A few favorite beach walks around Puget Sound

My husband and I adore walking the beaches of Magnolia. We will often bring our Crazy Creek chairs and a picnic to spend a Sunday afternoon here. If you park near the Palisades restaurant in Seattle, you can walk all the way to Discovery Park, if the tide is out. When the tide's in, there's also a beautiful walk on the bluffs above at Magnolia Park.

We walk this particular beach in all seasons and see a variety of shellfish and birds.

Just a little North of Magnolia, in Ballard, we also enjoy walking along Seaview Ave NW towards Golden Gardens. It's an amazing boat and beach walk. While much more urban, you will mostly likely be facing the stunning view and not notice that you're next to cars the majority of the time.

Outside of Seattle, driving North towards Port Townsend to Marrowstone Island is a new favorite for me. There are so many beautiful beach walks that I'll just mention our highlights. We first stopped at Isthmus Beach between Indian Island and Marrowstone, which was swampy but picturesque.

There's also Mystery Bay State Park in the area of Nordland, on Marrowstone. It had a small dock for boats and tons of clams! Fort Flagler, at the Northern tip of the island, is East of Port Townsend. The beaches of Fort Flagler look across the sound to Whidbey Island. If you're a bird lover, there were several eagles and lots of blue herons.







For our birthdays this year we drove to Forks and stayed in La Push. Since it was February, it was pretty wet, so we didn't do as much hiking as we'd hoped. Fortunately, nearly 40 miles to the North of Forks, Cape Flattery was out of the rain shadow.





There's a neat boardwalk and a breathtaking view. And on clear day you can see Victoria!






We only drove by Lake Crescent but we hope to stay at the Lodge sometime soon!