San Juan Island

In this post, let me write about the San Juan Island. To go to this island, we went to Anacortes and then took the ferry from there. This is just a day trip. You can always carry your car on the ferry and then drive the car in the island. This comes to nearly 50 dollars for two people and the per person will be lesser if you pool more people in a car. The island is quite small and there are two places where you can rent bikes and ride them. Cycling in those roads is a good activity. Or you can drive and see places around. The key places I recollect are the Lighthouse, British camp, a couple of beaches, Lavender farm and Young hill.

The trek to the top of Young hill is simply amazing. The trek is short but steep enough to make you sweat a lot and you have a prize in the end of the trail. You will have an amazing view of Canada. We did have enough charge in our cameras. So we could not manage any pictures of this location in good resolution. However you can find some of the cellphone shots taken, here.

Cape of Disappointment

This place, unlike the name suggests, is a superb place which will not disappoint you at all. The drive to this place is on the most scenic highway US-101. There are two routes to go to this place from Seattle and I would suggest you to go in this route. There is a beach in the Cape Disappointment State Park and it is not crowded and is the best place to sit and enjoy. Then there is a jetty near the beach which goes quite a distance into the sea. And the walk on the rocky strip is breezy and refreshing.

From the beach you will be able to see two light houses. Then there is a Light house trail which will take you to one of the Light houses. There will be another scenic view of an isolated beach. You can see the pictures taken during our trip to Cape of Disappointment, here. This is one of the best short trips you can make from Seattle and I highly recommend this place for Spring/Summer.

Cowiche Canyon

In the last post we saw about the Ancient lakes trail in the east of Washington. This time let us branch out on the way and take another scenic super-fast highway. The route to drive on is this. As usual I-90 will be great and on I-90, east of the Skiing Central Summit, you will have a huge surface of ice. I am still to figure out if it is just a plain land or a frozen lake. So we have to get more to the east and then we have to go towards Yakima taking I-82 E. This 30 odd miles drive on I-82 is something really awesome.

And the trail is very different. You can go up the canyon and walk along the rim for a longer hike or just cross the 11 bridges on the lovely stream of the river flowing there. The upland overlook trail is quite good to take and have a seat relax with a nice view on top. It is just a fun walk if you do not climb the canyon. So I would suggest to take the tougher hiking route. We did the simple walking trail on the bridges. Some of the pics taken are here(Courtesy: Arun Kalaiselvan). In the next posts, let us go to the Pacific side of Washington.