Rangers give tours of the 1875 Olmstead homestead on summer weekends. Image: Witold Skrypczak / Alamy Stock Photo

Explore Ellensburg's Hidden Gems

Drive time: 1 hr 45 mins

Admit it: You’ve judged the town of Ellensburg by the truck-stop gas stations and fast-food chain signs you spotted from the freeway. Don’t blame the city for its underwhelming curb appeal; a few blocks off the interstate sits a cozy, historic downtown, the gateway to Eastern Washington.

Past the off-ramp district, nearly everything here is vintage. The free Kittitas County Historical Museum sits in its own beautifully restored nineteenth-century building and sells a poster of the dozens of other classic edifices around town. The Clymer Museum and Gallery eulogizes the Old West in paintings of the myth-ridden American frontier; down the road the Olmstead Place State Park preserves a frontier homestead as a still-working farm with guided tours. Peek inside a refurbished house of worship at the Yellow Church Cafe, where the Holy Moly chicken sandwich provides its own form of salvation: housemade cheddar bun, apple barbecue sauce, and a salty pickle spear.

But not everything in town is antiquated. Just steps from the Clymer collection, the Gallery One Visual Arts Center combines a gallery of modern art with a local crafts shop. A few blocks away, bright folk art and more than 10,000 bottle caps festoon a private home known as Dick and Jane’s Spot, a joyful monument built over more than three decades.

One sign preserved in the Kittitas museum calls Ellensburg “a town that only a mother could love.” While it may never shake its cow-town reputation, the city’s cheerful self-deprecation underplays its undeniable charm.

Pit Stop: Worth a detour either coming or going: Thorp Fruit and Antique Mall, a giant white barn that acts as its own billboard hawking whatever’s in season in 10-foot red letters. There’s no bad season for the locally made huckleberry ice cream in back.

LeMay Collections at Marymount

Spanaway • Drive time: 50 mins

The Thinker, one of only a few identical sculptures made from Auguste Rodin’s original plaster casts, has a new perch in the woods, sheltered by tall Douglas firs. Donated last year to LeMay Collections at Marymount, it debuts with three other works in the site’s new sculpture garden this spring.

Though the Rodins will be LeMay’s first foray into fine art, collection is clearly nothing new here. The Marymount site, a former nun-run military academy in Spanaway, was once owned by the late Harold LeMay, a Pierce County waste collection magnate who ironically hated to see things thrown away. Some of his more than 2,000 vehicles were spun off into the separate America’s Car Museum in downtown Tacoma; his other treasures went on display at this woodsy retreat.

The school’s old gyms are crammed with unusual cars while its halls brim with vintage radios, dolls, even hundreds of hose nozzles. Visitors can book a Model T driving lesson or attend lectures, and, this spring, tour Rodins. Though the artworks number far fewer than other LeMay collections, The Thinker doesn’t seem to mind seclusion.

Pit Stop: The Marymount acres abut a residential neighborhood south of Tacoma, not far from small enclaves with their own local eateries. [email protected] debuted in 2017 with a short farm-to-table menu of rich breakfasts and hearty lunch dishes in an old brick building decorated with, suitably, an antique rolling pin collection.

Flower Powered: Gardens With a Signature Plant

Lilac

Named for a German immigrant who settled north of Portland, Woodland’s Hulda Klager Lilac Gardens celebrate Lilac Days April 21 through May 13, the only time Hulda’s farmhouse is open for viewing and lilacs are for sale.

Rhododendron

Washington’s state flower gets a showcase at Meerkerk Rhododendron Garden on Whidbey Island, 10 dog-friendly acres with four miles of walking trails.

Dahlia

As one of the largest of its kind in the country, Point Defiance Park’s Dahlia Trial Garden in Tacoma is all about size—the round flowers can grow on stems that top six feet.

Bonsai

The Pacific Bonsai Museum doesn’t trap the tiny trees in windowless galleries; the outdoor display was started by the Weyerhauser Company in the 1980s and still sits on its onetime Federal Way campus. Free public tours are held Sundays.

Iris

Patrick Spence, the gardener behind Cascadia Iris Gardens, knows every detail about the plants he breeds, down to the genetic level; his all star is the Siberian 40-chromosome iris. He opens his Lake Stevens display gardens to the public regularly.

Skagit Valley Tulip Festival

Drive time: 1 hour

The Skagit Valley Tulip Festival owns April. The 35-year-old event simply claims the entire month and hopes the county’s famous flower blossoms at some point during those 30 days. But as the festival website acknowledges, “Bloom dates according to Mother Nature,” and in the past few years warm winters have led to an explosion of color in March. The event, fronted by two main growers outside Mount Vernon, RoozenGaarde and Tulip Town, is so massively popular that even an early arrival of colored petals is a welcome way to spread out the crowds that clog the rural valley roads.

A barbecue event, foot races, fairs, and art shows supplement the annual flower worship, but a self-guided drive among the tulip fields is the heart of the festival. RoozenGaarde has walking trails among its half million hand-planted bulbs, Tulip Town runs a trolley, and the Instagram-ready backdrops tempt waves of attendees. Pack your patience and don’t expect peak flowers at the end of the month; the tulips tend to arrive fashionably early these days.

Pit Stop: Mount Vernon, festival headquarters, can get overwhelmingly full during bloom. Head just north to Burlington for Chuckanut Brewery’s South Nut, a new beer outpost of the Bellingham brewer located in a cheery red barn—lined with taps but still family friendly.

Apple Blossom Festival

Wenatchee • Drive time: 2 hrs 30 mins

Every spring, pink clouds of cherry blossoms transform the Seattle Center into a Japanese cultural fete at the Seattle Cherry Blossom Festival (while the trees at the University of Washington turn the campus into selfie central). But Seattle doesn’t have a monopoly on flowering tree fests; Wenatchee’s Washington State Apple Blossom Festival turns 99 this year with a parade, a fair April 26 through May 6, and a salute to the 100 million apples grown in the state every year.

Pit Stop: Wenatchee’s Windmill Restaurant traces its roots back 87 years, almost as long as the town’s big festival, and its apple pie is made fresh daily. There are four cuts of steak and the occasional prime rib to prep the palate for dessert.

Everything’s Coming Up Tacoma

Our sister city to the south won’t be the same after 2018—and it’s all for the better.

After years of downtown rejuvenation, endless freeway construction, and plain old mockery, this summer Tacoma will see a slew of openings and upgrades. “It seems like the stars are kind of aligning” for Puget Sound’s second-biggest city, says Metro Parks commissioner Erik Hanberg.

It began in February, when the city decided it was so cool, it was intergalactic: A peninsula in Point Defiance Park, once a Superfund site, will be reborn as a park named after the famous sci-fi novel Dune, its pathways designated the Frank Herbert Trail, for Tacoma’s hometown author. The headland’s toxic slag heap inspired the environmental saga, says Hanberg, a Herbert fan who proposed the moniker. “Here you have this opportunity to mirror what the book is about: reclamation of the environment.”

In summer, Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium will launch its new Pacific Seas Aquarium, with a coastal kelp forest and a tank that recreates Mexico’s Baja Bay, complete with hammerhead sharks and green sea turtles. Expect a run on giant novelty scissors down south; late in the year, the Tacoma Art Museum cuts the ribbon on its new Benaroya Wing, which will house some of the 225 works of art gifted by Rebecca Benaroya in 2016.

But the most exciting thing to happen in Tacoma will come when the Ruston Way waterfront is finally linked to Point Defiance Park via an elevated walkway; a ferry terminal dispatching boats to Vashon island once blocked the two pedestrian centers. Wilson Way, a bridge 50 feet off the ground, will soar over the ferry dock sometime in late 2018. The best part is how you get from top to bottom: a series of slides meant for kids and adults alike.

“Why? Because they’re fun,” says Metro Parks spokesperson Michael Thompson. Tacoma, when did you become so cool?

Washington State Spring Fair

Puyallup • Drive time: 40 mins

Significantly smaller than Puyallup’s fall fair bash, Washington State Spring Fair sets up on the same grounds and crams the best bits for a bite-size early season version for one weekend, April 19–22: live music, fair food, carnival rides. But it’s exclusively in spring that the fairgrounds feature racing pigs, dogs performing tricks, and smash-happy monster truck shows. In Sunday’s demolition derby, the vehicles tow boats as they destroy each other—a perfectly chaotic new rite that beats spring cleaning.

Pit Stop: This is the fair—if you haven’t had your fill of curly fries and cotton candy, you’re doing it wrong. Go back to the food stands and ask someone to fry you something.

There’s plenty of elbow room at the spring fair, which draws smaller crowds than fall’s Washington State Fair. Image: Courtesy Patrick Hagerty

Fall City Wallaby Ranch

Fall City • Drive time: 35 mins

Why do kangaroos have tails? Rex Paperd, owner of Fall City Wallaby Ranch and its 11 marsupials, poses the question in his barn and knows that you’ll answer wrong (they’re not for balance). After 15 years of raising red kangaroos and white and gray wallabies, there’s little he doesn’t know about the hoppers. Visits to his ranch start with a slide show of the photos he takes of the marsupials’ unique child-rearing, where baby animals grow in mom’s pouch—images of jelly bean–size kangaroos so unique he’s worked with National Geographic on video of the process.

Paperd first settled on his 10 rural acres because they had access to a private airstrip, but the onetime professional pilot now devotes his time to his unusual pets. (Why kangaroos? “Because pet skunks are illegal in the state of Washington.”) His introductory slide show may resemble a homegrown episode of Planet Earth, but the guided walk that follows, through the animal pens, is nature at its most immediate. Pet a wallaby, feed a kangaroo, and try buying Paperd’s assertion that six-foot Jasper, who sports some impressive guns, is the chillest. Paperd insists his beloved creatures—bottle weaned and raised in his house after spending six or seven months in the pouch—aren’t dangerous. Imagine a cross between a rabbit and a border collie, affectionate but pushy. And those tails? Watch the animals use them as a third leg.

Tours are by appointment only, starting at $60 for six people. Don boots that can navigate a muddy Northwest walk (or wallaby scratches) and pants that can take a little dirt. At this petting zoo, the zoo pets back.

Pit Stop: Between the hefty meat chili and six varieties of mac and cheese, The Roadhouse Restaurant and Inn in the middle of Fall City doesn’t skimp on comfort fare. If the two-story wood exterior looks familiar, it’s because it appeared in the original Twin Peaks.

The Washington State History Museum

Tacoma • Drive Time: 35 Mins

A danceable floor piano, like in Big. An Etch-a-Sketch the size of a Mini Cooper. A Lite-Brite whose pegs take both hands to move. Not every toy at The Washington State History Museum’s Toytopia exhibit (through June 10) is supersize, but everything on display probably has larger-than-life significance to someone. The hands-on show celebrates the history of toys, from dollhouses to video games, proving that the somber brick museum in downtown Tacoma has a goofy side.

Pit Stop: Tiki trend, meet the speakeasy craze. Two timely bar styles merge behind an unmarked door in downtown Tacoma’s brand-new Devil’s Reef cocktail bar. It’s only fun to feel like a kid for so long.







Monte Cristo was a mining hub and then a tourist destination before its lodge burned down in 1983; now it’s a ghost town. Image: Ethan Welty / Tandem Stock

Ghost Town Resurrection

Drive time: 1 hr 30 mins

The old mining town of Monte Cristo, tucked into the Cascades off Mountain Loop Highway, was more recently haunted by something worse than spirits: toxic waste. A $5.5 million cleanup addressed the arsenic and lead in 2015, and now the townsite is again a favorite hiking destination, accessible on a flat eight-mile road hike along the North Fork Sauk River. A few buildings still stand, with mining equipment and rusted signs scattered about. This year the Forest Service began public meetings to ask about the future of Monte Cristo: More informational exhibits? More camping? A—gasp—reopened road to the historical site, inviting cars back to where the forest is reclaiming the onetime settlement? Plans will likely be sketched out in 2018, but until then the site is open to anyone able to make the hike. Though the cleanup was considered successful, the Forest Service does advise not drinking the water there, lest you be possessed by spirits of the toxic kind.

Pit Stop: The town of Granite Falls, the last real civilization before the winding Mountain Loop Highway leads to the Monte Cristo trailhead, offers limited dining. Luckily the only-in-a-small-town Barbecue Bucket dishes homestyle pulled pork and baby back ribs on a roomy patio.

Whatcom Museum

Bellingham • Drive time: 1 hr 30 mins

The shining treasures of the Jeweled Objects of Desire show at downtown Bellingham’s Whatcom Museum through May 6 range from a 7,000-carat quartz egg to a sardine can made of 14-karat gold studded with Russian diamonds. It’s amazing the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History loans them out, considering the exhibition just begs for a glitzy heist by a jewel thief.

Fortunately the Whatcom has plenty of space (and security) to show off the glitz: Its Lightcatcher building by Olson Kundig’s Jim Olson is basically a jeweled treasure all its own, thanks to a translucent 180-foot curved glass wall. The Lightcatcher serves as just half the museum; classic Old City Hall is a block away, a stately Victorian relic devoted to history exhibits. Admission is two for one, so if you plan to cat burgle, treat yourself in both buildings.

Pit Stop: Though the town has long been known for its beer—we love you, Boundary Bay—this year Bellingham Cider Company opened next to the Whatcom Museum to make a case for apple-based brews; the in-house restaurant goes a step beyond brewpub levels with a poached fennel starter and lamb bolognese on the dinner menu.

Kukutali Preserve

Skagit County • Drive time: 1 hr 20 mins

In between the day trip–worthy towns of western Skagit County—La Conner, Anacortes, Mount Vernon—and the tulip fields that define the rural region are little pockets of protected lands, lush nature at its Northwest best. Kukutali Preserve, the first swath of land co-managed by tribal and state parks authorities, is 83 acres of Swinomish Reservation waterfront with three islands and stretches of beach.

Named for the mats made of cattail that the original inhabitants used to build structures, Kukutali comprises lands that passed from reservation to private ownership to state control. It finally opened as a nature preserve in 2014, guarding the resident bald eagles, harbor seals, and more. Several miles of trail loop through the site, and the beaches are open to hikers.

Pit Stop: This close to La Conner, it’s an easy side trip to The Scone Lady Bakery for portable pastries. The homey desserts suit a town crammed with craft shops and quilt shows. 425-876-1608

Boeing Tour

Mukilteo • Drive time: 30 mins

Don’t plan to steal the secrets of the 777 while on the Boeing Tour, because no cameras, cell phones, or even pens and paper are allowed in this outing at Paine Field, just south of Everett. From the Future of Flight center, right on the runway, tour takers ride a bus to the massive factory; the 90-minute excursion can only cover a sliver of the biggest building ever constructed (it could fit Disneyland under its roof). Viewing stations are many stories above the factory line, and the complexities of airplane manufacturing can be tough to grasp in the maze of turbines and metal tubes.

Even if you don’t exit with the ability to assemble your own $250 million flyer, there’s something about the factory that makes giddy toddlers of us all. They’re making airplanes! As if they were Legos! This site constructs giant 747s and Dreamliner 787s, among others, and is currently making the first-ever 777x. New materials and methods have revolutionized air travel, so the factory floor has fewer rivets and more space-age carbon fiber; even the aluminum is coated in electric green polymer.

What rivets? Called the Dreamliner, Boeing’s 787 plane uses composite materials in place of more traditional metals. Image: Bob Ferguson / The Boeing Company

Make the tour into a full day with Paine Field’s other flight-based attractions, including Paul Allen’s Flying Heritage Collection and the Museum of Flight Restoration Center. Back at the Future of Flight center, the Strato roof deck offers views of the active Paine Field runways and the Dreamlifter unloading zone next door, where pieces of in-process airplane fit inside megajets like Russian nesting dolls—and cameras are allowed.

Pit Stop: A Future of Flight snack stand kills time before the next open tour, but why bother when the gift shop sells Astronaut Ice Cream?

McMenamins goes tropical in…Kalama?

Drive time: 2 hours

It’s okay if you haven’t heard of the town; it’s easy to speed past Kalama on a mad I-5 dash to Portland. But 35 miles north of the Oregon border, just over two hours by freeway from Seattle, the port town has changed little since the Nixon administration.

The fanciful hoteliers of McMenamins viewed an industrial roadside and saw potential; their 30-plus facilities across the Northwest are built in old schools, masonic temples, debtor’s farms, and brothels. In Kalama, named for Maui-born John Kalama, their imaginations ran even wilder than usual: a Hawaiian retreat on the working northwest waterfront, next to the town’s totem pole park. Kalama Harbor Lodge and its wraparound porch opens in April, modeled after a historic island hotel in a salute to cross-Pacific trade that dates back more than a century.

McMenamins loves a funky bar, and the lodge will boast one made of salvaged telegraph poles, another one on the roof, and one in a wood cabin down a path from the main building. Outdoor fire pits will do their best to recreate island warmth, and a seven-barrel brewing operation makes the chain’s signature beer. It’s certainly the only joint in town that can say its 40 hotel rooms boast private lanais. With just enough tiki cocktails, it all makes sense, so it’s best to plan on staying the night.

South Sound Coffee Trail

Olympia • Drive time: 1 hr 5 mins

Maybe the state capital has so many coffee roasters in order to keep the lawmakers from yawning through legislative sessions, or perhaps it’s a result of the waterfront town’s vibrant business district—pedestrians love a good cafe. Three java producers make up the self-guided South Sound Coffee Trail that links tastings (or “cuppings”) at Batdorf and Bronson, Olympia Coffee Roasting Company, and Olympic Crest Coffee Roasters. But the brew is everywhere here, from the uber artsy Burial Grounds—even the latte art is edgy—to the treats-first Hawley’s Gelato and Coffee. Olympia was once known for its beer, but it might be time for the coffee scene to adopt the famous “It’s the Water” slogan for its caffeinated brew.

Pit Stop: When the caffeine high wears off, a sugar rush is an acceptable substitute. The Bread Peddler’s French-style treats are more exciting than a mere loaf: custard-filled gateau basque, fruity bread pudding, and crepes beyond the sunny main dining room.

Bremerton’s Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, near the USS Turner Joy, dates back to 1891. Image: courtesy Jeremy Gonzalez / Spark Creative

USS Turner Joy

Bremerton • Drive time: 1 hour

Touch just about anything you can reach at the USS Turner Joy, docked next to the Bremerton ferry terminal; the navy may have strict codes of conduct but its museum ship is a wide-open playground. The self-guided tour is more like a loose maze through the cramped hallways and near-vertical stairs of the decommissioned naval destroyer. USS Turner Joy once carried roughly 300 sailors on nine deployments to the scattered battles of the Vietnam War; it took fire in the controversial Gulf of Tonkin incident that began the war, then fired the navy’s last rounds of the conflict in 1973.

John Kieft walked halls just like these from 1963 to 1967 as a fire control technician on a naval destroyer that’s since been scrapped. Now a volunteer docent on the Turner Joy, he explains to visitors that he used computers to target the ship’s guns, even way back then, hitting targets 10 or 12 miles into the Vietnam mainland. “Everywhere I look, I see the old stories in my head,” he says. “It’s familiar territory.”

Drink coffee in the mess hall or touch the thin mattresses that line berths crammed into seemingly every available corner of the ship. Docents like Kieft, most retired military, wander the halls to share stories of life on the 400-foot vessel. Nowhere else in Bremerton’s sprawling naval complex is military life so accessible to civilians, but for all the fun of being let loose on a navy warship, reminders of its sober purpose are around every corner. Number nine on a posted list of Ten Commandments of Damage Control: “Take every possible step to save the ship as long as a bit of hope remains.”