After staying up half the night to pack we took the early morning ferry to orcas. We stayed in the car and slept on the ferry 

Once we landed we drove to north beach. 

You can see Sucia from north beach, as we did on our last orcas trip, but this time we had to paddle across. 

(We also saw it from the top of Mt. constitution) 

The waves looked large though it was almost time for slack so we slowly loaded our kayak, waiting for slack to start. 

The water calmed and we launched. It was mostly smooth, with some larger waves that went over the top of the kayak and soaked me, but none that caused alarm. 

We safely reached the other side and paddled around the side of this wild and rocky island, into Echo Bay. 

We didn’t want to stay on the beach, with no privacy and a lot of foot traffic from all the motor/sail boaters. 
So once we found our spot I stayed to guard our spot while Alex brought out kayak in from the other beach (what do you call a tandem with only one person?). 

The next open site was off the beach for privacy but still with the beach view and access so we didn’t have to haul our gear a mile. Unfortunately that access was via ~25 stairs. Alex of course wanted to bring the kayak up to, to keep it in the shade. 

We set up camp and explored the area, finding the composting toilets, pay station ($12 a night), and water spicket.  There’s also the group site, full of noisy YMCA kids the first night, and kayakers from San Juan Island the second night. 

They were fine, and so was the wildlife (nothing ate our food, despite forgetting to bring our bear bag). The biggest pest pest were the ants, making us seal our bags and tents immediately and still finding their way in in the two seconds we had them open. 

I don’t think they bit but with all the mosquito bites I itched all weekend I wouldn’t have noticed if they had. 

Since we paddled over in the morning we had plenty of time to explore in the daylight (not our usual setting the tent up in the dark!). We walked along the trail on the north side of Echo Bay for a while before our growling stomaches called us back to camp.