Deception Pass & Fort Casey (July 21-22)

We took Ryan on his first camping trip, a one-night stay at Deception Pass State Park.  We arrived about midday and hiked from the bridge down to the beach. (Ryan loves to throw rocks into the water).  Afterwards, we hiked back up and drove to our campsite.  The campgrounds are perfectly situated between a pebbly beach to the north, a fresh water lake to the south, and the typical Washington, driftwood-filled beach to the west.







We purchased a new tent (REI Half Dome 4) the night before this trip and didn't bother reviewing the assembly instructions.  My old REI tent has a simple 2-pole criss-crossed design…and we kept trying to assemble the new tent in the same way with no success.  We eventually had to pull out the cellphone to find pictures of an assembled tent.

After we setup our tent, we walked down to the beach area by the fresh water lake.  We didn't realize how developed and popular this area was.  There were kayaks and pedal boats for rent, a snack shop, and a nearby amphitheater (with a Canadian folk band playing that night).


Cooked and ate our turkey quesadillas back at our campsite, watched the sunset, made some s'mores…
and the whole time worked endlessly to keep Ryan from falling into the campfire...


In the morning, after cooking eggs and bacon, we headed down to Fort Casey, a coastal fortification built in the 1890s to defend against invasions into the Puget Sound…..