Another letterbox placed on our camping trip to Bay View State Park.
Padilla Bay Nature Reserve is about half a mile up from Bay View State
Park, near Mount Vernon,
and is a great spot for bird and wildlife watching.

Padilla Bay

Padilla Bay is an estuary at the edge of the large delta of the Skagit
River.
A large colony of great blue herons lives there as well as many other
shorebirds such as dunlin and sandpipers. During the winter, the bay
contains an average of 50,000 ducks of 26 species, and many raptors
including bald eagles, peregrine falcons, merlins and snowy owls, so
bring your binoculars!

To get to the Padilla Bay National Reserve:
Take Interstate 5 north from Seattle or south from Bellingham to exit
230, just north of Mount Vernon. Take Highway 20 west toward Anacortes
about 6 miles. Turn right at stop light onto Bay View-Edison Road. Drive
north about five miles, past Bay View State Park. The Breazeale
Interpretive Center will be on your right, 1/4 mile past the state park.


From the parking lot, follow the signs to the Upland trail. At the
bench, go straight ahead eastward. At the fork in the trail, keep left.
Keep going straight along the gravel path to the meadow. Stay on the
path through the meadow and back into the woods. At the fork in the
trail where the little wooden fence is, take the left spur to the
lookout. Approximately 28 steps along this trail, about 10 steps before
the lookout, there is a nurse stump on the right. Directly behind this
stump as you are facing it, a little way back, is a tall tree, and
behind this tree is another stump. The letterbox is in this stump,
covered with bark.


Mariette
dbltall of Team Garlic