Salt Creek Recreation Area is a 196 acre county park with Washington state’s premiere shore diving, some great hikes, and an amazing variety of tidal pools. Salt Creek Recreation Area is located on the Northern coast of Washington State, about 100 miles West of Seattle, and just North of Olympic National Park. The park was previously Camp Hayden, a World War II military camp built 1942–1945. It’s also a great deal, as there’s no fee for entering the park or using it’s amenities.

The shore diving in Salt Creek Recreation Area may be Washington’s best shore dive site for beauty and sea life. It is comprised of a rugged rocky reef and a thick bull kelp forest that grows from summer to early fall. Note: Northwest Dive Club’s review of the site (https://nwdiveclub.com/viewtopic.php?t=7874) points out that this is an Advanced dive, with rocks, waves, current, and surges along the shore depending on the time of year and the weather.

However, if you make the dive you’ll find shelves, channels, overhangs and large boulders all housing colorful invertebrates such as huge beds of sea urchins, sponges, starfish, chitons, and hydrocoral. You also may see lots of black rockfish, kelp greenling, lingcod, and sculpin amongst the kelp forest. The underwater kelp forest reaches its peak in the summer and fall.

We weren’t there to dive, so for us the big attraction was the many tidal pools along the shore. The best tidal pools are on either side of Tongue Point, a peninsula that juts out from the Northwest corner of the park. See below for a few of our images from the park’s tidal pools.

Salt Creek Recreation Area also has a variety of short scenic wooded park trails, including trails to WWII historic bunker, and the hiker/biker/equestrian trail to Striped Peak. The Striped Peak trail is 5-mile round trip hike with 850 feet elevation gain.

The park also includes 92 scenic campsites along the coast, almost half of which include hookups. There are numerous first come, first serve day-use picnic tables with fire pits and benches, a playground, sand volleyball courts, horse-shoe pits, a basketball court, and a playing field (bring your own equipment) available for use.