Wonderful Whidbey Island, Washington
August, 2021
Beach at Fort Ebey State Park
Hiking trail on the bluff at Fort Ebey State Park
There was so much to do and see on Whidbey Island, which is in Puget Sound, northwest of Seattle. We were there for a week, and didn’t run out of things to do. There were several state parks, lots of beaches, and cute little seaside towns.
We bought a Washington State Parks annual pass, because it paid for itself after 3 park visits. Deception Pass State Park is on the north end of the island, and is connected to Fidalgo Island by a high bridge over Deception Pass. The bridge is undergoing repairs, so part of it was covered by tarps. We could walk on a narrow sidewalk on the bridge across the pass—quite unnerving!
These sunset colors and a rainbow were actually east of us over Deception Pass.
Looking at Fidalgo Island from the west side of the Deception Pass bridge
At Deception Pass State Park, the most-visited state park in Washington, we walked down a trail through the woods to North Beach, which faces Deception Pass. This photo shows just a portion of the bridge.
The rocks on the beach were so many different colors and patterns! Rocks are cool!
Another interesting state park was Fort Casey. We could walk around the fort, which was built in the late 1800’s to protect the coastline, and was in use by the military until 1945. We could also go inside Admiralty Head Lighthouse.
One small section of the fort. Craig climbed the ladder to the top of the lighthouse to take this photo and the one below. This view is looking toward the Cascade mountains.
We also walked a trail to the bluff overlooking a beach at Ebey’s Landing National Historical Reserve. The reserve is a combination of Federal, State, and private land. It preserves the history of the island.
We like quirky roadside stuff, and Craig found out about a park in Oak Harbor called Flintstone Park that had a concrete replica Fred Flintstone car. We wondered, “Why?” The story goes that the town was excavating a road, and someone said it looked like a road from the Flintstones cartoon. So somebody else heard that and decided to make a Flintstone car to put in a park.
We really liked the southern half of the island, because it was not as busy on the main road. We loved the cute little town of Langley. It had good restaurants, lots of flowers, shops, art galleries, and sculptures. It even had lots of bunnies hopping around!
This was in “Boy and Dog Park”, naturally!
Sculpture garden. Among the flowers were bronzes and glass sculptures for sale (for tens of thousands of dollars!)
Beautiful flowers everywhere in Langley
One evening, we drove up Mount Erie on Fidalgo Island to watch the sunset. We could see some of the San Juan Islands from our viewpoint.
On our last day, we went on a whale-watching tour, which went around several of the islands north of Whidbey Island. According to the naturalist on board, we saw 4 different pods of orcas. We were surprised at how close to shore they were. We didn’t see any of them breaching, but we did see a couple swim under the bow of our boat. They were so close!
I wouldn’t have wanted to be in that tiny boat!
We got to be the first vehicle (after some motorcycles) to drive our RV onto the ferry from Whidbey Island to Port Townsend. So we had a great view crossing the inlet.
Port Townsend. Our ferry looked just like this one.
What a great week! Now onward to Olympic National Park.