Just the trip through the San Juan Islands by boat on the way to Jones Island Marine State Park fills your cup for adventure and serene beauty.
The islands have always held a magical quality to me, in that I get really excited just being there. We camped on Jones Island for three nights and in this blog post, hope to cover enough to convince you that this is a must do camping experience, and how to do it successfully.
The Pacific Northwest is such an amazing part of the world.
It’s this amazing transition point from the civilized and tamed world of the lower 48 to the wild, untamed beauty of Alaska and Northern Canada.
Nowhere is this transition point more pronounced than in the San Juan Islands. You could launch your boat in Anacortes, sail through the Islands, and really just keep on going, all the way up through the inland passage to Port Hardy, Prince Rupert and further north to Alaska.
Now don’t get me wrong, there is plenty that is tamed and civilized in the San Juan’s, as houses dot most beach areas and there are plenty of towns to visit such as Friday Harbor, Roche Harbor, Deer Harbor, etc. However, there is an unmistakeable feel and notion that you are no longer in Puget Sound or around Pugetropolis.
You can still find entire areas by boat, where you will see no signs of anyone else, no houses, no other boats, just the rich marine life and beauty of the islands.
Enough about how awesome the San Juan Islands are! Let’s talk boat-in camping on Jones Island.
I will try to cover this somewhat linearly, so I can stay on track with all of the details you are likely interested in.
I know that when I was researching this, there are some very good resources, but also quite a bit of unknowns that we had to experience to figure out, that we will provide here in this blog post. You can always start with the official Washington Parks site for good background information.
First of all, when it comes to packing up your boat for camping, realize that this is a solid 45 minutes plus trip by boat from Washington Park near Anacortes.
That means, you need to load up your boat assuming you are making just one trip each way. Boats come in many shapes and sizes, but I will cover this based on my boat which was one of the smaller ones we saw attempting to do this trip, so it’s likely you have more flexibility then we did.
In general, when packing a boat with gear, you want as much stuff in the bow of your boat as possible. Boats are designed to have more buoyancy in the bow. To get to the Islands, you have to cross Rosario Strait.
Rosario is big water, and if you have a 10+ mph wind coming from any direction with an S in it, you will experience at least 2-4 ft wind waves.
I would not cross Rosario in my boat in those conditions. Not only do you have to think about the wind, but the boat traffic is another factor. There are ferries, tugs with barges, container ships, large yachts and the like displacing lots of water and creating big wakes behind them.
Loading your boat with most of your heavy gear on the bow is the safe way to travel when you consider all these factors.
If you load a lot of your gear in the bow, you may not be able to get through the door that leads to the bow. This may be ok in the scenario where you have adequate dock from where you are launching from and where you are going.
To be flexible, you may need to consider making sure that door will open. As of the time of this writing in May, 2019, the dock on the Washington park boat launch is barely adequate due to the storm damage inflicted in February of this year.
If the tide level is 3 ft or below, you may not have enough dock to enter your boat through the side or to tie your boat to the dock. We were barely able to launch about 3 hours after a minus 1.5 ft tide. And we were barely able to get back about 3 hours before a .5 ft tide coming down from a 6 ft high tide.
One of the biggest question we had was about the dock space situation on Jones Island itself. While it sounds like they have a lot of dock space, the reality is that it only takes some of the bigger live aboard yachts to show up and take up all that space.
There are many more campsites available (24) on the island then there is dock space to support everyone keeping their boat tied up. You may need to make sure you have a plan B such as anchoring in deep enough water with a line on your stern tying you to the beach. The Anchor Buddy is an awesome product for enabling you to work with changing water depths due to tide/river flows and not get left high and dry, or unable to retrieve your boat due to deeper water.
Also, if you are traveling with other boaters, or you can make friends quickly, rafting your boats together can be a great option. Nobody is required to let you raft to them though.
If you arrive before 3pm, there’s a section of dock on the left side at the head of the dock as you are arriving that is supposed to be reserved for 30 minute load / unload between 8am and 3pm. There’s also dock reserved for dinghy’s that need to be tied up for those who are anchored/moored (they have several mooring buoys for bigger boats) in deeper water and who need to come ashore.
On the right side closest to the shore, there’s a section reserved for employees of the Washington parks department, and they do show up and expect that to be free.
As you walk up the dock and unload, taking your stuff ashore, you will be faced with the option of going to the right or to the left. To the right, there’s a big section that groups can reserve and a few individual campsites nearby. For a bit more serenity, head left.
You will have to go up in elevation slightly, but you can find some great peaceful, roomy campsites with great views of the cove and docks. During the week days, you may be by yourself as we were, on the weekends, you will have neighbors. We were in site #2 and we were quite happy with it.
In terms of wildlife there are quite a few deer which are not in any way bothered by all the human activity in the area, but also plenty of marauding raccoons who will mess with your stuff at your campsite AND on your boat.
You will want to be sure that all coolers, dry bins, etc have latches at the very least, but even better, would be to get some bungie cords like these and wrap your coolers and bins with them, ensuring there’s enough tension to prevent easy removal by these furry scavengers.
You can read my other account of raccoon proofing your campsite for a laugh. I had a soft cooler with a zipper on it and some salmon carcasses in them, and the raccoons were able to unzip it far enough to take out one of the carcasses and have a little snack in the early morning.
The morning we left, some of the new arrival boaters had left stuff out on the dock near the picnic tables and it was everywhere as the raccoons raided their stuff that night.
You may run out of gas, firewood and / or ice at some point and want to re-supply. The nearest place to do that is Deer Harbor on Orcas Island. Deer Harbor is a short boat ride east and north from Jones Island.
As you approach the marina area, the guest moorage and fuel dock is on the far right hand side. Anywhere with the yellow stripe is available guest moorage. The red stripe is for folks re-fueling.
Stop in and have a bite to eat or espresso at the Market & Dock Store. The fish and chips and burgers were outstanding. The people there are quite helpful and friendly as well. If you ask around about firewood, the locals will tell you to just ignore the signs and pick up the driftwood off the beach…Not that we are advocating for that, but there is a lot of driftwood out there…
Our kids probably spent most of their time near camp playing in the tide pools in the north cove. There’s so much interesting marine life to enjoy and rocks to climb around on, your kids will not be lacking for entertainment and engagement of the non-electronic variety.
In terms of hiking there’s a nice well groomed trail that takes about 5-10 minutes to go from the north cove to the south cove of the island.
It takes more like 40 minutes to take the trail around the Island’s circumference along the eastern edge, from the south cove back to the north one again. Expect some great views of the water, the other islands and lots of forest, while traversing a pretty good trail with some elevation change up and down as you make your way around the island.
Many of the folks who camp on Jones Island are looking for a good jump off point to experience some incredible fishing and shrimping opportunities.
The Ling fishing all around that area can be outstanding. The season usually goes from May 1 – June 15, but always check the regs before you go.
We didn’t spend too much time at it, but we quickly hooked up with two undersized lings drifting green label herring near the bottom around rocky structure.
We also hooked what was likely a salmon, that soon led to a seal stealing it and making our reel sing until it was yanked off the hook.
We did spend more time shrimping, but didn’t quite hit it the way we wanted to.
One of the challenges that I wrote about with the announcement of the seasons is that the best tides are really Sat-Wed. The shrimping days that are open are only Thr-Sun though.
We had to leave on Saturday, so really Thursday and Friday were our days to Shrimp, and you had to be up early to catch the period of low current just right.
That’s not always possible when you are trying to balance a pleasant family trip with maximizing your harvest opportunity. Still, we did pretty good, but we had to work a bit harder at it then what we wanted. We talked to several others who had limits of shrimp as well. Keep in mind that the Thr-Sun shrimping is for Area 7 West only.
The other parts of Area 7 have different opening days and I believe don’t have any season left at the time of this writing.
We had a fantastic meal of fresh spot shrimp cooked over a campfire with butter, onions, garlic and mushrooms one night. Epic! For more on how to catch these tasty critters, you can refer to our page on how to catch Spot Shrimp.
In summary, the entire experience is surreal and epic, especially if you’ve never experienced anything like this before.
I’ve been looking forward to this trip all year and it did not disappoint. Feel free to post any other questions in the comments section you might have and I will try to get back to them promptly so you too can have a great camping experience on Jones Island Marine State Park among the San Juan Islands.
