Birch Bay State Park, Washington
July 5, 2026
Happy Independence Day, everyone! We hope everyone had an enjoyable holiday weekend. We celebrated the country's 250th almost as far north as one can go on the west coast and still be in the United States.
Our drive from Yakima River Canyon took us through a variety of scenery...
Mount Stuart peeking out from the end of the canyon
Unfortunately, we met with fog when we were driving through the mountains--so no views for us
Seattle ahead--never fun to drive the trailer through a big city!
After the Seattle metro area, we drove through the scenic Skagit Valley
We had a pleasant, but quite shady, non-electric campsite that challenged our solar panels. Although, with a bit of electrical rationing, we made it through just fine.
Nice Pacific Northwest scenery
The campground was quite attractive, but we were a little disappointed with Birch Bay. While not ranking up there with our all-time favorite water bodies, it still edged out Salt Lake (at least during high tide). At low tide, well, that was a closer call. It didn't help that the creek that we had to cross to get to the bay smelled like a pit toilet most of the time. Apparently, it's "all natural" rotting stuff, but that didn't mitigate the disgust factor.
The beach on Birch Bay
Later that evening, sunset brought out the best of the bay (and it helped that it was high tide)...
The trail from the campground to the bay
Another day, we walked along the shore during low tide. We thought it was kind of icky, but there were lots of people enjoying themselves with shovels and buckets, looking for clams.
Low tide on Birch Bay was slightly reminiscent of Salt Lake
Lots of people out clamming
We walked through a part of the little vacation hamlet of Birch Bay, which was adjacent to the state park
The weather was cool during our stay, with highs generally in the 60s. At our shaded campsite, it felt pretty chilly much of the time.
Rick moonlighting as a computer hacker 😉
The big redeeming quality about this particular location was its epic annual July 4th fireworks display where literally thousands of private fireworks are set off all along the shoreline. (Washington state is home to the unusual trifecta of legal selling of fireworks AND legal buying of fireworks AND legal discharging of fireworks.)
The "pre-game show" before it was actually dark, with some Canadian mountains in the background
Continuous fireworks were set off for a couple of hours all along the shore!
It is safe to say that we had never before experienced fireworks quite like these before--we were not disappointed!
On our final day, we walked the campground loops and a short nature trail off of the campground.
The nature trail wasn't anything special--just a nice walk in the woods
The highlight of the walk was wild thimbleberries and the occasional blackberry
Next stop--Vancouver Island!
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