The trails of Moran State Park on Orcas Island are perfect for the family or dog-lover. There are lots of easy options which can quickly add up to a full day of walking. We walked around the South side of Cascade Lake, which is a pleasant forest walk to a bridge; the walk around Mountain Lake is longer but more secluded; the top of Mount Constitution is popular, but has one of the nicest sunrise/sunset views in the state of Washington; the trail to Cascade Falls is very easy and short, but there's lots of fun stuff for the kids to do, including walking under the falls and climbing on fallen trees. On the other hand, the hikes on Turtleback Mountain were mostly disappointing - lots of bland forest walking with tons of stinging nettles intruding on the path. One more note - while almost everyone swims in Cascade Lake, Mountain Lake is actually warmer and much more pleasant.

Turtleback mountain on Orcas Island has been saved for the public. I hiked the south entrance trail to Ship Peak lookout. The trail is an old road and rises through an open forest of Douglas Fir and Garry Oak to a high point of 931 feet. The top portion is steeper as the forest gives way to meadow/rock fields. There are great views to the south of many islands in the San Juan archipeligo. To the east are brilliant green farm fields on Orcas. Just below to the south is the West Sound marina in a big bay with tiny sailboats parked in rows. It’s a superb scenic easy trail.

This new hike was featured in a P.I. Getaways article by Greg Johnston on 2/22/07 (thanks Greg). We were going up to Orcas Island for the weekend and thought we would give it a try. It’s great “new” hike, not written up in any guidebooks (yet). See the link below for Greg’s article. We started at the south trailhead and hiked up to Ship’s Peak and beyond, around the Center Loop Trail and back, for a total of 6.4 miles (according to my GPS). Our advice: skip the Center Loop Trail as it’s not very scenic, and no views. The hike up to Ship’s Peak and somewhat beyond is fantastic! Round trip to Ship’s Peak is about 2.8 miles and gains about 800 feet. It starts out on a nice old road and after coming to the Norton Clapp cabin near the top, becomes real trail, recently constructed, it looks. There are flags marking the way beyond the cabin and a sign at the junction pointing the way to the top of Ship’s Peak. The views at the top are really nice, even on a rainy, foggy day like we had. Here is the link for Greg Johnston’s article: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/getaways/304374_orcas22.html Here is another link, this one from the San Juan County Land Bank, showing directions on how to get to the trailheads and a map: http://co.san-juan.wa.us/land%5Fbank/images_orcas/Turtleback/map_directions.pdf