Deception Pass Lighthouse loop- 2 mile loop, 350 elevation gain
Pass-Pay to get into the park Difficulty-2/5 Rating-4/5
This has been another great week in the Pacific Northwest! For Mother’s Day Chris had me and the kids meet him at Zillow Tower after his work. I wasn’t sure why he wanted us to come. I was excited to get out of the house with the kids though and I haven’t been downtown since the Tanner’s were here last month! Chris wanted us to come down so he could have the kids pick out flowers for me at Pike Place Market. It was a fun surprise and the kids LOVED it! I got a bunch of different tulips and I loved being apart of the adventure!
What I really wanted for Mother’s Day weekend was to go camping! I have been wanting to go since we moved here. I have been dying to go Olympic National Park. It looks stunning in that area. I spent a bunch of time looking at different areas we could go camping on the Peninsula. There are SO many options. Everything looked amazing and I narrowed it down to a few locations. I decided to look at one other spot not on the Peninsula, a little closer to home and civilization. We haven’t been camping with the kids since Lilly was little and I didn’t want it to be too rough. We actually ended up going to the last place I picked that I looked at randomly, Deception Pass. It looked like a cool area and the more I looked into it the more excited I got! (We will have to do the Peninsula another time, when we have more time to really explore!
Deception Pass is about an hour and forty minutes north of us.Deception Pass is a strait separating Whidbey Island and Fidalgo Island. And it connects Skagit Bay and part of the Puget sound. You can cross the strait by two bridges that you can drive over, or park near and walk across (we did both!) Whats weird for me being an Arizona girl is all the water in Washington! We drove across the bridge and I couldn’t tell if we were driving across ocean or lake. Turns out it is ocean! The strait is a neat thing to see! I really haven’t seen anything quite like it. It looks like a river running into a lake that turns into ocean. It sounds strange, and it really is strange to see. When you are near it, it almost sounds like a waterfall falling, or a rushing river. It looks like a rushing river SOME of the time and in certain places. We saw whirlpools and waves that look like they are holding still in one spot right in the middle. And sometimes the current runs one way and sometimes it looks like the current runs the other way and sometimes it looks like 2 currents are fighting each other. It was SO strange! I read that sometimes the current can run about 9 miles an hour. Some of the fastest currents in the world off of Florida and South Africa run about 5-6 miles and hour! So SOMETIMES the currents at Deception Pass really are flying! We did some reading afterwards and it sounds like people can scuba dive there(when conditions are good.) and the diving is amazing. You wold have to be an experienced diver and talk to locals to know when conditions are OK to dive. People also kayak in there and boats will sometimes pass through. It really is a crazy sight and I have never seen anything like it!
We got to Deception Pass in the later afternoon. We found the campsite area, but they were full and had no other spots to camp, except for cabins. They gave us a list of other campgrounds but they were all fairly far away. We talked it over and decided to just get one of their cabins. (Chris and I both checked the websites and we were unable to reserves spots until next weekend. The website made it seem like they weren’t accepting reservations until later in May.) Ryan had a melt down because he really wanted to stay in a tent. (We all did too.) I told him it was either the cabin or we just go home later that day. He calmed down a bit, but was not happy about the cabin. We drove through the campsite looking for our cabin. When we found it I realized I had lost the code to get in. (It was less than 5 minutes away. I’m still not sure where the code is the lady gave us, or how I lost it, but I did.) We had to drive back to the check in area and get a new code and then drive back to our cabin.) Once in the cabin Ryan saw we had bunk beds and he was in heaven! The cabin was barely a step above a tent. It seemed new and it was nice, but it only had a table, a bunk bed (bottom bunk was a larger size) and a futon. The kids were so excited about it!
After we dropped everything off we wanted to go on a small hike. There are so many fun hiking spots around but we knew we wanted to see some great views. We decided to hike around Rosario beach. (We did the lighthouse loop.) On this hike you get a little bit of beach walking, walking through the woods, and you get views of Deception Pass bridge and the Sound. It really is a stunning hike. It was later afternoon by the time we started so we did about 2 miles. This was the first time Lilly walked it all by herself. There were minimal tears and she didn’t ask to be carried at all. We were also able to go on a pier and we saw some kayaks (Ryan really wants to go kayaking now.) The hike was perfect for views and the kids loved it! At the entrance of that hike there is a playground so we let the kids play there after we were done hiking for a bit.
We drove around the area for a little bit, then went back to our cabin. We made a fire. The kids roasted hot dogs and we had smores. After the kids went to bed Chris and I sat by the fire for a while just the two of us and then we went to bed. It was a perfect day! We all slept really well. Better than we would have if we stayed in a tent.
The next morning we woke up and parked near the bridge and walked across. We ended up doing a small hike around Goose Rock. This one felt like we were more in the woods, but we could still get glimpses of the ocean. We went as long as the kids wanted and then we turned around and went back to the car. We drove around Anacortes for awhile (A near by town) and then headed for home.
It was so fun kind of camping (Ryan said we couldn’t call it camping since we weren’t in a tent.) and hiking. There is so much to do in the Northwest. I feel like if we camped every weekend and went somewhere new we wouldn’t have time to see everything! We feel so blessed to have this time in the Northwest!
I wish they were really sleeping! First bus ride with just the three of us!
Waiting for daddy to come down from work!
the flowers my kids picked out for me for Mother’s Day
Getting ready to go camping with the candy they got from Chris’ work
Its almost 10 PM at night. It was never this light, this late in Arizona
Our flowers are blooming!
