Whidbey Island

Little Red Hen Bakery for breakfast and lunch (Coupeville), Vail Wine Shop for wine tasting (Coupeville), Penn Cove Brewing for beer and food trucks (and music) (Freeland). Double Bluff for hiking and beach walking, Deception Pass State Park, Joseph Whidbey State Park.

Edit: Forgot to mention you can walk along the beach to Joseph Whidbey State Park from the Cliffside campground. Oh, and you'll be near the blast wall for the jets. :-D But interestingly, you won't get the noise they get in Coupeville. Just some cool views of jets. And maybe orcas.

Coupville is an attractive small town with art galleries, antique stores, a nearby sculpture park. I’ve had excellent seafood at Front Street Grill and Toby’s. Hopefully they survived the pandemic. Also worth a visit is Fort Casey SP as well as Deception Pass SP. if time permits a visit to Port Townsend is worth it but you do need to make a ferry reservation. Great beaches around Coupville, but cold swimming - though no personal experience of that!

Trotter: Thanks for all your suggestions. Husband loves breweries, so will plan a meal there.
Joseph Whidbey? I’ll have to Google to see who he was. We’ll have to investigate walking from Cliffside to JW State Park. Thanks for tip on Double Bluff for hiking. We’ll need to stay in shape for Italy and Switzerland trip later this summer.
We have stayed at CliffSIDE before. Jet noise is the sacrifice we make for Oceanside view.
Lanlubber: we love seafood: thanks for recommending Front Street Grill in Coupville.
As for Port Townsend, we’ll be staying a few nights at Port Ludlow, so we’ll definitely plan a day trip there.

We spent the weekend before the 4th camping over at Whidbey. Not sure where you will be coming from, but right on highway 20 literally on the west side of I-5 is Skagits Own Fish Market which is a must. They have fish tacos and such for take away lunch, but inside is a wonderful seafood market and would be great for items to cook at your camp.

For hiking, in Anacortes I really like Sugarloaf Mountain. Ebey's landing is a nice hike up on a bluff and then down along the beach. It is just under 6 miles and really nice. The Lupine are in bloom right now, and the entire bluff is covered in it, so it is really pretty. You need a Discover Pass for here, but would need one for Deception Pass as well. Deception Pass is a great park to explore with loads of trails of hiking and of course the beach there. Cornet Bay is across from Deception Pass State Park and is nice. We go threre for beach combing. Meerkirk Gardens are really nice, and very peaceful.

Coupeville is a cute little town and I love the red "barn" wharf. We used to sail from NAS Whidbey over to Coupeville and were so disappointed when the base got rid of the sailboats. As mentioned above, the Little Red Hen is great there.

Definitely take the drive along Madrona Way from Penn Cove into Coupeville instead of just taking 20 into town. It goes right along the water and the madrone trees are really pretty.

The Greenbank Pantry is a wonderful little store with deli sandwiches etc. Greenbank Farm is fun to explore, and their loganberry pies are excellent! There are trails around here as well.

Fort Ebey and Fort Casey are both interesting.

Oh there is also an area just south of Coupeville where the jets take off and land, called OLF. There is room along the shoulders there and you will often see people pulled over watching the jets.

If you want to visit Port Townsend, simply park your car on the Coupeville side and walk across onto the ferry, no reservations required for that. You will arrive in downtown Port Townsend, all 10 blocks of it. You can have an enjoyable time wandering around until the next ferry (about 1.5 hours) and then return.

Don't forget you can take the ferry to Port Townsend also. You can walk on/ walk off and it docks right in old Port Townsend, or take the car and you can visit Fort Warden and hike the beaches there as well as get out to all the hiking trails near the Olympic Forest and Lake Crescent in less than an hour.

I’ll second Deception Pass. We thoroughly enjoyed a day hiking in the park.

KGC and Carol, retired: I had not considered going to Port Townsend from Coupviille on ferry. We both have “Senior ORCA cards” so ferry should be cheap. So much more convenient than driving that winding road from Port Ludlow.
We’ll be on Whidbey 8 nights because we originally planned going to the San Juan Islands, but since we were there 2 months ago, we probably won’t do that on this trip.