|
|
|
Blake Island, Washington
by Leslee Jaquette
An off-season cruiser's secret playground
Print This Article
|
Email This Article
The cocoa and cookies are packed. Rain gear, boots and stocking caps have been thrown in the duffel along with the heavy coats. Dressed in sweatshirts and wool socks, most of the family is crammed in the car waiting to drive to the boat at Shilshole Bay Marina in Seattle.
We are waiting for Roger, 18, to put the cat out. As he starts to lock the door, Roger notices the sky is spitting hail. With his best Jack Nicholson imitation, he asks, "Are we deranged?"
The answer is "yes." For as many winters as he has experienced, our family has relished boating to Blake Island in the off-season.
Located eight miles from downtown Seattle, Blake Island State Park's marina is bow-to-stern with outboards, luxury yachts, ski boats and Hobie Cats four months out of the year. Pleasureboats are triple-rafted at the docks and restrooms are crowded with teenage girls curling their hair. Every mooring buoy has a waiting line and the beaches are littered with cans.
However, in the off-season, Blake Island reclaims its anonymity. Puget Sound boaters seem to get amnesia every winter, forgetting that the island -- which most historians say was Chief Seattle's birthplace -- is easy to reach for weekend or day cruises throughout the year, in most conditions.
Over the years, we have sailed, powered and even rowed to Blake Island. After all, it is less than six miles from Alki Point to the docks on the island's northeast corner.
When we first visited Blake Island in the off-season, the children were quite young. On one trip, Roger, then age 7, caught his age in flounder using fat sand worms he had dug during low tide.
That winter trip was the first time he and his brother Adam, then age 3, worked together to dam tide rivulets and dig clams. The best part was that we were the only people on the entire west beach.
While the boys dragged sticks along the sand and climbed giant, soggy logs, I remember treating myself to a jog around the island. I took the trail to Tillicum Village and marina first,
because I wanted to make sure no red tide was present to prohibit us from eating the clams we had dug. I found no warnings posted on the marina bulletin board.
As I paused for a glance at Seattle to the south and Mount Rainier to the north, two deer were foraging among the ferns near the edge of the nature walk. After about an hour's jog, I wound my way back to the beach, where my boys were still playing, steadfastly damming every stream on the beach.
Several years later, we spent Easter weekend at Blake Island. By then, the boys enjoyed camping in their very own tent and star gazing, after a marshmallow roast. That year, the Easter Bunny hid dozens of candy-filled plastic eggs all over the spit. The boys spent hours hunting through seaweed, under logs and behind rocks for the goodies, on what seemed like our own private beach.
Our most recent mini-cruise to Blake Island was as individual and special as our scores of other getaways. Even though the boys are sophisticated young men now, we totally enjoyed our few hours of family time and windy, winter beach play. Again, we felt like the sole proprietors of lovely Blake Island.
After the rain and hail on the morning of our cruise, the day continually improved. Around noon, we enjoyed two hours of clear skies and bright sunshine before clouds converged to cover the season's first scattering of snow over the Cascades.
On the way to Blake Island, we observed a bunch of seagulls chasing a bald eagle away from a herring ball, off the West Point buoy. The rest of the downwind cruise provided some quiet time for reading and daydreaming. Once the boat was secured to the mostly empty dock at the marina, we hiked over to the beach on the west side.
There, we watched a confused salmon swirl around the deep end of the spit. We saw several deer near the nature trail, but we didn't see another person on the beach or on the trail in the entire three hours we visited the island.
We took a leisurely three hour return cruise and arrived back at Shilshole Bay before the first short day of Daylight Savings Time closed in on us.
Isolated, But Historic
One of the reasons Blake Island is so deserted during off-season is that visitors can only get there by boat. During winter and early spring, no passenger service is available to the island.
Between May and October, Tillicum Village -- adjacent to the
marina -- offers boat rides to the island from Seattle's Pier 56. The village, which houses the Northwest Coast Indian Cultural Center, schedules numerous salmon barbecues, native dances and cultural exhibitions for island visitors.
Once an ancestral campground of the Suquamish Indians, Blake Island was named for explorer Capt. Charles Wilkes' surveyor, George Smith Blake, in 1841. Previously, it was known as High Island and Smugglers' Island.
In 1904, Seattle developer William Pitt Trimble bought the island and built a luxurious summer home there for his bride, Cannie Trimble. Today, parts of the foundation and tennis courts, along with aging holly trees and laurels, are all that is left of the Trimbles' grand palace, where the couple once hosted garden parties for the cream of Seattle society.
After Cannie Trimble's death and the house's destruction in a fire, the island was purchased by the state. It became a marine park in 1959.
An Accommodating Destination
Despite the absence of visitors in the off-season, Blake Island facilities are designed to accommodate lots of boats and boaters. Blake Island State Park's marina has 1,500 feet of dock space for visitors. Dock space for boats smaller than 26 feet is $6, and the fee for larger boats is $9 a night. An annual dock permit costs $27 for boats under 26 feet, and owners of larger boats pay $45.
Boaters also will find 15 buoys around the island, for easy mooring. The fee is $5 a night for any length of boat.
Restroom facilities with showers near the dock are open year-round. Although the restrooms on the west end are closed during the winter, outhouses are available for intrepid campers.
The 41 campsites scattered throughout the park are available on a first-come/first-served basis. Campsites are $4 a night, and group campsites and shelters can be reserved in advance.
No trash cans are provided on Blake Island because all garbage must be "packed out." However, trash bags are available from the ranger.
For more information, call Tillicum Village at (206) 443-1244; or Blake Island Camp Reservations, at (206) 947-0905.
|
This article first appeared in the February 1, 1992 issue of Sea Magazine. All or parts of the information contained in this article might be outdated. |
|
|
|
|
