Memorial Day Hideaways
Seattlest spent Memorial Day weekend of 2002 at Banks Lake, just south of the Grand Coulee Dam. Halfway through the long weekend, we vowed never to do that again. Along with a camping layout that resembled a jammed Belltown block of newfangled condos, there was also the constant blasting of stereos from every nearby car, trailer, RV, and boat. We made the best of it by drinking plenty of beer, throwing the frisbee about, and the occasional fishing jaunts out on the lake, but especially after the drive back to Seattle that resembled a slow-moving slough of cars stuck in lava, we arrived home neither rested nor with the typical 3-day weekend glow we're accustomed to. So this year we plan to "get away from it all", as the travel sites like to say.
Our strategy will likely be to hide somewhere remotely near, but not too close to, Leavenworth, and check out the conditions of the nearby hiking and mountain biking trails. We're not telling you exactly where because, well, that would defeat our purpose of avoiding everyone. But Seattlest still wants to help you achieve your own introverted, crowd-averse peace for the upcoming holiday weekend. While doing some snooping research on other sites about potential secret-squirrel hideaways for Memorial Day weekend, we happened upon a piece over at NWSource, the online arm of our friendly Seattle Times denizen. In concert with our recent efforts to not ignore our family-run local main paper at the expense of our endeared weeklies, you're encouraged to hop on over and check out the dutiful research served up to you in these handy pages of boat-in and hike-in camping options.
Being originally from a land-locked state, but having done quite a bit of car-camping in our childhood, we were mighty pleased to see a range of options for boat-in camping. (In fact, we had our own "Ferry Boat" moment about the whole concept: "Boat-in camping. Huhn... Oh, so you don't drive your car to go camping, you get there solely by boat. Fascinating...") Some of these water-craft excursions are so remote as to be available only to non-motorized water vehicles, narrowing the list quickly down to kayaks (we thought about a canoe out amongst the islands and quickly realized, yep, just kayaks). We elect not to comment on the fact that the destination for that particular trip is called "Blind Island". Yep, just going to leave that one right alone...
Seattlest is drawn to the idea of boat-in campsites not only because of our landlubber fascination with the whole concept, but also because many of them are in the San Juans, thereby offering miles of Gilligan's Island/Survivor waterfront options that would otherwise be unaccessible via more typical means. Griffin Bay narrows your options even further by offering only a single camping spot for the taking, no reservations in advance. You'll have to bring your own coconuts though, for the true Survivor island experience.
