Quick Facts:
- Washington State Park website
- Access to water: walkable distance, but no view of the water from campsite
- Free hot shower, flush toilets, drinking water source
- Activities: a large oval shaped sport field in the center of the main loop, nice day use beach with enormous mud flat that stretches for kilometers at low tide
- Beach type: pebbles
- Outdoor Fam rating: 6 out of 10
Bay View State Park is a fairly small park set on the shores of Padilla Bay. It has a nice west-looking day use beach connected to the campground via a highway underpass.
The main reason for camping here would be to spend time at the pebble beach and exploring the nearby areas. The mud flat may look enticing for clamming, but the area is closed for harvesting bivalves (clams, mussels, oysters) due to health concerns. Picnic tables and a picnic shelter are available on a grassy area at the beach.
Facing west means there were some epic sunset views from the beach.
The campground itself was fairly small. The main loop is an oval surrounding an open grassy field with natural vegetation (read: long and fairly uneven grass). The layout makes each individual site less private than those set deeper in the woods in other parks. A larger peripheral loop was closed for the shoulder season. There were also some cabins very close to the RV and tent sites. Good to know for friends who may need the extra comfort.
This trip was extra special for us, because it’s the debut camping trip for the boys’ Wai Gong (maternal grandpa). He had a ton of fun too and is already plotting more outings. He really liked the fact that there are cabins in many Washington state parks.
We timed our visit for the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival. We thought about biking to the tulip farms (about 45min biking to the big attraction at Roozengaarde), but thankfully we didn’t because it includes stretches of narrow highway shoulder biking where the speed limit is 50 miles per hour (80km/h).
Camping at Bay View did allow us to get to Roozengaarde before 9am, when the huge parking lot was still half empty. We didn’t have to wait at all to get a spot. When we left around 11am, there was a huge line up of hundreds of cars on either direction waiting to get into the parking lot. After all, it is the most famous tulip farm that literally owns the name; its website is simply www.tulips.com.
After the tulips, we headed to the quaint seaside town of Anacortes for a nice lunch at Adrift seafood restaurant and a stroll in Pelican Bay Bookstore and Coffeehouse, an surprisingly big bookstore for a town this size. Actually it may be the biggest, most well-kept used bookstore I’ve visited. Most books were in prestine condition, even the decade-old ones. The prices of the used books reflect their excellent condition though.
Overall, Bay View State Park was nice but fairly similar from other nearby oceanside state parks such as Birch Bay, Larrabee, and Dash Point. The main differences would be the location and surround area. It was very nice to camp 10 minutes away from our main target attraction: Skagit tulips on this trip.