June 16, 2026 Deception Pass State Park, WA to Yakima Sportsman State Park, Yakima, WA

Deb here. Well, today was a whole lesson in flexibility! Last night I’d decided to just relax and not worry about a ferry reservation between Coupeville on Whidbey Island to Port Townsend on the Olympic Peninsula. The ferry was all part of our new plan to head south through Washington a different way than we’d intended.

We had coffe and tea at the campground and then decided to head out. We stopped to walk over the Deception Pass Bridge (very scary) and then stopped for breakfast at the Island Cafe in Oak Harbor and I pulled up the ferry schedules. It turns out that the 3 morning ferries scheduled were canceled due to excessive tidal action (or something like that), and the remaining ferries were all full with standby only. We talked it over and decided it wasn’t worth gambling on standby status, so concocted a whole other plan to head back to the mainland and travel on Rt 2, up over Stevens Pass and through Leavenworth.

John here for the rest. We got gas at Costco ($4.84). So gas prices are screwy out here. Some stations sell it for $5.99 and the next station is $4.99, then $5.69, etc. Costco was the best price and right on the new route and not busy at all around 10 am.

We backtracked on Rt20 and then went south on I-5 for not too long before we turned onto Rt 2 East which we would spend most of the day on. It is a beautiful road and mostly 2 lane with a couple of passes (4-5K ft) and a few ice covered ragged mountains, and as the afternoon wore on we started to see things dry out. As we drove through Skykomish we stopped at LouSkis Deli and split one of their famous Rainy Day Reuben sandwiches. A great setting with picnic tables outside on the river.

Then, after we climbed up and over Stevens Pass we eventually arrived in Leavenworth, a Bavarian themed village. Everything has the Bavarian thing going on and we stopped and walked around the village, splitting a frosted gingerbread cookie.. 

After leaving Rt 2 we followed Rt 97, finally turning on to super twisty Rt 821.We found a half dozen campgrounds between Rt 97 and Rt 821 that were either forest service or BLM. We skipped the forest service ones so we could get some more miles in and decided to stay at one of the BLM ones on Rt 821. Lo and behold, they were mostly all closed since they were renovating them. We then found a State Park in Yakima, Yakima Sportsman State Park, which was pretty empty with nobody to take our money so we had to call the nice State Park lady who told us to drive around, find a site and call her back. We called back and got another State Park lady who took all our information and credit card and told us to fill out a white form and put it on the dash. The white forms were back at the unattended park ranger shack so we got a little end of day walk in.

We reconned the bathrooms (B+) and sat in the breezy afternoon with a couple of beverages. Then cooked dinner, did dishes and hit the books then sleep.

Tomorrow we visit Deb’s old friend Helga and then on to the Portland area to visit with Beverly and Brett.

Another nice weather day just figuring it out…