Resting at Quartz Mountain
Quartz Mountain is one of the most unique rentals in the Washington State Park System.
Camping with Wee Ones
Middle Fork is close to Seattle and easy to get to with a car full of children.
Grayland: Oysters, Clams and Rain
We got a text on the way to Grayland, “Hurry! I am in my tshirt on the beach”, but by the time we got their the sun was setting, the clouds gathering and it was time to put on a hat. We never took off the hats the rest of the weekend. I tell everyone [...]
Grayland Looks Like a Tradition
For the third year in row, I’ve made the trip down to Grayland State Park for a Spring weekend on the beach. This year, in addition to unseasonably warm weather, a large group of friends rented yurts around the campground, making for more time around the campfire telling jokes. I’ve recommended this before, but for [...]
Quartz Mountain Fire Lookout
The Washington State Park system has many interesting accommodations to rent: cabins, yurts, lighthouses, covered wagons to name a few. Quartz Mountain is a fire lookout in Mt. Spokane State Park and can be yours for $60 a night with a bit of flexibility and planning. Open, depending on the snow, from mid-June through mid-October, [...]
Boating to Blake Island
Off the coast of Seattle lies little Blake Island. The entire thing is a state park, with a few campgrounds, buoys around it to moor your boat, and first-come-first serve marina. It’s a popular tourist destination due to Tillicum Village, which hosts an salmon feed and Native American dance show in a Northwest long house. [...]
Hiking at St. Helens
Iron Creek Campground is three hours south of Seattle, ten miles south of Randle. Lying in tent your tent at night you can hear the Cispus River rush by. Too early for mosquitos, cool at night, the campground is lush, quiet and nearly perfect in late June. We were there because it’s the closest camp [...]
Willapa Bay Oyster Hunt
Unlike the coast to the north, or the Oregon coast to the south, Washington’s southern coast is one of long sandy beaches and broad shallow bays. Squally and cool, we based our weekend of oyster-questing out a yurt at Grayland State Park. The road from Grayland skirts the cranberry bogs, before rounding Cape Shoalwater into [...]
Grayland
While work certainly gets in the way of actively blogging about life, thankfully, it does little to get in the way of having a life. Grayland is a small town on the Pacific Ocean. It’s about 20 miles Southwest of Aberdeen and there’s not much there. Some cranberry bogs and a bar where the locals [...]