Changes to Kitsap’s park code in the works.

HOOD CANAL — Salisbury Point Park, the only North Kitsap site along Washington’s 150-mile Cascadia Marine Water Trail, is now open for camping, with conditions.

Chip Faver, director of Kitsap County Parks and Recreation, said camping is only available to those using the park — located just north of the Hood Canal Bridge — while traveling as part of the Washington’s Water Trails organization.

Washington Water Trails is a Seattle-based nonprofit geared toward traveling waterways with non-motorized boats such as kayaks or canoes. It is open to anyone to join.

General use camping, however, is still prohibited by Kitsap County Parks and Recreation unless specified or granted a permit by Faver.

“Our parks people know what they are looking for; basically it’s the people who can pick up and pack out everything that fits in a kayak,” Faver said.

Changes in the parks code still need to go before the Parks Advisory Board and before the Board of County Commissioners in September or October, but that is just a formality, said Faver.

Until now, no camping was allowed in any of Kitsap County’s parks.

“The county parks system does not have infrastructure to support camping in general and has not as yet laid any ground work to pursue incorporating that activity. That is why camping was originally prohibited by county code. Camping is simply not an option for this park system unless it is restrictive in numbers and to specified locations,” Faver wrote in a letter addressed to Washington Water Trails.

Other Kitsap County Parks on the 150-mile long Cascadia Marine Water Trail are the Anna Smith Park and Guillemot Cove in Central Kitsap. Both are included in the camping permit, Faver said.

Julie Anderson, director of Washington Water Trails, said there have been no problems camping in other county parks.

“We need to go out and make sure people understand what we do,” she said. “We’re not the rowdy, beer-drinking crowd.”

The organization, which formed in the early 1990s, created maps of several water trails throughout the state. It first created the Cascadia Marine Trail, which the Kitsap parks belong to, in 1993.

With the conditional use camping of the three parks in Kitsap County, Washington Water Trails now has 58 camping sites along the Cascadia Marine Trail.

“Our goal is to have sites five to eight miles away from each other and 150 sites all together,” Anderson said. “What we are trying to preserve is sites for non-motorized vesssels throughout the sound.”

Currently U.S. Rep. Jay Inslee (D-Bainbridge Island) is proposing a bill to make the Cascadia Marine Trail part of a national scenic waterway, which would give it national recognition.

“I think that a lot of people don’t understand what a water trail is yet. A water trail is just one of those things that hasn’t been branded enough yet,” Anderson said. “The majority kayak, but the water trails are also accessed by canoes and beachable sailboats — non-motorized, of course. I just think that people want to go out and spend more than one night and this is a way to go to different sites and obviously see the different scenery and wildlife habitat.”

For more information on Washington Water Trails visit wwta.org.