Fort Ebey State Park — Attraction in Whidbey Island

Awesome campground. New favorite state park to camp at in Washington for sure. The camp host while we were there (8/10-14) kind of sucked though. Her smoke detector was broken and kept beeping. She insisted it still worked fine, but she didn't want to take it down because that wouldn't be safe, and assured us that she was going to go into town the next day to get a new one. That was after our first night there and she never fixed it. Luckily a breeze picked up for the rest of our stay and she was far enough away from us (we were at site 8 and she was all the way on the other side of the bathroom) that the sound of the wind in the trees and the ringing of the buoy down in the sea covered the beeping. That was just irritating, but not the fault of the park and we never bothered to complain to either of the rangers so who knows if it could have been actually resolved by a camper with more courage to complain. I definitely want to come back here. There was so much to do in the park as well as close by. We had a day exploring the battery, and a short drive to the Price Sculpture Forest, one day was beach day, and another we spent in Coupeville being tourists. Great spots to view the sunset every evening too. If you have a kid who loves planes, this is definitely the place to be. But if you hate hearing planes, maybe don't go here because he army jets fly over frequently and can be so loud that you have to stop conversation until they pass by. I didn't mind that...

It is a fantastic park. I only give it four stars because of the same reason as with other parks: not enough action is being taken to remove invasive plants from precious sites. However, I am tempted to give five stars because of the following: -There are native cacti growing here. Opuntia fragilis is very abundant on one section of the bluff. -Northern alligator lizards live here. I found a pregnant female. -It seems to be pretty good habitat for some nonnative slugs, because I found a leopard slug and a melanistic rufous arion that were twice the normal size. Maybe even bigger than the average banana slug. -The pacific rhododendrons are gorgeous even when they're not in bloom, and it's nice to see them being abundant and producing seed (most if not all the ones I saw had seed pods) -The amount of nonnative invasive forbs inside the forest is minimal, they are nearly absent around the campgrounds. -The salal berries I found here were the best I've ever had. -The view of the sunset with the Olympics and the coast ranges of Vancouver island is priceless. And so is the view of the Kitsap and Olympic peninsulas during night. -The clay formations on the loose parts of the bluff are pretty rad. -Surf scoters and brants were feeding at the kelp forest visible from the bluff (in August!). -I found a rare parasitic plant at the bottom of the bluff right next to the beach. It was a completely unexpected but fascinating find. I had such a blast during...

Amazing view from the cliff, but it's a bit dangerous to get too close. If you like old buildings, there is the main facility for the gun battery (the guns have since been removed, but the mounts are still there), plus at least two look out places to view the water from, lookout points from when the fort was active. The first lookout point is near where the main battery is, just down the hill, but to find the second one, you have to take the mile track down the shore trail and pay attention.

The campsite was clean and well-maintained when we arrived, and even though we got there after when we were supposed to check in, one of the park rangers came by and gave us our pass as we were finishing breakfast the next day (but we did sleep in). All of the rangers who we interacted with were very nice and helpful.

The only issues with the entire trip where things outside of the control of those maintaining the site. The big two issues were that the longer that we stayed at our campsite, the more hornets decided to join us in our camping excursion. No one got stung but honestly, it was pretty scary trying not to get them in the car as we were loading. The other thing was that the Whidbey Naval Air Station is close enough nearby to hear their planes, so there are military planes flying over at any time of the day.

Overall, it was a very relaxing trip with wonderful views and creepy cool history. Video game accompaniment for this trip before or...