Because we’ve stayed locally and pretty much only traveled within mostly three hour roadtrips from Seattle for the past year and a half, we’ve been to Seabrook Washington nearly a handful of times and it’s one place that we don’t mind going back to over and over again. It is perfect for active families, there are a variety of lodging options and we can bring along our pup who loves to hang out at the beach at Seabrook too. We’ve also been able to book last minute and find cool places to stay. On our most recent visit we checked out the new Vista Bakeshop bakery, we brought along our bikes (the bike trails at Seabrook are fantastic!) and we visited the Joie des Livres bookstore for the very first time. It’s amazing how each time we come to Seabrook we find new places here to explore.
The Vista Bakeshop in Seabrook Washington
This bakeshop is absolutely perfect and every little town needs a bakery like this. We ended up picking up bake goods more than once on our last trip. And just like popular Seattle bakeshops, the Vista Bakeshop sold out by the afternoon a few times while we were there. We usually just got to the store around opening and didn’t have to wait very long. The cruffin and cinnamon bun were probably our favorites but all the pastries were good and I think we might have tried all the varieties they had. The bakery is also really cute and it’s always a great combination when a bakery is just as adorable as its pastries are good.
Cookies Country Chicken
Cookies Country Chicken did not have a permanent storefront in Seabrook Washington when we were there but they did have a food truck that my kids couldn’t stop raving about. We let them bike over and bring home lunch one afternoon and the macaroni and cheese and chicken nuggets that they brought home were really tasty. We’ll have to look them up in Seattle too, apparently they have a Seattle location. And I am not sure if this was on the menu at the Seabrook location but on the Seattle menu it looks like they have a cauliflower main dish that would be fun to try one day as well.
Joie des livres is the dreamiest bookshop
This adorable bookshop is a place I want to bring my niece and nephew. The are all about make believe and looking for magical things and this is the type of place that fosters imagination like this. While I was looking around the store, the shopkeeper needed to get something and pulled a bookshelf forward and revealed a “secret” storage room and it’s details like this that makes it the type of bookshop that people who love books dream about. I meant to revisit on our trip but I forgot to check the opening and closing times and we stayed at the beach too long-make sure you check if you want to visit. Shops felt like they closed a little earlier in Seabrook than they do in the city and that totally makes sense but it’s easy to forget.
And bring your bikes to try the bike trails at Seabrook if you love to bike
You can also rent bikes at Buck’s Northwest, the bike store in the Seabrook Village center. They rent everything from beach cruisers to mountain bikes and they even have mountain bike lessons if you want to get more comfortable riding. Friends who have places at Seabrook told us about the Seabrook bike trails after we didn’t bring them on our first visit and we’ve been bringing our bikes ever since.
We usually look for places to stay in the Farm District which are near the drop-in for a lot of the trails like Hway 1-0 fun and Buck Lake. Wormhole is also really easy to access too. But Mike-O-Rama that is a little farther away has the most scenic overlook and I found it a little scary but fun to ride as well. (With little kids I’d check out the trails first to see if they can do them before I bring them along. Wormhole was the first bike path my kids tried out because it’s the easiest to watch from off the trail.)
Buck’s Northwest also has skimboard rentals too. We ended up getting a skimboard last year and the rental we stayed at had one available for use as well. (It’s always good to check if things like this are included in a Seabrook vacation rental because you can save $40+ dollars in rental fees if they have things like bikes, clam guns or other things for guests’ use.). We brought our tennis rackets on our last trip as well (Toyota let me borrow a Sequoia Nightshade so it was beach perfect and we had room for EVERYTHING including our bikes) and we used them a lot more than we ever do in Seattle.
Have you ever been to Seabrook Washington? We’re already looking for time when we can visit again (and hopefully with family and friends this time and to the new Rising Tide Tavern that just opened there as well-it looks SO good!)
(Thank you for reading. If you want to find out more about our travels locally and far away, or more about me, Terumi, you can find this on my about page and also my instagram too.
Terumi Pong is a Seattle-based family travel writer and mom of twin teenage boys. She loves coffee and pastries, shopping local and looking for greener ways to live. She is also known as Scout’s mom (Scout is a 5ish pound little black yorkie-poo)