Bayview State Park - Memorial Day Weekend

Our first trip of the season (Memorial Day weekend) was to Bayview State Park near Anacortes Washington. We always like to head out early afternoon on Friday to beat the horrible Seattle traffic. It was supposed to be a beautiful, sunny weekend so we were really looking forward to this trip after a long, dreary Seattle winter.

On Saturday we decided to drive over to Whidbey Island and explore Fort Casey. Both Grace & Wes visited the Fort when they were in the 6th grade, a tradition with several of the local schools, so we always like to visit when we're in the area. Grace was surprised to find the same woman giving tours of the Admiralty Head Lighthouse as she had back in 1975! The woman even had a photo album of the kids from that year, but Grace didn't see anyone she recognized.

We were pleased to see that there was some restoration work being done on the Fort, which has been deteriorating over the past several years. The Fort Casey Ammunition Hoist Rehabilitation Project includes repairing "Battery Worth," a one hundred year old ammunition hoist in poor condition. You could see the restoration involved repairing severely corroded surfaces, reconstructing two crank handles, painting, and making the hoist operational. You couldn't go inside the areas they were restoring, but we explored the other Batterys. Here's a picture of Wes looking inside the James Moore battery commander post. You can see how deteriorated the concrete is.


As you can see from the pictures, the weather was beautiful but still a bit on the cool side. The picture below is Wes standing inside the searchlight emplacement, which juts out over the side of the embankment.




He didn't want to go any further than this. You can see why from the picture below which shows the emplacement from the Keystone Ferry!








This is a HUGE lilac bush that was obviously planted when the Fort was in use. There was a small trail leading back among the bushes and on further investigation it appeared there was probably a house in this location at some point ~ maybe on officer's house whose wife liked lilac?????




This was an interesting addition. On our previous visit we noted the restrooms were showing their age. Well, the Parks Department built a brand new facility and installed a "Green Roof". First one we had seen in action.




After poking around the Fort for awhile, we caught the Keystone Ferry (which is right next to the Fort) over to Port Townsend. We just walked on because the ferry drops you off right in town.



Port Townsend is an old harbor town established in 1792 and you can see it in the old buildings lining downtown. We marveled at the painted advertisements on the old brick buildings, commenting on the fact that they are probably painted with lead paint!




Of course we had to explore the local hardware store and found a really cool mural:



After dinner we caught the ferry back to Whidbey Island. Wes enjoyed the ride back on the ferry.



Bayview State Park is called Bayview becauses it overlooks Padilla Bay, an estuary at the saltwater edge of the large delta of the Skagit River in the Salish Sea. It is about eight miles long (north to south) and three miles across. In 1980, this bay was selected to be included in the National Estuarine Research Reserve System. So, on Sunday we decided to take a little bike ride and went up the road about 1/2 mile to the Breazeale Interpretive Center.



Because the bay is filled with sediment from the Skagit River, the bottom is very shallow, flat, and muddy. It is so shallow that almost the whole bay is intertidal. This means that it is flooded at high tide. When the tide goes out the whole bay empties out, exposing miles and miles of mud flats. We got a great example of this when Grace & Wes decided to take the bikes on the Padilla Bay trail.


The trail is a hard packed gravel and offers several stopping points to rest or have a picnic.



Sunday we headed home, looking forward to our next trip in two weeks to Rasar State Park!

Great photos. I would probably have to say that Wes got farther than I would have at the ferry.

It looks like a very nice place to visit.

Tater

Very nice, thanks for sharing with us. My brother lives in Olympia and we've visited there a few time, but he's never taken us there. But, I guess to his defence, he did take up to Port Angeles and across to Victoria.