Boat in camping at Sand Island Marine Park

Our first ever boat-in camping trip was quite an adventure. But first a question: What does axe-wielding in your underwear have to do with raccoon-proofing your campsite? That’s quite the question, read on and I will answer it!

Our primary mission on this trip was fishing for springers on the Columbia River.

We wanted to fish for multiple days, but also I had this itch to camp somewhere you could only reach by boat.

I had this amazing experience boat-in camping about 5 years ago with a fishing guide, who arranged it all for my best friends’ pre-wedding festivities.

We camped on an island in the Columbia River and went fishing every day and it was an awesome experience.

Since I purchased my boat, I dreamt of repeating the experience, but this time with my family.

So last year, I purchased this amazing Kodiak Canvas 8-person tent, which is completely waterproof, easy to put up, and super roomy.

I would definitely recommend it to anyone serious about tent camping. We launched our boat at the Saint Helens Marina and paid 5$ per night in the drop box so we could leave our trailer there for a few days while we camped and fished to our heart’s content.

We wanted to bypass the setup camp part of the trip initially, so we could get right to fishing, since we got up super early to get down there and get fishing in the early hours of the morning.

This certainly created more work for us to actually go camping. It would have been far easier, to load all the supplies in the boat before launching, and then motor over to the island and unload it.

Going back to the launch, and packing the supplies down from the truck to the boat, was significantly more work. In general, you should be picky about what gear you are taking as you have to potentially move it from truck to boat, then from boat to campsite, which can feel like a lot of work by the time you’re finished.

Sand Island Marine Park was basically empty (it’s also first come first serve and free!), so we had the entire island to ourselves, and we picked out a campsite near the river bank, to make it easier to load supplies back and forth and provide us a great view of the river and our boat from our campsite.

We had a great time around the campfire that night talking about the fish we caught, the big one that got away because of our my haste to get it into the boat, and in general enjoying the company of our good friends on the trip with us.

After we took our friends back to the mainland so they could make the drive home, and we put our dog away in his crate in the tent, some additional friends decided to show up at the edge of our campfire.

By “friends”, I don’t mean the super intoxicated fisherman on the other side of the island who showed up a bit later, but the Raccoons.

Now our dog’s behavior a few minutes earlier made a bit more sense, as he was kind of freaking out, running around and barking his little head off before we put him away.

Our initial reaction to the Raccoons was “Oh that’s interesting”, but soon became “Uh, are we raccoon-proofed?”. Meaning…We had coolers, dry supplies, and our most precious possession:

Springer fillets and other crap strewn about our campsite.

And would we get a good night’s sleep with these buggers around our campsite attempting to get into our stuff?

We hadn’t really experienced this problem before, as we hadn’t done much tent camping in Washington, and we have a travel trailer we use for the majority of our trips. We’ve heard all the stories though about how raccoons can get into just about anything.

So as we wound down for the night, we put everything away, stacked stuff on top of the springer cooler, and placed unused firewood on top of other bins. Now, all of our coolers and dry bins had latches, but…we were convinced these masked bandits could likely circumvent these protective measures.

So it was with great trepidation that we went to bed that night.

I have this awesome head lamp with many different modes of brightness that I kept by my side as I attempted to sleep.

So at about 3 am (what took them so long?), when my wife woke me up with the phrase “I can hear them messing with our stuff!”, I immediately sprung up and bounded to the entrance of our tent, headlamp in hand, maximum brightness setting on, focussed directly on the 2 sets of eyes staring back at me from a few feet away.

This of course startled the interlopers, who retreated to the edge of our campsite and stared back at me from a comfortable distance. I thought, “Ok, at least we know we can hear them if they get too close and start messing with our stuff, and maybe they will leave us alone now” (ha!).

This incident repeated itself several more times, and finally about 45 minutes into this laying down, jumping up, flashing head lamp, laying back down again routine, I had had enough!

Now, to make this a bit more personal: I don’t care how cold it is, I sleep in only my boxers, that’s just how I’m comfortable.

So, when I jumped out of the tent, grabbed my hatchet, and went running after these sleep-stealing pests, you can appreciate the visual (sorry no pics).

I brandished my hatchet like the battle axe it was about to be, making loud animal noises and running (yes, all in my boxers) at the raccoons at the edge of our campsite while flashing my headlamp (and lots of skin) to frighten them.

As it would turn out, this frightening visual was all that was needed to keep them away the rest of the night. In fact, as I lay back down and began to drift off, I could only hope for what nightmares these little critters were experiencing as I gave them quite the scare.

So this is apparently how to successfully raccoon-proof your campsite! Who knew?

The next morning we found everything in place as it should be, with no further sign of the Raccoons.

We had another awesome morning of fishing, picked up another springer and proceeded the process of taking down our campsite and packing up for the trip home.

All in all, an amazing experience, and one I would repeat in a heartbeat next year (though, we do plan to think a bit more carefully about the raccoon situation, any ideas?).

It was also a super valuable learning experience about boat-in camping without much trouble as Sand Island was a 5-minute kicker motor boat ride from the Marina. This will prove invaluable as we plan to boat in camp on Lake Chelan and Jones Island State Park in the San Juan Islands later in the season.

Both of these involve much longer runs from the launch to the campsite. All in all, a wonderful PNW Best Life kind of experience!