Welcome to The Washington State hiking podcast. I'm your host Jennie Thwing Flaming. Along with my part time co host guidebook, author Craig Romano. We provide practical and timely seasonal hiking advice for hikers, trail runners and potential hikers and trail runners of all skill and ability levels. That is helpful, accurate, fun and inclusive. We would love to hear from you, our listeners, the second link in the show notes right below the tip jar. Hint Hint, is our voice
memo link. Please leave us a voice memo with your question, and we will answer it in a future episode. Hi, everyone, today, Jennie here today we're talking about some awesome beach hikes, or maybe beach Hangout, some of them are more Heike than others in Washington State. And there are some additional features that I think are pretty awesome. In mid summer that we're not going to talk about today. We'll save that for a future episode. So the ones I'm talking about
today, we're in mid April. So the weather is pretty unpredictable, it can be very summer like, or it can be kind of cold and gray and maybe rainy. So these are all really fun hikes and beaches to explore. No matter what the weather is doing. They'll be great if you're looking ahead to summer beach opportunities. And they're also great this time of year, and for that matter in the dead of winter. So I'm really excited to share these with you.
And this is probably something that people would disagree about a bit. So I want to just remind you that in the SpeakPipe. That is our voice memo that's in the show notes, you can either sound off and disagree with me or ask questions that you have about really anything, including at these hikes that we're talking about today. So let's dive in. I have nine that I'm going to talk
about today. And these are all these all just happen to be hikes and beaches that are along the saltwater either Puget Sound, the Salish Sea, or the Pacific Ocean. I'm not including any late hikes here because I feel like Lake hikes and beaches are better for summer. So we'll get to that at some point in the future. Alright, let's start out on the Olympic coast on the Pacific Ocean. And I have three different areas that I want to talk about there that are awesome beaches. The first one
is Long Beach. Now that's not Long Beach in California. That's a long beach on the beach, well, not even on the Olympic Peninsula in southwest Washington. And it's pretty convenient for folks in Portland and Olympia, and Tacoma, and Seattle. And if you're doing a road trip around the Olympic Peninsula, this can be kind of a cool addition as well. So one of the things I really love about Long Beach is that the beach is
really open. You can walk or drive for many miles along the beach, which is kind of unique. You can build a fire out there if it's a nice day. And I really love that. So you don't need to hike to get to the beach, you can just go there and then walk as far as you want and see those big ocean waves. And it's just a
really cool environment. I'd also add that at nearby Cape Disappointment State Park, there are lots of hiking trails that are near the beach, and where you can see the Columbia bar over the mouth of the Columbia River, which is also pretty interesting. And I would really encourage you to do I have an article about visiting Long Beach and I'll put that in the show notes if you want to learn more. Okay, so that's the first one. The other two hikes out on the Pacific Ocean are both in a
Olympic National Park. And there are several great beaches there. But the two I want to talk about today are real alto beach and second beach. Rio alto Beach is very unique in that it has a wheelchair accessible ramp to sort of get you out to the water and to be able to see the ocean even in a wheelchair, which is really cool. It's been that way
for a long time. But unfortunately, a lot of times in the winter the storms, throw up lots of logs and kind of get in the way of that so I'd recommend checking WTA trip reports and also with a Olympic National Park to see how accessible is right before you're gonna go. But It's recently been kind of rehabbed and made even more accessible than it was before. So that's really cool. It's also a wonderful place to walk along the beach. There's no steepness there. Second Beach is different
that way. But on reality beach, it's flat, and you can walk quite far on the beach up to a hole in the wall. Or you can just sit and enjoy the ocean and the driftwood with no kind of buildings or development around. That's pretty cool. Second beach, you get to that from the trailhead that's very near the town of law push, which is also a fun place to go. It's a little more of a hike. It's not super far, it's less than two miles through old growth forests. Very
cool big Sitka spruce trees. But it is when you get to kind of the end of the trail and you go down to the beach, it's very steep and, and scrambled to get down there and backup. So just be aware of that. But for the most part, the trail is flat and the beach is flat. But there's this kind of tricky bit to get down and up. That is an amazing place to see a sunset. By the way, you can camp out there, you can get a permit from a Olympic National Park in Port Angeles at the wilderness Information
Center. That's one of my favorite places to backpack in Washington State. And it's a great place to start because it's not too far that you have to take your stuff. But even if you're just doing a day trip, it's still really awesome. And it's a wonderful beach to just take it hanging out on. Really wonderful. Okay, so that's the first three. The next three are kind of still in more remote areas, but not as remote as out on the Pacific coast in Olympic
National Park. So we're working our way around the Olympic Peninsula. I want to call it Crescent Beach in salt Creek county park. It is an awesome, awesome beach. It's almost never crowded. It's got beautiful sand, you can get to it very easily. There's a campground nearby salt Creek, and the tide pools out there, not on Crescent Beach, but on the spit of rocks that kind of sticks out from salt Creek Park has wonderful tide pools, it's one of the best places for tide pooling in
Washington. So that makes it a really great place to walk around, continuing kind of a long. We're now on the Strait of Juan de Fuca, which is the water that goes off the Pacific Ocean between Vancouver Island and Washington state. So going further along Dungeness Spit is a fantastic hike as well. So in just in less than a mile, you can hike down to the beach, through the forest. And then you can walk as far as you want on
the beach. One word of caution, it is about six miles from the parking area out to the lighthouse. So it's really easy. I have done this myself to like walk all the way out to the lighthouse and then be kind of tired. And now you have to walk like five and a half, six miles back. And so just watch out for that. If you're wanting to go all the way out to the lighthouse, that is going to be a 12 mile hike. And it can get kind of tiring walking on the sand on the rocks as well. So
just pay attention to that. But beautiful place. Really interesting. You can watch shipping traffic out there. It's another great sunset spot. Just remember your time and getting back to your car. And then working our way kind of into the islands of the Salish Sea. My favorite beach in the San Juan Islands is Spencer spit on Lopez island. It is it feels like it's always sunny there and I read that in a guide book one time that it was always sunny there,
which of course it isn't. But it feels like it's sunnier than some places. I don't know how to explain it. There is a beautiful sand spit. There are picnic shelters. The water is quite apt. There's a swiftcurrent out at the end, but there's kind of a lagoon behind it. That's pretty mellow. Um, there are you know, it's a great place to put up a hammock. There's a campground nearby. It's really a it's just a wonderful place and
you can do a day trip there. It can be really expensive to stay in the San Juan Islands but especially to Lopez. I've done day trips there several times and I've also camped at Spencer spit state park it definitely fills up so you need to have a reservation if you're going on a weekend for sure also for the ferry, but you can totally do it in a day trip if you live in Seattle or Everett or Bellingham or definitely you're anywhere on Whidbey Island no problem. Um you can also do it without a
car. This is all Something that I've done, you can just take your bike on the ferry and bike over to Spencer spent. Lopes isn't as steep of an island as some of the other sand ones. So it's a little bit easier bike riding, so that's another option. Okay, next up is EBS Leontine, which is on the west coast of Whidbey Island facing Admiralty inlet. And aebs. Landing is a great three and a half mile loop that goes up over the bluff and then comes back on
the beach. Or you can start on the beach and go up over the bluff. Or you can just hike along the bluff above the beach, or you can just hang out at the beach without any hygiene at all. That is a pretty great place as well another place with wonderful sunsets, very de trouble from Seattle, Everett Bellingham, really a great location to either hike or just hang out for
a while. It's also very interesting historically, a lot of the interpretive signs are about white settlers who were in that area in the last 150 years or so. But Whidbey Island has long been a really important crossroads of many different Coast Salish people. And so I would just encourage you to think about that. And I know that the, the land managers there are working on changing some of that to make it tell a more inclusive and longer story of the indigenous people who've
been there as well. But either way, it's a really a great place to go. I've often seen eagles, they're up on the bluff trail, sometimes there are people doing paragliding off the boat bluff, which is pretty cool. There's pretty limited parking there. You can park along the road, but just keep your wits about you if you do that. Okay, we've got two more to go. And these last two beaches are in the city of
Seattle. And if you live in Seattle, or if you are visiting Seattle, or if you live in another part of Washington, and you're heading into Seattle, don't miss out on the opportunity to hang out at these beaches. And I'll tell you a little bit more about how you can do a walk there in a moment. They are on different sides of Elliott Bay. So well, golden gardens isn't really on Elliott Bay, it's north of West Point.
So it's along the Salish Sea, north of the Shilshole Marina, and l Kai Beach is on the south side of Elliott Bay, and faces back towards the city of Seattle. Depending on where you are, you may not you might see just the Space Needle or you might see the whole city, you might see more of an island and water view because it's a curved beach kind of depends on where you are. Both beaches have firepits. And you can bring in wood, they put the fires out pretty early kind of for public
safety reasons. But it can be a really fun activity, a really great way to spend an evening or an afternoon in the winter. So both of those are wonderful. Okay, so let's talk a little bit. And you can of course, hang out there without high gain both of those places with no problem. But if you want to do a hike, or it's really going to be more of a walk in either location because you're in an urban area for sure. So let's start with
golden gardens. If you're there, you can do about a three mile loop that goes up through the forest through the park to the top of Sunset Hill. And then you walk down 30 seconds and eventually end up close to downtown Ballard depending on how far over you go. You could go to downtown Ballard. Or you could come out kind of by the Ballard locks that you can explore that area, and then walk on a paved sidewalk from the Ballard locks to Golden gardens.
So that's one way to make it more of a walk over on Altai, you can walk several miles along the sidewalk in West Seattle, you can you can go many miles and go around to constellation Park, which is on the other side of West Seattle facing out towards Blake Island. And that goes all the way down to Lincoln Park by the fall of a theory. There are some trails in Lincoln Park and one of the new trolls is there. There's also a troll
in Ballard. So there are lots of ways to extend this into more of a walk or hike, if that's what you want. And if you want just to hang out each time, you can have that to you. So that brings us to the end of this episode about year round awesome beaches in Washington. I hope you enjoy Get it. And I want to just remind you about Craig's in my tip jar that's in the show notes helped keep the Washington State hiking, podcast going and ad
free. And also just a reminder to leave us a message in nurse SpeakPipe of voicemail so we can answer your questions. Bye for now.