One of my favorite parts of Washington State is Kalaloch. Here on the western edge of the Olympic Peninsula, Highway 101 bends close to the ocean shore. Every couple of miles is some new scenic overlook, with long sandy beaches to explore.

As is true of most parts of the world, what’s beautiful enough by land is even better by kayak. From a car-camping base at Kalaloch, I paddled out to Tunnel Island in the Copalis National Wildlife Refuge the first morning, and then out to Destruction Island in the Quillayute Needles National Wildlife Refuge the next.

The seabird migration was in full swing. Hundreds of surf scoters and white-winged scoters were flocking offshore, mostly within a few hundred yards of the surf line. Red-throated loons were also present in large numbers, along with smaller numbers of common loons and a handful of Pacific loons. Each of these species is headed for the arctic to breed. Soon our waters will be largely empty of seabirds—what I call the annual “bird desert.”

Some seabirds do breed in Washington, of course, and these resident breeders were getting prepared. Pelagic cormorants were hauling vegetation for nesting material to the ledges of cliffs on the offshore islands. Marbled murrelets were paired off and dressed in brown camouflage, the better to blend in among the high branches of old-growth forests, where they lay their eggs on moss.

Tunnel Island is so named for the large tunnel on its south side. At high tide, during low swell, it is possible to paddle a kayak straight through. When I arrived, however, waves were breaking inside the tunnel and slamming into the walls. For ninety seconds at a time, all would be quiet within the tunnel, and then wham! an explosion of whitewater.

I toyed with the idea of shooting the tunnel during one of the calm periods. It would have been a fine adventure in a plastic kayak, with a helmet and a partner for safety, but I was in a fiberglass kayak, bareheaded, and alone.

Luckily, there were other arches to explore. Tunnel Island was long renowned for an arciform feature called Elephant Rock, so named for its fanciful silhouette. Sometime in late 2016, one of the arches collapsed, destroying the elephant’s head and trunk and leaving behind only an ordinary cluster of sea arches, similar to any number of others on the Washington coast.

Arches and tunnels look imposing, but they are transient features. Even the tunnel of Tunnel Island is not a permanent fixture. Until ocean waves punched through its far end several decades ago, the “tunnel” was only a sea cave, and the island was known as Arch Island. The name was officially changed to Tunnel Island in 1960.

It was not only seabird migration season; the gray whales were also on the move. Each year, some twenty-seven thousand individuals migrate between Baja and the Gulf of Alaska, passing through our waters on the northbound leg during spring and the southbound leg during fall.

The eastern Pacific gray whales represent one of the great conservation success stories of North America. Whereas the Atlantic gray whales were extirpated by whalers and have not returned to this day, and whereas the western Pacific gray whales are still barely clinging to life, the eastern Pacific gray whales have fully recovered to their pre-whaling population.

There were so many gray whales haunting the surf line I had to be careful of collisions. At one point, a whale popped up without warning on the landward side of me. I was worried it might bolt for the ocean and run me over, so I headed out to sea myself, only to startled by a second whale popping up on my seaward side. I tried charting a middle course between the two whales, only to face a third whale that popped up right in my tracks. The whales were playing pinball with me!

The next morning, I launched from Ruby Beach toward Destruction Island. As with Tunnel Island, landing on Destruction Island is prohibited, but it’s a beautiful and remote place to circumnavigate by kayak. Many are the land-bound visitors who wonder about this island; few are the kayakers who have seen it up close.

The southern and western faces of Destruction Island were exposed to wind-waves and swell, so my clockwise circumnavigation made for a bumpy outbound leg. Reefs extending about a third of the way from the island to the mainland posed a further challenge. Many of the boomers broke on only the largest swells, so I had to stay alert for surprises.

At low tide, a boomer field closed off the entrances to the sheltered bays on the north side of the island. In these bays I had found dozens of sea otters during a previous visit to Destruction Island, so I was disappointed not to be able to enter this time.

I proceeded to the calmer rock gardens on the east side, not expecting to find much in the way of wildlife. To my surprise, the sea otters had all relocated here, as well! A raft some three hundred strong was tucked away in a hidden, rocky alcove. I watched from a distance of a hundred yards, careful not to disturb one of the principal concentrations of sea otters in Washington.

After a quiet hour in the soothing company of sea otters, I paddled back across to the mainland. The rising tide had calmed the reef breakers off the island as well as the surf line off Ruby Beach. I landed without capsizing, no doubt disappointing the hordes of tourists from landlocked states, poised with their cellphones to capture a bumbling native falling out of a sea kayak.

The entire Olympic coast is a wonderland for kayakers. Between the geography, the geology, the meteorology, and the biology, there is never a dull moment on the coast.

—Alex Sidles