What To Do When It's 103, Part II

...Get the hizizzle outta here. On Wednesday, the hubby surprised me and had scheduled a day off. We drove to the Everett waterfront and caught the tiny, free foot ferry to Jetty Island for a day of water play. I had read about this spot in this book and some friends of ours had also extolled its virtues.I am kicking myself for not taking more pictures, but hopefully you get the idea. This was our spot on the beach taken from the water. Pack some chairs and a blanket, an umbrella (there is very little shade) and a picnic and you are good. Remember, it's a foot ferry, so you are only taking what you can carry. They sell some bottled water, but there's no concessions or retail or anything like that, so take what you need.

This is a truly unique spot in the Pacific Northwest. It is a long sandy beach that you can wade out into Puget Sound for a hundred yards and the warm water is still only waist deep. You could also spend time here exploring the island, but the sand was too dang hot for that on our trip.

It was a whopping twenty degrees cooler here than at our house in the Cascade foothills where it felt like a giant blow dryer was trained on us.

This is a fantastic outing for family fun. The kids love the novelty of the four minute ferry ride and the danger quotient is extremely low. They can just run and splash and wear themselves out. If you have puppies for children like I do, it's a perfect spot. For such a hot day, it was surprisingly not too crowded, though I suspect that changes on summer weekends. I highly recommend it. The ferry is free, but donations are suggested to help subsidize the ferry at $2 per adult and $1 for children, round trip.