Maya and I met up with my friend James and his daughter, Chelsea, for an overnight paddle to Blake Island. This was Chelsea’s first-ever kayak-camping trip and Maya’s longest-distance kayak trip.
Maya had been to Blake Island once before, but on that earlier trip, we launched from Southworth to shorten the paddling distance. This time, we launched from Weather Watch Park in West Seattle, for a paddling distance of about five miles (8 km) one-way.
Route map. There was plenty of free, overnight parking in the neighborhood near Weather Watch Park.
Chelsea and Maya at launch beach, Weather Watch Park. Low tide is a delight to little girls who like to explore.
James and Chelsea paddling to Blake Island. Chelsea helped James paddle.
Alex and Maya paddling to Blake Island. Wind and currents were both benign.
Blake Island was the perfect place for two little girls to go exploring. There were acres of tidal mudflats, a long, sandy point covered with driftwood logs, and a dark forest that seemed as if it might conceal dinosaurs. The girls wandered for hours in their rubber boots, picking up shells, crabs, sticks, and feathers.
They even found a dinosaur, too—a little pterodactyl named Chelsea, which James was able to capture with a net.
James unloading gear on Blake Island. At low tide, an extensive mudflat developed, but the footing was quite firm.
Chelsea and Maya climbing on driftwood. The girls made up their own adventures, unencumbered by adults.
One unpleasant discovery was the thousands of burrs in the ground at the marine trail campsite. These burrs were the sharpest I’d ever encountered, and they were everywhere, just waiting for us every time someone tried taking off his or her shoes. The burrs poked right through my tent and its floor pad, and it was only by luck they did not penetrate our air mattresses. A thick tarp would have protected us, but we didn’t have one.
The girls didn’t mind the discomfort. They were too absorbed in visiting one another’s tents and playing with one another’s stuffed animals and sticker books.
Maya and Chelsea in Chelsea’s tent. Chelsea, age six, made up stories that delighted Maya, age three and a half.
Maya in her own tent. So many stuffed dogs accompanied us they needed their own drybag just for dogs.
We spotted a fair amount of wildlife, including flocks of western sandpipers on the mudflat, and harbor seals and porpoises in the sound between Blake Island and the mainland. Down on the beach, James and Chelsea found a giant ochre sea star and even an even larger bald eagle. A pair of large deer walked through the campsite in the morning, while families of raccoons foraged in the eelgrass at low tide, scooping up crabs.
Surprisingly, the raccoons did not raid our campsite at night. They must have found enough natural food not to need ours. I love it when raccoons retain their natural behavior, even in the face of human encroachment. In their natural habitat and nature habits, raccoons are actually lovely animals—not the pests we sometimes think of.
On Sunday afternoon, the warm sun, rocking waves, and soothing presence of their dads lulled Maya and Chelsea to sleep in the kayaks. Both girls slumped forward in their dads’ laps and slept away half the crossing back to Seattle. James and I didn’t wake them, even when porpoises swam across our path.
It was harder than I had expected to relocate Weather Watch Park from Blake Island. The entire West Seattle shoreline was so developed there were no real landmarks, just an endless façade of suburbia. Even the Alki Point Lighthouse was difficult to discern amid the overgrowth. Luckily, I had replaced the binoculars that fell overboard during a previous trip to Hein Bank, so even from a few miles’ distance, I was able to pick out a familiar-looking pier and aim for that.
Loading the kayaks on Blake Island. The seagrass was full of crabs, ranging from fingernail-size up to hefty Dungeness.
James and Chelsea paddling past Alki Point. There’s nothing finer than a summer afternoon in Seattle.
The best part of kayaking is never the kayaking. The real purpose is to explore the beauty of the natural world, and no one makes happier explorers than a pair of children and their dads.
—Alex Sidles