Minus 3 foot tides midday and midweek beckon me to go see some beach spots normally inaccessible.
A 40 minute drive and a mile of tidal flat/bird sanctuary wandering puts you at Craft Island.
It's a big dang rock out in the Skagit delta where it meets the Salish Sea.
Flats were not too muddy and exploding with flowers, cattails and mind bending distant vistas. Nice and quiet save for a couple overnighter kayakers, several mums and a small tassel of kids under 8 years old... and Navy Jets, ours thank goodness.
Easy enough to put plenty of distance on the kids and mums once we navigated up over part of the rock and down onto what seemed limitless beach made of sand ground out of the North Cascade mountains by the mighty Skagit. An absolutely amazing expanse of shallows, mud and sand.
Covered at least a mile of beach and could have gone much further if we wanted to do a little wading here and there.
Craft Island... high tide has the water level high enough to cover all the sand and up onto the rock itself.
Near to NAS Whidbey ey so these guys seem to use this area as a low and slow practice area, wheels down, flaps down and just enough throttle to keep from making a big expensive splash
