Day 8: Camano Island State Park to Mariners Cove

*Lunch spot at Rocky Point, right before the crossing to Mariners Cove. This was not atypical of many of our stops in Puget Sound.*

The paddle north of Camano Island State Park was really quite similar to the paddle to Camano Island State Park – high bluffs, lots of beaches, really cool houses with rickety stairs down to the water. We had a bit of a head wind and current to fight, but otherwise the weather was fine and plugged our way northward to Mariner’s Cove County Park. If you are an avid kayaker and I confused by the mentioning of this park, I don’t blame you. I don’t think anyone but the locals uses it. There’s no camping, no toilet, not evening a picnic table – just a park bench and a boat ramp. So why were we headed here? Well, the next campsite north of Camano Island was either in Oak Harbor, which was more a detour that we wanted to take, or it was another ten miles north and Hope Island. Having discovered the wonders of Airbnb, we opted to find a bed and hot shower for a night. Luckily we discovered Wildwood Farms, a horse farm not far from Mariner’s Cover Marina, and Craig, the jovial owner, who had a big pick up truck and was willing to drive us and all our gear back to his place.

*The problem with having a lot of cargo room in a kayak is you fill it with a lot of stuff. Here’s a shot of all of our camping gear. This doesn’t include all the paddling gear we use as well. Ugh.*

*Another splendid place to spend an evening. We’ve learned to enjoy spoiling ourselves on this trip.*

We landed at Mariners cove, unloaded our mountain of gear and called Craig to pick us up. We locked our kayaks to the park bench using some cable straps I’d made and a combo lock. Craig arrived and gawked at our pile and said, “You need some horses.” He brought us back to Wildwood Farm, which is a spectacular horse farm spread over dozens of acres. We got to walk around and meet many of the horses (there were about fifty of them living at the farm when we were there). I’m not a horse person – they still kind of spook me – but Giovannina loves them and felt very comfortable with them. I just stood back and thought, “Please don’t think of me as food.”

But surely the delight of the stay was the hot tub right outside our room. Gio and I have a history of making trips in order to soak in gorgeous locations. I’m not saying that we paddled seventy miles to sit in a hot tub and gaze out over the rolling hills of bucolic horse farm; but I’m also not saying we didn’t.