After a hiatus of a couple of months, I return to the story of our road trip to Washington state with a visit to Deception Pass State Park. Previous posts include Washington Park, the Bellevue Botanical Garden, John Day Fossil Beds, and Lake Abert.

Deception Pass State Park straddles Deception Pass, the waterway that separates Fidalgo Island from Whidbey Island and Island County from Skagit County. Deception Pass got its name when Joseph Whidbey, a member of the Vancouver Expedition, failed to find the passage on his first exploration of the area in May, 1792. Subsequent exploration in June, 1792 revealed the passage. George Vancouver named it “Deception” because the initial failure to find it had led him to map Whidbey Island as a peninsula. Essentially, the pass “deceived” him.

Deception Pass Bridge connects the two islands in two spans, crossing Canoe Pass on the north and Deception Pass to the south, crossing Pass Island in the middle. The bridge carries a fair amount of traffic (20,000 crossings a day according to Wikipedia) both because it is the only land connection to Whidbey Island and it carries traffic headed to the Port Townsend ferry. The Port Townsend ferry connects to the Olympic Peninsula.

The view of the bridge from the North Beach in the park is impressive. Click on any picture to see a full-sized image.

The water in Deception Pass can flow as fast as 9 knots (10.4 mph, 16.7 kph). We were there as the tide was flowing briskly — the water was flowing into Skagit Bay as it was a few hours after low tide. The flowing water creates all kinds of interesting waves and apparent shears in the flow that are visible from the shoreline.

The high tide line is quite visible along the shoreline.

This is a great place to visit at low tide as there are all kinds of sea creatures you can see.

Whidbey Island is home to Whidbey Island Naval Air Station. When at Deception Pass State Park, one often sees Naval Aviators at work. Here is a Boeing P-8 Poseidon patrol and reconnaissance plane on approach to land at Ault Field in Whidbey Island NAS.

Several times a pair of what I think are Boeing F/A 18 Super Hornets flew by. They would come down from the north over Fidalgo Island.

This is the clearest shot I got of the planes and it was this picture that led me to believe they are F/A 18 Super Hornets.

Here they are headed south toward the the airfield.

There are more posts to come, including ones on Samish Overlook and our visit to Bonneville Dam.