Seattle’s Great Outdoors

You can go for walks and hikes and bike rides anywhere, but when was the last time your 5-year-old got squirted by a live clam as big as his head?

We do it all the time with our grade-school son, Joe, who can now spot a burrowing clam from 10 feet away, and delights in making them squirt. Locals, but very few tourists, know that the best things to do outside in Seattle usually involve interaction with the amazing ecosystem of Puget Sound.

Beaches and Creatures

The first thing you’ll need is a tide calendar, which your hotel concierge should have, or which is available in any local bookstore (ours is posted on the kitchen wall). Tide tables are also published every day in the newspapers on the weather page. Check out when the low tides for the day are, and head to a Puget Sound beach a half-hour before the water will be at its lowest.

The best place to go is Golden Gardens Park in the Ballard neighborhood. Look for the wooden bridges and paths at the far end of the park that lead to a wide, rocky beach. You can access the same beach from the other side from Carkeek Park, in north Ballard, and when we can talk Joe into walking, we park at the top and enjoy a 20-minute downhill hike through a steep, forested glade before coming out at the beach.

• Mmmmm...geoduck clams!
• Gerry Thomasen

At low tide there will be starfish and barnacles and shells everywhere. Turn over big rocks and watch the tiny crabs skitter, and keep an eye peeled for the holes in the sand. Many of them will be made by live clams, some of which will actually squirt water a foot into the air if they feel disturbed.

If you dig with shovels, you have a chance of spotting foot-long horse clams and geoducks that can grow to five pounds or more, with necks that extend two feet from the shell (but to harvest them, you’ll need a license). Also be on the lookout for amazing moon snails, which can be as large as basketballs and burrow under the sand eating shellfish. A sharp eye will detect their trail in the sand, and you’ll find distinctive, circular, pressed-sand shapes that they leave behind.

Fishing charters leave from the adjacent marina if you want to try your hand at reeling in local salmon and lingcod. Families that love to paddle should head to the Northwest Outdoor Center on the west side of Lake Union in downtown Seattle (2100 Westlake Avenue N., tel. 206-281-9694). There you can rent single or tandem kayaks or canoes for leisurely spins around the placid lake, which is much calmer than the Sound.