Holiday jaunt to Deception Pass? Better get in line

At 1 p.m. yesterday, three camper trailers were backed up at the Deception Pass State Park entry while attendant Darlene Clark searched a computerized campground map for two people at the counter.

A phone jangled in the background -- somebody wants to know about a reservation.

At Washington's busiest park, it's the first breeze in a holiday whirlwind.

If temperatures rise, as many as 90,000 day-trippers and campers will fill the park's 246 campsites and line its beaches by the time the Labor Day weekend ends, rangers predict. About half that many are expected if the weather, as expected, remains cool.

Eighty-six cubic yards of trash will cram the park's 46 Dumpsters; 69,000 gallons of sewage will flow through its pipes; 50 people will get ticketed or arrested; 15 to 20 will need medical aid for anything from heart attacks to bee stings; three or four will have to be rescued from the water.

And two will get married, in a ceremony planned at Bowman Bay.

If you failed to make reservations months ago for a state park campsite, don't count on joining the fun anywhere this weekend. Parks that require campsite reservations were about 90 percent booked by yesterday; and most of the remaining spaces are for one or two nights only. (For reservations, call 1-800-452-5687.)

You also might find space in a park that doesn't require reservations, particularly if the weather is poor, but don't count on it.

"There's turnover every day," said Brett Bayne, a ranger at first-come, first-served Fort Casey State Park, 25 miles south of Deception Pass on Whidbey Island. "It's just that the closer you get to the weekend, the less turnover there is."

The big holiday crush is an annual reminder of a central irony in the state parks: More and more people want to use them, and there is less money to go around.

Visits to Washington's state parks grew 31 percent from 1991 to 1999, according to a parks report last year to the Legislature. At the same time, basic park funding dropped by $4.34 million.

To look at it another way, Washington's state parks have the third-highest day visit rates in the nation. But their funding ranks 49th.

The effects are showing in many parks, said Anne Hersley, spokeswoman for the state Parks and Recreation Department. In some places, trails are wearing away. Broken picnic tables are not repaired. Electrical systems function spottily, and buildings need fixing.

The parks system estimates it needs $32 million just to get its maintenance and repair backlog up to date, Hersley said. It figures that a $12 million to $13 million boost in its annual $45 million budget -- currently about 0.3 percent of the state's total budget -- would give it about all it needs.

Besides being the busiest park in the state's system, Deception Pass is one of the most heavily traveled in the nation. It attracted 5.5 million visitors in 1997 and 5.8 million in 1998, not including traffic on state Route 20 across the Deception Pass Bridge. That's more than twice the traffic count for Yellowstone National Park.

The state has poured considerable money into Deception Pass in the past few years, Park Manager Bill Overby said. A new multimillion-dollar sewer system now carries waste from the park's West Beach and campground area to Whidbey Island Naval Air Station.

A new entryway, combined with the new reservation camping system, has smoothed traffic and virtually eliminated the weekend traffic jams that used to routinely create mile-long traffic snarls from the beach to state Route 20.

Still, as many as 60,000 people a day can cram into the 4,120-acre park on a sunny weekend. Even rainy days can draw 16,000.

The attractions are obvious. The Deception Pass Bridge commands spectacular views of surging tides, the Strait of Juan de Fuca and the quiet islands of Cornet Bay. There's kayaking, swimming, biking and hiking, stretching from Anacortes almost to Oak Harbor. Freshwater fishing is a big attraction on park lakes, and coho salmon seasons will open over the Labor Day weekend.

Deeper into the park, the soles of thousands of hiking feet are compacting soil around the roots of old growth trees, Overby said, and free-lance hikers are creating new trails where none should be. A unique system of tidepools at Bowman Bay was nearly destroyed several years ago by the crush of feet. Today, traffic there is limited.

The park is about a year deep into a comprehensive planning project, designed to outline the park of the future.

A set of rough goals approved by the state Parks Commission last month included a call for a small transit system to shuttle people around the park and a proposed snack concession somewhere on the park grounds.

Also on the list: Looking for ways to limit park traffic.

"How many folks can come in here before we love it to death?" Overby asked.

P-I reporter David Fisher can be reached at 425-252-2215 or davidfisher@seattle-pi.com

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