Oh, holiday weekends, how you do vex us, especially when you come with ideal weather. To go out amongst the droves of other humans or stay closer to home and regret “wasting” such an opportunity? I guess the title of this post gives away which choice we made. We did, however, go in a direction we thought might be the least congested.
The conditions for more traditional hiking are not yet to our liking, and even though we’re champing at the bit to take our first RV trip in the big rig, it’s not yet ready. We also didn’t want to drive too very far, but have nearly exhausted the unexplored close-to-home options. The idea to knock off some of the other state parks we’ve not yet visited was all mine, and I chose three that are close to one another out on the Key Peninsula.
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| No Vacancy? No problem, just a day trip! |
We started with the furthest away of the three and worked our way backwards. None of them offer much in the way of trails for distance, but they did each have a few loops of footpaths and lots of beach to walk.
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| Looking out at Case Inlet |
We could also see lots and lots of huge anemones in the water below, but no starfish, which I was really hoping to see. After taking in some rays on the pier, we “hiked” all 0.8 miles of trails.
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| TLG commands the route. |
This was a little unmapped trail that is part of the Puget Trail which is an Audubon Society’s birding trail, on which we didn’t see any interesting birds of note.
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| TBGoof |
I said, “Show how super-happy you are to be out in the sunshine!” and I got this.
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| Next! |
Over to the east coast of the peninsula we went.
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| So lost. |
Because I really can learn from the past, I had taken photos of the park maps before leaving for the day. It’s not like you can get lost at any of these smaller parks, so why someone felt the need to rip off this map, who knows?
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| TBGuide finds another map. |
This park has a few more trails to wander along than the first, and since almost all the people were busy at the beachy parts of the park, we enjoyed about two miles of near-solitude.
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| Non-beachy quietude. |
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| Low tide. |
It is possible to walk out onto a long sandbar at low tide, but if you look closely, you can see an almost single-file line of people doing just that. Eschewing that meant possibly missing sea stars, but we stayed off it anyhow.
Just like when we visited Cape Disappointment, there were signs asking park-goers not to disturb baby harbor seals they might encounter on the beach. And just like then, I was desperate to spot a baby harbor seal in order to show how good I was at not disturbing it. Again, sadly, my skills went untested.
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| TBG saving on sunscreen. |
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| Next! |
The website says this park has two miles of hiking trails, so I’m going to credit that, but we thought it was probably not really that much.
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| Big tree along the overgrown Interpretive Trail. |
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Showing TBG what super-happy really looks like. |
There is a cool-looking island a half-mile offshore that is Cutts Island State Park, which can only be accessed by watercraft. I told TBG that I should’ve brought my little kayak, and he scoffed at the idea, saying it would’ve been shredded on the barnacles. I say I could’ve made it, but now we’ll never know, and the current total in the Great State Park Grand Scheme is now at 64.