Washington: Epic Landscapes, Endless Adventures

From the Rain Forests of the Olympic Peninsula to the Volcanic Peaks of the Cascades, the Evergreen State Offers a Lifetime of Wonder

There is a moment that arrives for nearly every visitor to Washington State, usually when they least expect it, that reorders something fundamental in their understanding of what landscape can be. It might happen on a ferry crossing Puget Sound when the clouds part and the white cone of Mount Rainier materializes above the horizon with an improbability that makes you question whether something so enormous and so perfect can actually be real. It might happen on a trail in the Hoh Rain Forest when the silence of the old-growth forest closes around you and you realize that you are standing among trees that were already ancient when the first Europeans arrived on this continent. It might happen on a beach on the Olympic Peninsula at dusk when the sea stacks rise from the surf like the ruins of some enormous cathedral and the light turns everything to copper and gold. Or it might happen simply on a clear winter morning in Seattle when you look east from almost anywhere in the city and the Cascades are white and sharp against the blue sky, and you think that no city in America has a more spectacular natural setting, and then you look west and realize that the Olympics are there too, another white range gleaming above the Sound, and the city is sitting in the middle of an embarrassment of natural riches that most of the world cannot begin to imagine.

Washington State, the Evergreen State, is one of the most physically dramatic and ecologically diverse places in the United States. It encompasses rain forests that receive more than 140 inches of precipitation annually and desert landscapes that receive fewer than eight inches. It contains the most glaciated peak in the contiguous United States outside Alaska, a volcano that famously and catastrophically erupted in living memory, the deepest gorge in North America, ancient forests of Douglas fir and Sitka spruce that have never been cut, and nearly 160 miles of wild Pacific coastline. It has the largest population of orcas in the world in the waters of Puget Sound, the largest concentration of bald eagles in the lower 48 states along its rivers in winter, and salmon runs that have shaped the cultures of its indigenous peoples for thousands of years.

It also has Seattle, one of the most livable, creative, and scenically situated cities in America, a place that has produced more than its share of cultural influence, from the music of Jimi Hendrix and the grunge revolution of the early 1990s to the coffee culture that Starbucks exported to the world, to the technology companies that have reshaped global commerce and communication. And beyond Seattle, it has Spokane, a significant and underappreciated city in its own right, and dozens of smaller communities of great character scattered across landscapes as varied as eastern Washington’s rolling wheat fields and the San Juan Islands’ forested shores.

Washington is not a destination that reveals itself quickly or easily. It rewards patience, curiosity, and a willingness to venture beyond the well-worn paths. But for those who bring those qualities to their visit, it offers experiences that are genuinely, permanently transformative. This is a place where the natural world operates at a scale and with an intensity that reminds you of your own smallness in the most exhilarating possible way.

Understanding Washington’s Geography
Washington’s geography is organized around several major features that divide the state into dramatically different regions. The Cascade Range, running north to south through the center of the state, is the primary geographic dividing line, separating the wet, forested western part of the state from the drier, more arid eastern part. The Olympic Peninsula, in the state’s far northwest corner, is a world unto itself, a compact wilderness of rain forest, glacier-capped mountains, and wild Pacific coastline enclosed within Olympic National Park. Puget Sound, a complex system of interconnected marine waterways extending south from the Strait of Juan de Fuca, defines the character of the state’s most densely populated region. The Columbia River, forming much of the state’s southern border with Oregon, drains an enormous watershed and has shaped both the ecology and the economy of the region profoundly. Eastern Washington, the high plateau of the Columbia Basin and the rolling hills of the Palouse, is a landscape of surprising beauty and agricultural richness quite unlike the forested west side of the mountains.

SEATTLE
Seattle is the heart and soul of Washington State, a city of approximately 750,000 people within the city limits and more than four million in the broader metropolitan area, situated on a narrow isthmus between Puget Sound to the west and Lake Washington to the east, with Lake Union cutting into its center and the ship canal connecting salt and fresh water through the middle of the city. It is one of the most topographically dramatic major cities in America, built on a series of hills that provide constant views of water and mountains, and it is one of the most livable, with a culture that combines intellectual seriousness, environmental consciousness, culinary sophistication, and a genuine love of outdoor life in ways that feel organic rather than performed.

Pike Place Market, perched on the bluff above the waterfront at the foot of Pike Street, is the oldest continuously operating farmers market in the United States, established in 1907, and it remains one of the finest and most atmospheric public markets in the world. The market is not primarily a tourist attraction, though it draws enormous numbers of visitors, but a living, working market where farmers from the surrounding valleys sell seasonal produce, fishmongers throw salmon with practiced theatrical skill, flower vendors create extravagant arrangements from locally grown blooms, craftspeople sell handmade goods, and small restaurants and food stalls serve everything from fresh chowder to piroshky to crumpets. The main arcade, the low-ceilinged corridor where the famous fish throwers operate and the produce stalls line both sides of the walkway, has a sensory intensity and a human warmth that makes it one of the great public spaces in American city life. Below the main arcade, the lower levels of the market descend in a warren of small shops, antique dealers, comic book stores, and specialty purveyors that reward thorough exploration.

The Space Needle, built for the 1962 World’s Fair, is the iconic symbol of Seattle and one of the most recognizable structures in America. The observation deck, recently renovated with glass floors and tilting glass walls that provide vertiginous views straight down to the ground far below, offers panoramic views of the city, the Sound, the Olympic Mountains, Mount Rainier, and the Cascade peaks on clear days that fully justify the admission price and the lines. The surrounding Seattle Center, the campus built for the 1962 Fair, contains several of the city’s finest cultural institutions, including the Museum of Pop Culture, the Pacific Science Center, the Chihuly Garden and Glass, and the Seattle Children’s Museum, as well as the home arenas of the Seattle Storm WNBA team and the Seattle Kraken NHL team.

The Museum of Pop Culture, designed by architect Frank Gehry in his characteristically sculptural, deconstructed style, is one of the most distinctive museum buildings in the country and houses collections and exhibitions dedicated to the history and cultural significance of popular music, science fiction, horror, and video games. The permanent Jimi Hendrix gallery, dedicated to the Seattle-born guitar genius who revolutionized rock music, is the museum’s emotional core, and the collection of Hendrix artifacts, instruments, and recordings is extraordinarily moving for anyone who cares about music. The Nirvana and grunge exhibitions connect the museum directly to Seattle’s own profound contribution to the history of rock and roll, and the interactive Sound Lab, where visitors can pick up instruments and play in soundproofed rehearsal spaces, is enormously enjoyable.

Chihuly Garden and Glass, on the Seattle Center campus adjacent to the Space Needle, presents the extraordinary large-scale glass sculptures of Seattle-born artist Dale Chihuly in both indoor galleries and an outdoor garden setting. Chihuly’s work, characterized by organic forms in brilliant colors that seem to capture and concentrate light, is among the most distinctive and spectacular achievements in contemporary decorative arts, and the Seattle installation, including the extraordinary Glasshouse, a 40-foot-high steel and glass structure sheltering an enormous red and orange chandelier sculpture, is one of the finest presentations of his work anywhere in the world.

The Seattle Art Museum, in the heart of downtown, houses one of the finest art collections on the West Coast, with particular strength in Northwest Coast Native American art, African art, and European and American painting and sculpture. The museum’s Olympic Sculpture Park, a nine-acre outdoor sculpture park on the downtown waterfront donated to the city by the museum, presents large-scale works by artists including Alexander Calder, Richard Serra, and Louise Bourgeois in a beautifully designed landscape overlooking Elliott Bay and the Olympic Mountains, and is free and open to the public every day of the year.

The Capitol Hill neighborhood, east of downtown on one of the city’s hills, has been the center of Seattle’s arts, music, and LGBTQ communities for decades and contains the highest concentration of excellent restaurants, bars, music venues, coffee shops, and independent businesses in the city. The neighborhood’s Broadway commercial strip and the Pike-Pine corridor are the arteries of a street life that feels genuinely urban and genuinely Seattle at the same time. The recently opened Cal Anderson Park is one of the best urban parks in the city and a constant gathering place for the neighborhood’s diverse community.

The International District, adjacent to downtown and Pioneer Square, is the historic center of Seattle’s Asian American communities, with excellent Chinese, Vietnamese, Japanese, and Filipino restaurants, tea houses, groceries, and cultural organizations that reflect more than a century of Asian immigration and community building. The Wing Luke Museum of the Asian Pacific American Experience is one of the finest community history museums in the United States, presenting the history of Asian Pacific Americans in the Pacific Northwest with extraordinary depth and emotional intelligence. Uwajimaya, a large Asian supermarket and shopping center in the heart of the International District, is a wonderland of Asian food products, prepared foods, and household goods that rewards extended browsing.

Pioneer Square, Seattle’s oldest neighborhood and the site of the original settlement, has been through multiple cycles of prosperity and decline and is currently experiencing a creative revival. The neighborhood’s Richardsonian Romanesque brick architecture from the late 19th and early 20th centuries gives it a cohesive historic character unique in Seattle, and its concentration of art galleries, making it the center of Seattle’s gallery scene, adds a cultural dimension that rewards exploration. The underground tours of the subterranean storefronts and streets that were buried when the city was re-graded after the Great Seattle Fire of 1889 are one of the city’s most popular and genuinely interesting historical experiences.

Seattle’s coffee culture is so pervasive and so deeply embedded in the city’s identity that it barely requires description, but a few specific notes are in order. While Starbucks was founded in Seattle in 1971 and the original Starbucks at Pike Place Market is a genuine pilgrimage site for the brand’s devotees, the independent coffee culture that has flourished in Seattle’s wake has in many respects surpassed its originator in quality and sophistication. Victrola Coffee Roasters, Lighthouse Coffee Roasters, Caffe Vita, and Slate Coffee are among the many excellent independent roasters operating in the city, and the standard of espresso preparation throughout Seattle is genuinely among the highest in the world.

The food scene in Seattle has expanded dramatically in quality and variety in recent decades, driven by proximity to extraordinary agricultural and seafood resources and by the diverse immigrant communities that have made the city their home. Canlis, a mid-century modern restaurant overlooking Lake Union that has been in continuous operation since 1950, remains one of the finest dining experiences in the Pacific Northwest, constantly evolving while maintaining its commitment to exceptional hospitality. The Ferry Building equivalent of Seattle’s food scene may be found in the combination of Pike Place Market and the surrounding first-ring neighborhoods, where restaurants like The Walrus and the Carpenter, a beloved oyster bar in Ballard, and Renee Erickson’s collection of Seattle restaurants represent a seafood-focused cuisine of great intelligence and beauty.

The neighborhoods of Ballard and Fremont, north of downtown across the Lake Washington Ship Canal, deserve extended exploration. Ballard, originally a Scandinavian fishing and lumber community that was annexed by Seattle in 1907, retains a distinct neighborhood character in its old downtown commercial district along Ballard Avenue, lined with excellent restaurants, bars, and the Nordic Museum, a beautifully designed institution celebrating the Scandinavian heritage of the Pacific Northwest. The Hiram M. Chittenden Locks, where the ship canal meets Puget Sound, are one of the most fascinating urban infrastructure attractions in the Pacific Northwest, where pleasure boats, commercial fishing vessels, and enormous container ships pass through the locks while salmon migrate past on their way to and from their spawning grounds in the fish ladder below.

OLYMPIC NATIONAL PARK AND THE OLYMPIC PENINSULA
Approximately two hours west of Seattle by ferry and car lies one of the most extraordinary concentrations of ecological diversity on the planet. Olympic National Park encompasses nearly a million acres of the Olympic Peninsula, protecting three distinct and dramatically different ecosystems: the temperate rain forests of the western valleys, the alpine meadows and glaciated peaks of the Olympic Mountains, and the wild, largely undeveloped Pacific coastline.

The Hoh Rain Forest, on the western side of the Olympic Mountains, receives between 140 and 170 inches of rain annually and supports one of the finest examples of temperate rain forest in the world. The forest is a cathedral of towering Sitka spruce, western red cedar, western hemlock, and bigleaf maple draped in thick green carpets of moss and fern that create an atmosphere of green, filtered light and profound quietude quite unlike any other forest in America. The Hall of Mosses, a short trail through a grove of bigleaf maples whose branches are so heavily draped with club moss that they form long, weeping curtains of green, is among the most beautiful and otherworldly natural scenes in the United States. The Hoh River Trail, which begins at the rain forest visitor center and follows the Hoh River through the forest for 17 miles before climbing above treeline to the glaciers of Mount Olympus, is one of the great wilderness trails in the Pacific Northwest.

The Quinault, Queets, and Quinault Rain Forests in the park’s southwestern section offer equally spectacular old-growth forest experiences in a somewhat less visited setting. The Quinault Rain Forest contains some of the largest individual trees of several species in the world, including the world’s largest Sitka spruce and western red cedar, trees of such size that they must be seen to be understood.

Hurricane Ridge, in the park’s interior above the city of Port Angeles, provides the most accessible alpine experience in Olympic National Park. The ridge road climbs from sea level to nearly 5,200 feet in 17 miles, emerging above treeline into open meadows of wildflowers in summer, where black-tailed deer and Olympic marmots graze with apparent indifference to the presence of visitors, and where the views of the Olympic Mountains and across the Strait of Juan de Fuca to Vancouver Island in British Columbia are staggering.

The Pacific coast section of Olympic National Park protects more than 60 miles of wild Pacific coastline, the longest stretch of undeveloped ocean beach in the contiguous United States outside Alaska. Rialto Beach and Ruby Beach are among the most accessible and most spectacular stretches, where enormous sea stacks of erosion-resistant rock rise from the surf, tide pools shelter sea stars, anemones, chitons, and other intertidal life, and driftwood logs of immense size accumulate in dense tangles at the high tide line. Hiking the Olympic Coastal Strip, a multi-day backpacking route along the wild Pacific shore, is one of the most demanding and most rewarding wilderness experiences available in Washington State.
The Dungeness Spit, on the northern coast of the Olympic Peninsula near Sequim, is the longest natural sand spit in the United States, extending nearly six miles into the Strait of Juan de Fuca. The Dungeness National Wildlife Refuge that surrounds it is one of the finest shorebird and waterfowl areas in Washington, and the walk out to the historic Dungeness Lighthouse at the spit’s tip is one of the most memorable coastal walks in the state.

The town of Port Townsend, at the northeastern corner of the Olympic Peninsula, is one of the finest Victorian seaport towns in the American West, a community of extraordinary architectural richness that developed as an anticipated major port city in the late 19th century before the railroads bypassed it and left it frozen in architectural amber. The resulting collection of Victorian commercial buildings downtown and Victorian residential buildings on the bluff above has been preserved with great care and makes Port Townsend one of the most charming and architecturally distinguished small communities in Washington. The annual Wooden Boat Festival, held every September in Port Townsend’s harbor, is one of the premier maritime festivals in the country, drawing wooden boat builders and enthusiasts from throughout the Pacific Northwest and beyond.

THE CASCADE RANGE AND MOUNT RAINIER
The Cascade Range defines Washington State’s character as profoundly as any single geographic feature. This chain of volcanic peaks, running north to south through the center of the state, creates the dramatic rain shadow that divides the wet west side from the dry east side, provides the spectacular mountain backdrop that makes western Washington’s urban landscapes so extraordinary, and offers some of the finest mountaineering, skiing, and wilderness hiking in North America.
Mount Rainier, at 14,411 feet the highest peak in the Cascade Range and the most glaciated mountain in the contiguous United States outside Alaska, dominates the skyline of the entire Puget Sound region with an authority that goes beyond mere elevation. When it is visible, which in the cloud-prone Northwest is not always the case, it commands attention from distances of 100 miles or more, its white cone seeming to float impossibly high above the surrounding ridgelines. The mountain has entered the regional consciousness so deeply that Seattle residents have their own shorthand for its appearances: when Rainier emerges from the clouds on a clear day after weeks of overcast, they say simply that the mountain is out, and everyone understands.

Mount Rainier National Park, established in 1899 as the fifth national park in the United States, encompasses the mountain and its surrounding forests and meadows in 369 square miles of protected wilderness. The Paradise area, on the mountain’s southern slope, is the most visited part of the park and offers access to the most spectacular subalpine meadow scenery in the Pacific Northwest. In late July and August, when the snowpack finally melts from the high meadows, they burst into bloom with paintbrush, lupine, bistort, avalanche lily, and dozens of other wildflowers in displays that have been described as among the finest alpine wildflower shows in North America. The Skyline Trail from Paradise loops through these meadows and up to the edge of the Nisqually Glacier, providing views of the mountain’s ice-clad upper slopes and across the Tatoosh Range to the south that are genuinely breathtaking. The Paradise Inn, a magnificent 1916 log and timber structure that is one of the finest examples of National Park rustic architecture in the country, serves as the primary lodging and dining destination in the park and is a destination in its own right.

The Sunrise area, on the mountain’s northeastern side and accessible by the highest paved road in Washington State, offers a different perspective on Rainier, with views across the Emmons Glacier, the largest glacier by area in the contiguous United States, and out to Mount Baker and Glacier Peak in the northern Cascades on clear days. The meadows around Sunrise bloom later than those at Paradise, typically in August, and the combination of alpine flowers, glacier views, and the relative solitude compared to the more popular south side makes Sunrise one of the most rewarding destinations in the park.

North Cascades National Park, in the far northern part of the Cascade Range near the Canadian border, is one of the least visited national parks in the country and one of the most spectacularly beautiful. The park contains more than 300 glaciers, roughly half of all the glaciers in the contiguous United States, and a landscape of jagged peaks, turquoise glacial lakes, and deep, forested valleys of extraordinary wildness. The North Cascades Highway, State Route 20, is the primary road through the region and is generally considered the most scenic highway in Washington, passing through the Skagit Valley, climbing over Washington Pass with its extraordinary views of the Liberty Bell and Early Winter Spires, and descending into the Methow Valley on the east side of the mountains. The highway is closed by snow in winter and typically open from April through November.

Mount St. Helens, in the southern Cascade Range near the Oregon border, is the most famous and most visited volcanic site in Washington, the mountain that erupted catastrophically on May 18, 1980, in the largest volcanic event in the history of the contiguous United States, killing 57 people, blowing 1,300 feet off the mountain’s summit, and laying waste to 230 square miles of forest in a matter of minutes. The Johnston Ridge Observatory, located at the end of State Route 504 on the mountain’s western flank, offers the most direct and dramatic view of the crater and lava dome from a distance of five miles, and the observatory’s excellent exhibits convey the science and human story of the eruption with great clarity.

The recovery of the blast zone, now protected as Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument, has become one of the most important natural laboratories for studying ecological succession in the world, and the evidence of recovery, from the first returning plants and animals to the young forests now covering much of the blast zone, is in its own way as moving as the devastation itself.
Crater Lake it is not, and Mount Baker it has not the fame, but Mount Baker in the northern Cascades deserves mention as one of Washington’s most beautiful and snowiest peaks. The Mount Baker Ski Area regularly receives more snowfall than any other ski area in North America, and the Artist Point area above the ski area, accessible in summer by a spectacular road, offers views of the mountain and across to the North Cascades and British Columbia that rival anything in the Pacific Northwest. The mountain’s reflection in the still waters of Picture Lake, at the end of the road to Heather Meadows, is one of the most photographed natural scenes in Washington.

The Methow Valley, on the eastern slope of the North Cascades, is one of Washington’s finest outdoor recreation destinations, a sun-drenched valley of ponderosa pine and sagebrush that offers exceptional cross-country skiing in winter on the largest groomed Nordic ski trail network in the country, and outstanding mountain biking, hiking, and river recreation in summer. The town of Winthrop, styled after an 1890s western frontier community with wooden boardwalks and false-fronted buildings, is the valley’s commercial center and a popular destination in its own right.

THE SAN JUAN ISLANDS
In the waters of northern Puget Sound and the Strait of Georgia, between the Olympic Peninsula and the Canadian border, lie the San Juan Islands, an archipelago of more than 170 named islands and hundreds of smaller rocks and reefs that constitutes one of the most beautiful and ecologically remarkable marine environments in the world. The islands, accessible primarily by Washington State Ferry from Anacortes, are sheltered from the open Pacific by the Olympic Peninsula and Vancouver Island, creating a rain shadow microclimate that gives them more sunshine than any other part of western Washington and a distinctive Mediterranean quality quite unlike the forested mainland.

San Juan Island is the largest and most visited of the accessible islands, home to the town of Friday Harbor, the archipelago’s commercial center and ferry hub, and to San Juan Island National Historical Park, which preserves the sites of the curious Pig War of 1859, when American and British forces briefly occupied opposite ends of the island in a dispute over the boundary between the United States and British Canada that was resolved without bloodshed but that left two remarkably well-preserved military camps. English Camp, on the island’s sheltered northwest shore, and American Camp, on the exposed southern prairie with its views of the Olympic Mountains across the Strait of Juan de Fuca, are both fascinating and evocative historic sites.

Lime Kiln Point State Park, on the island’s western shore, is known as the best place in the world to watch orcas from shore. The resident orca pods of the Salish Sea pass close to Lime Kiln regularly throughout the summer months, and the experience of watching these extraordinary animals from the rocky shoreline, their tall dorsal fins cutting the surface, their blows visible in the clear air, is one of the most powerful wildlife encounters available anywhere in North America. Whale watching boat tours operating from Friday Harbor provide an even closer encounter and are among the most popular tourist activities in the islands.

Orcas Island, the largest of the San Juan Islands by area and the most topographically dramatic, rises to nearly 2,400 feet at the summit of Mount Constitution in Moran State Park. The views from the stone observation tower at the summit, looking across the entire San Juan Archipelago to the Cascades, the Olympics, and the British Columbia mainland, are among the finest in the entire Pacific Northwest. The island’s resort community of Rosario, centered on the historic Rosario Resort built by Seattle mayor and businessman Robert Moran in the early 20th century, is a landmark of the islands. The East Sound commercial village on Orcas is one of the finest small shopping and dining destinations in the islands.
Lopez Island, the flattest and most agricultural of the main islands, has a culture of extraordinary friendliness, famous throughout the Northwest, where residents wave at every passing car as a matter of cultural tradition. Lopez is the preferred island for cycling, with its gentle terrain, quiet roads, and beautiful bay and farmland scenery making it ideal for a day or weekend of leisurely exploration by bicycle.

THE COLUMBIA RIVER GORGE AND CENTRAL WASHINGTON
The Columbia River, forming Washington’s southern border with Oregon, has shaped the landscape, ecology, and history of the Pacific Northwest more profoundly than any other geographic feature. The Columbia River Gorge, where the river cuts through the Cascade Range in a canyon of extraordinary scenic drama, is a National Scenic Area of great beauty and recreational richness, shared between Washington and Oregon.

The Washington side of the gorge, while less developed for tourism than the Oregon side, offers outstanding windsurfing and kiteboarding at the town of Stevenson and Hood River adjacent communities, as well as access to Beacon Rock State Park, where the 848-foot basalt monolith of Beacon Rock, the second-largest such monolith in the world, can be climbed by a trail of switchbacks and handrails to a summit with outstanding gorge views.
Central Washington, east of the Cascades in the Columbia Basin, is the state’s primary agricultural heartland, a landscape of orchards, vineyards, hop yards, and wheat fields that produces an enormous proportion of the nation’s apples, pears, cherries, hops, and wine grapes. The Yakima Valley, centered on the city of Yakima and extending south and east through communities like Zillah, Sunnyside, and Prosser, is the state’s largest and most established wine region, with more than 120 wineries producing wines from Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Syrah, Riesling, and Chardonnay in a warm, dry climate ideal for viticulture. The Walla Walla Valley, in the southeastern corner of the state, has developed an even more distinguished reputation for quality, producing Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah, and Merlot of national and international significance from a growing number of wineries that have made the valley one of the premier wine destinations in the Pacific Northwest.

The Wenatchee Valley, in north-central Washington on the eastern slope of the Cascades, is the apple capital of the world, producing more apples than any comparable region on earth in an extraordinary concentration of orchards covering the valley floor and the hillsides above. The Washington State Apple Blossom Festival, held in Wenatchee every spring when the orchards are in bloom, is one of the largest and oldest agricultural festivals in the Northwest.
Lake Chelan, a long, narrow glacially carved lake extending 55 miles into the Cascades from the Columbia River, is one of the deepest lakes in the United States and one of Washington’s premier summer recreation destinations. The town of Chelan at the lake’s southern end is a popular resort community, but the far end of the lake, accessible only by the Lady of the Lake ferry or by small plane, terminates in the remote community of Stehekin, a tiny, car-free settlement at the edge of the North Cascades wilderness that is accessible only by the ferry, a small plane or on foot, and that represents one of the most truly isolated and peaceful destinations in Washington.

The Palouse, in the southeastern corner of the state, is one of the most distinctive and beautiful agricultural landscapes in America. The Palouse Hills, great rolling swells of wind-deposited silt soil called loess, have been farmed in wheat, lentils, and barley for more than a century, and the resulting landscape of curved contour lines, changing colors with the seasons, is of a photogenic beauty that attracts landscape photographers from around the world. The viewpoint at Steptoe Butte, a quartzite island rising 3,600 feet above the surrounding hills that was left behind when the softer loess accumulated around it, offers panoramic views of the Palouse that are particularly spectacular in late spring when the winter wheat is at its most vivid green and in late summer when the harvested fields create geometric patterns of gold and brown across the hills.

EASTERN WASHINGTON AND SPOKANE
Eastern Washington, east of the Cascades, is a region that western Washingtonians sometimes condescend to and that almost always surprises visitors who arrive with low expectations. It is a land of big sky, agricultural abundance, volcanic geology, and genuine cultural vitality centered on Spokane, the second-largest city in Washington and a place of considerable charm and sophistication.

Spokane, situated on the Spokane River at the edge of the Columbia Plateau, is a city that has spent much of its history in Seattle’s shadow and has in recent years come into its own as a destination of genuine interest. Riverfront Park, created from the industrial riverfront and railroad yards for the 1974 World’s Fair, is one of the finest urban parks in the Pacific Northwest, with walking and cycling paths along the Spokane River, historic pavilions from the fair, a gondola ride over the river falls, and views of the dramatic Spokane Falls, one of the most powerful urban waterfalls in the United States, thundering through the center of the city. The Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture is an outstanding regional museum with strong collections in the art, history, and natural history of the inland Northwest and an impressive adjacent historic house museum. The city’s Kendall Yards neighborhood, a redeveloped former industrial area on the river bluffs, has become a hub of excellent restaurants, cafes, and boutiques that give Spokane’s food and retail scene a quality and sophistication that rivals much larger cities.

The Channeled Scablands, the extraordinary geological landscape of eastern Washington formed by the catastrophic Missoula Floods of the last Ice Age, when an ice dam in what is now Montana repeatedly failed and sent floodwaters of almost incomprehensible volume crashing across the Columbia Plateau, are among the most significant and dramatic geological landscapes in North America. The floods stripped away the loess soil cover across enormous areas, leaving bare basalt bedrock sculpted into coulees, dry waterfalls, and giant ripple marks visible from the air. Dry Falls, in Grand Coulee south of the town of Coulee City, was once the largest waterfall in the world, a cataract three miles wide and 400 feet tall that dwarfs Niagara in every dimension. Today it is a dry cliff face above a state park, but the interpretive center at the rim conveys the scale and violence of the floods with great effectiveness.

Grand Coulee Dam, on the Columbia River in eastern Washington, is one of the great engineering achievements of the 20th century and was, at the time of its completion in 1942, the largest concrete structure ever built. The dam, three times the height of Niagara Falls, created Lake Roosevelt, stretching 150 miles upstream into British Columbia, and its power generation capacity supplied the aluminum smelters and plutonium production facilities that played crucial roles in the American war effort and in the development of the atomic bomb. The free visitor center and tours of the dam’s powerhouses are fascinating, and the summer laser light show projected onto the dam’s face every evening from Memorial Day through September is a spectacular if improbable attraction.

NATIVE CULTURES AND FIRST PEOPLES
Washington State is home to 29 federally recognized tribal nations whose relationships with this land span thousands of years and whose cultural presence is woven into the landscape, the place names, the ecology, and the living communities of the state in ways that demand acknowledgment and respect.
The Makah Nation, at the northwestern tip of the Olympic Peninsula at Cape Flattery, America’s most northwesterly point, maintains a culture with deep connections to the sea. The Makah Cultural and Research Center in Neah Bay houses one of the finest collections of Northwest Coast Native American cultural objects in existence, including the extraordinary artifacts recovered from Ozette, a Makah village that was buried by a mudslide approximately 500 years ago and preserved with remarkable completeness until archaeological excavation beginning in the 1970s revealed thousands of objects of extraordinary significance. Cape Flattery itself, a short hike through Makah land, offers views across the turbulent waters where the Strait of Juan de Fuca meets the Pacific Ocean from dramatic sea cliffs that represent the edge of the continent.

The Lummi Nation, Tulalip Tribes, and other Coast Salish peoples of Puget Sound have maintained their relationships with the salmon runs of the region for thousands of years, and the ongoing legal and political struggles to maintain those relationships in the face of development, pollution, and environmental degradation represent some of the most important environmental and human rights issues in the state.
The Yakama Nation in central Washington, the Colville Confederated Tribes in northeastern Washington, the Spokane Tribe, and the many other interior nations have their own profound and complex histories of relationship with the landscapes of eastern Washington, histories of fishing the Columbia and its tributaries for salmon, of gathering the camas root that was a primary food source across the plateau, and of navigating the successive waves of American expansion that disrupted and attempted to destroy their cultures.

FOOD, DRINK, AND CULINARY CULTURE
Washington’s culinary culture is rooted in one of the most extraordinary natural pantries available to any state in the country. The Pacific Ocean provides salmon, Dungeness crab, halibut, albacore tuna, sea urchin, and razor clams of exceptional quality. Puget Sound and Hood Canal produce oysters of world-class distinction, particularly the Olympia oyster, the only oyster species native to the Pacific Northwest, and the larger Pacific oyster varieties grown at farms throughout the Sound. The rivers provide wild salmon in season that has no equal as a food product anywhere in the world. The agricultural lands of eastern Washington produce apples, pears, cherries, asparagus, potatoes, wheat, hops, and wine grapes that form the basis of an outstanding regional cuisine. The forests provide chanterelle, morel, matsutake, and porcini mushrooms of exceptional quality and quantity.

Dungeness crab, harvested from the coastal waters of Washington, Oregon, and California, takes its name from the small community of Dungeness on the Olympic Peninsula’s north shore and is among the finest edible crabs in the world. The sweet, delicate meat, particularly in the large claws and legs, is at its best simply steamed and eaten with drawn butter, and the ritual of cracking a Dungeness crab at a waterfront restaurant or at a picnic table on a Washington beach is one of the great simple pleasures of Pacific Northwest food culture.
Washington salmon, particularly king salmon and sockeye from the Columbia River and the rivers of the Olympic Peninsula, is so superior in quality to farmed salmon that experienced Pacific Northwest cooks refuse to use the farmed product. The flavor of a wild Washington king salmon fillet, grilled simply over alder wood in the traditional style of the region’s First Peoples, is one of the transcendent culinary experiences available in American cooking.

Washington oysters have achieved national recognition for their quality and diversity. Taylor Shellfish Farms, the largest shellfish producer in the United States, operates growing sites throughout Puget Sound and the Hood Canal and retail oyster bars in Seattle and other cities where the full range of their production, from tiny Olympias to large Pacifics in multiple growing site varieties, can be tasted alongside simple accompaniments and local wine or beer.

The Washington wine industry has developed dramatically in the past three decades and now encompasses more than 1,000 wineries producing wines of genuine national and international significance. The Columbia Valley, Yakima Valley, Red Mountain, Walla Walla Valley, and Horse Heaven Hills appellations are among the most significant wine regions, and the best Washington Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah, Merlot, and Riesling now compete comfortably on the world stage. Leonetti Cellar, Quilceda Creek, Andrew Will, K Vintners, and Cayuse Vineyards are among the most celebrated producers, though the industry has expanded so rapidly that compelling wines are now being made at dozens of additional wineries throughout the state.
The craft beer culture of Washington, centered heavily in Seattle but extending throughout the state, is one of the finest in the country. Elysian Brewing, Fremont Brewing, Georgetown Brewing, and Cloudburst Brewing are among the Seattle-area producers of national reputation, while Bale Breaker Brewing in the Yakima hop fields and numerous eastern Washington producers reflect the agricultural roots of the state’s brewing tradition.

The Yakima Valley is the primary hop-growing region in the United States, producing approximately 75 percent of the nation’s hops in the rich volcanic soil and warm, dry climate of the valley. The hop harvest in September fills the valley air with a pungent, resinous fragrance that is intoxicating in the most literal sense, and the sight of the tall hop trellises stretching across the valley floor is one of the great agricultural landscapes of the Pacific Northwest.

PRACTICAL TRAVEL INFORMATION
Seattle-Tacoma International Airport is the primary air gateway to Washington State and one of the busiest airports in the country, with extensive domestic connections and direct international service to destinations throughout Asia, Europe, and North America. Spokane International Airport serves eastern Washington with a growing roster of direct routes. Alaska Airlines, which was founded in Washington and maintains its headquarters there, provides extensive service throughout the Pacific Northwest and beyond.
Washington State Ferries, the largest ferry system in the United States by number of vehicles carried, operate an extensive network of routes connecting Seattle to the Kitsap Peninsula, the Olympic Peninsula, the San Juan Islands, and Sidney, British Columbia. Traveling by ferry is not merely a practical transportation option but one of the great travel experiences of the Pacific Northwest, offering views of the Sound, the mountains, and the islands that are unavailable from any other vantage point.

Driving is essential for exploring most of Washington beyond the Seattle metropolitan area, and the state’s scenic highways, including US-2 over Stevens Pass, State Route 20 over Washington Pass in the North Cascades, US-12 through the White Pass and Yakima Valley, and the many roads of the Olympic Peninsula, are among the finest driving routes in the country.
Washington’s climate varies enormously by region. Western Washington, including Seattle, has a marine climate characterized by mild temperatures year-round, abundant rainfall from October through May, and famously overcast winters. Contrary to popular belief, Seattle does not receive exceptionally heavy annual rainfall, but its rain comes in a persistent gray drizzle rather than dramatic downpours, which makes it feel more pervasive than it actually is. Summers in Seattle and the western part of the state are genuinely magnificent, with long days of brilliant sunshine, low humidity, and temperatures in the mid-60s to mid-70s that are universally agreed to be among the finest summer weather in America. Eastern Washington has a continental climate with hot summers, cold winters, and dramatically more sunshine than the west side, receiving an average of 300 sunny days per year in some locations.

Accommodation ranges from world-class urban hotels in Seattle, where the Four Seasons, the Fairmont Olympic, and numerous boutique properties represent the highest end of Pacific Northwest hospitality, to wilderness lodges, national park inns, vineyard guest houses, and the full range of outdoor camping options in the state’s extraordinary public lands. The Paradise Inn at Mount Rainier and the Lake Quinault Lodge on the Olympic Peninsula are among the most beloved historic lodging properties in the state, offering the combination of spectacular natural settings and historic character that defines the best of American national park lodging.

Conclusion
Washington State defies the kind of summary that fits neatly onto a bumper sticker or a tourism brochure. It is too big, too varied, too layered in its history and ecology and human experience to be reduced to any single image or idea. It is the Space Needle and the Hoh Rain Forest and the Palouse hills and the Columbia River and the orca pods of the Salish Sea and the volcanic silence of Mount St. Helens and the hop fields of the Yakima Valley and the Victorian streetscapes of Port Townsend and the Friday Night Jamboree of Floyd and the laser light show on Grand Coulee Dam and the smell of wild salmon cooking over alder wood on a beach at the edge of the Pacific.

It is a state that asks you to pay attention, because if you do not pay attention in Washington, you will miss things of extraordinary beauty and significance that will not announce themselves loudly or wait patiently for your notice. The mountain will go back behind the clouds. The salmon will finish their run and be gone. The chanterelles will be found by someone else on the forest floor. The orcas will have passed by while you were looking at your phone.

But if you pay attention, if you bring to Washington the full presence of mind and senses that the place demands and deserves, it will give you back experiences that will stay with you for the rest of your life. The sight of Rainier materializing above the clouds. The silence of the old-growth forest. The cold, sweet meat of a just-caught Dungeness crab. The spray of the Pacific on a wild Olympic beach. The sound of a fiddle in a barn while snow falls on the Cascades outside.
Washington is not merely a destination. It is an argument, made by the land itself in the most eloquent possible terms, for why wildness and beauty and the natural world matter, and for what we lose when we stop paying attention to them. It is one of the most important arguments available to an American traveler. Go and listen to it.

Washington State — Ever Green, Ever Wild, Ever Magnificent, and Ever Worth the Journey.