We had lost our sense of adventure, mostly. With two small children packing the car and enduring road trip eventualities β soiled car seats, traffic, endless questions, whining β creates significant homebody inertia.
Getting out, especially in the short, damp days of a Northwest Winter, was often just too much. We needed motivation. Busy professionals with weak spots for childish competitions and games, one of us gifted the other a Washington State Parks checklist banner β thanks Etsy β for Christmas. The challenge was on, the game afoot. Visiting State Parks is a sizable reduction in both investment and payoff, from say, counting continents, countries or even National Parks. We had checked the map; done right we could probably do parks some days.
We understood that often our reward would be often picnic shelters and boat launches not grand geologic formations and soul-stirring vistas. Playgrounds not postcards. There are a lot of state parks in Washington State, 1 in all, and some not easily accessible. In our pre-child mid-twenties, we once visited the Grand Coulee dam. We are no strangers to long journeys with small payoffs.
Though now we are two car seats strong and have a tiny collapsible toilet in the hatch. Adventure takes no universal form.
At around am on Saturday August 19th, we pulled our small rental boat up onto the seaweed-strewn shore of Saddlebag Island, thereby completing our State Parks Challenge. It had been 1, days since we started this quest on December 27, at Spencer Spit State Park not far west of here. No cheering crowds awaited, no State Parks director to shake our hands, no local news coverage, no Ed McMahon to hand us an over-sized check.
