Tolmie State Park is a 105-acre marine day-use park with 1,800 feet of saltwater shoreline on Puget Sound. This forested park is on Nisqually Beach, a few miles from Olympia, the state's capital city. 
The park features an underwater park for scuba divers, a saltwater marsh, a sand and gravel beach, and a forest of cedar, hemlock, alder, Douglas fir, and maple. The park is named for Dr. William Frazer Tolmie (1812-1866) who spent 16 years with the Hudson Bay Company at Fort Nisqually as a physician, surgeon, botonist and fur trader.With just about an hour of intermittent sunshine on Saturday, we were able to portage the canoe over the sandspit here, and paddle around a far point, before we had to turn back. It was quite brisk out, and with the onset of rain, we had the briefest of canoe paddles.
We turned into the inlet as the tide was receeding, letting the current pull the canoe with the tide. It was very shallow, and the golden leaves from the big-leaf maples had fallen into the water.Tolmie State Park is not far from the Nisqually Delta, one of our favorite hiking areas. There is a 5 mile hike out to the delta, and this time of year one can see approximately 4,000-6,000 wintering geese and waterfowl in the wetlands, pastures, and estuary habitats around here.
Wintering songbirds (Northern shrike, winter wren, golden-crowned kinglet, varied thrush, yellow-rumped warbler, and sparrows) have arrived, and calling out from the willow thickets. On Saturday, we saw a bald eagle preening in a tall tree near the visitor's center. 
I remember, one year, we watched 5 immature eagles preening on a sandbank on the delta. That paddle was so windy, we had to drag our canoe across the grassy marsh, and I've never wanted to venture out there again. Two or three summers ago, George wanted to go back, and he explored it with his brother. Of course that was July, not November, and wind gusts then aren't as hazardous as they are in November. We got this day hike in, just before the storm front hit, with snow and temperatures in the low 20's.
