Sucia Island Marine State Park Campground

Cool rock scrambling in the sandstone cliffs, great tide pooling, and great people. It's a pretty big island and it can take a few days to explore the whole thing. Great sunsets at night!

Despite being relatively small (in the grand scheme of things) Sucia Island is the biggest of the three outer Shan Juan Islands and provides many different options for visitors. I often bring small groups of kids to Sucia when I lead trips.

Fox Cove and Shallow Bay are my favorites. Fox Cove is on the southwest side of the island and one of the smallest coves that has mooring and camping sites. Shallow Bay is the second largest cove on Sucia, there are group camping sites, multiple nice beaches and lots of camp site options. The northern beach of Shallow Bay is sandy, warm water and home to the China Caves. The Caves are fun to climb around in and have a fun history of hiding smugglers. There are also only several hundred feet between Shallow Bay and Echo Bay which means you can easily carry kayaks across rather than paddle around the island. The space between Shallow and Echo also has a large group campsite area complete with a picnic shelter.

Sucia also boasts fun fossils in and around Fossil Bay. There are lots of fun hiking trails and roads around the island as well as interpretive signs. The Finger Islands in Echo Bay are fun to paddle around. Also, the absolute best phosphorescence I have ever seen in my life were in Echo Bay.

We kayaker from Orcas to Sucia and spent the night at the Shallow Bay campsite on the southern beach. It was cute, tucked away in the trees. Incredible view of the water and the sunset, and secluded unlike the other bays which are favorites for the cruising crowd, meaning there were many moored and anchored boats.

Campsite was clean, flat, and spacious! A nice table was there along with a fire pit for convenience. Fairly buggy though - we got bit a few times!