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Lewis County
LEWIS COUNTY encircles a lot of intrigue within its boundaries. Just south of Olympia, stretching from west of I-5 east to a coveted ground between the triangle of peaks—Mount Rainier, Mount St. Helens and Mount Adams, Lewis County is a rectangular recreational retreat dotted with small towns along its bisector, Route 12. Hiking, trail running and paddling are at a premium in this county, one third of which is blanketed in national forest. When we talk of Lewis County, we talk about the outdoor culture forged hiking in the Cascades, driving to scenic points
around Mount Rainier and running, hiking or biking the trails of Gifford Pinchot National Forest. Perhaps no place captures the outdoor spirit here more than the tiny town of Packwood, a gateway to adventure. Though home to only a few hundred people, Packwood makes most hikers’ lists for its Packwood Brewing Company, housed in a renovated 1933 building and known for its Cowlitz Kolsch and Tree Line IPA. Rustic cabins and The Packwood Lodge are good options for visitors. An hour northwest up Forest Road 84 deposits you at the base of the hike to one of
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America’s top Forest Service lookouts—High Rock Fire Lookout. A steep trail that climbs 1,300 feet in a mile and a half is a daring approach that adventurers regularly make to look out over Mount Rainier and the Tatoosh and Sawtooth ranges. To the east is Goat Rocks Wilderness. The Goat Rocks Wilderness section of the Pacific Crest Trail is unmatched for its raw beauty. Mountain goats and high alpine lakes are ubiquitous at the elevation ranges from 3.000 to 8,200 feet. If you’re traveling with kids, Grove of the Patriarchs, a 1.5-mile loop among old growth giant Douglas firs, hemlocks and cedars, is a must. Some of the most photographed features are the 30-foot diameter trees and the suspension footbridge across the Ohanapecosh River, one person at a time. On the western side of Lewis County is its charm in small towns. Centralia, Lewis County’s largest city with a population of nearly 18,000, has a classic historic core that recalls the inspiring life of its founder, George Washington, the son of a
slave and a woman of English descent. A pioneer and entrepreneur, Washington paid his adoptive parents $6,000 for the plot of land that is now Centralia. Today, Centralia is a thriving downtown with history and eateries. The Historic McMenamins Olympic Club, an opulent hotel, restaurant and bar, is part of any conversation about Centralia and its storied past of glitzy gamblers and nefarious “gentlemen” train robbers. The Olympic Club has retained those stories and its 1913 luster. Chehalis, a town of fewer than 8,000 people, brings its own entree to Lewis County’s recreational menu. The 56-mile Willapa Hills Rail to Trail biking path crosses old railroad trestles between Chehalis and west to Pe Ell and beyond. Farther south and just east of I-5 is Toledo, a gateway to Mount St. Helens and hectares of outdoor recreation. Take a kayak tour on the placid Cowlitz River or head into miles of hiking trails at Mount St. Helens. Refuel on your way out with a killer burger and milkshake at Toledo’s Americana icon, Mrs. Beesley’s Burgers.
Back in the Saddle photography by Grant Gunderson Around the Pacific Northwest and the rest of the country, the coronavirus brought us back to basics—and one of the basics we all remembered we loved was riding bikes. With sales of bicycles soaring, you may be wondering where to ride them. We’ve got a lot of Washington suggestions for you, from downhill mountain bike shredding to leisurely road rides to gravel grinders. (pg. 56)
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©Grant Gunderson Photography, Inc., All Rights Reserved
Biking the Cutthroat trail in Washington.
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56 Two-Wheeled Washington Are you one of the many who rediscovered the joys of bike riding when coronavirus shut down gyms and limited group fitness classes? We have the best spots to take your new wheels out for a spin, whether you’re looking for mountain biking, road riding or gravel grinding. written by Paul Letourneau
64 A New Take on an Old Classic Jeffrey Veregge is a member of the Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe and a rising star in the art world. Veregge’s take on classic superheroes, from Batman to the Star Wars crew, mixes in Native design for a fresh look. artwork by Jeffrey Veregge
50 How to Travel Abroad Without Leaving the Pacific Northwest
FEATURES DECEMBER | JANUARY 2020 • volume 23
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DECEMBER | JANUARY 2020
After quarantining for months, we’re betting that wanderlust has struck—and we’ve got the cure. If you can road trip safely, you can hit areas of Europe and Asia, all here in the Pacific Northwest. From Italian-inspired wineries to towns straight out of Europe guidebooks, we’ve got some truly romantic, international-inspired options. written by Kevin Max
Visit Seattle/Alabastro Photography
Satisfy wanderlust in Seattle’s ChinatownInternational District.
DEPARTMENTS DECEMBER | JANUARY 2020 • volume 23
LIVE 16 SAY WA?
Peruse our list of the twenty best Washington-based albums of 2020, then plot your course through the holidays with gift ideas and options for staying busy.
22 FOOD + DRINK
Perfect your home cocktail menu with BROVO Spirits, make a road trip for the best Reuben sandwiches in the state, and cozy up to the eclectic menu of Wooden City.
26 FARM TO TABLE
Clams are the order of the day for Westcott Bay Shellfish Co. on San Juan Island. Learn how to incorporate these slurpable delicacies into your own cooking, too.
30 HOME + DESIGN
We spend an awful lot of time in the kitchen. If yours is looking a little worn, check out these two kitchen updates that honored the history of the homes without giving up function. Mutuus Studio
36 MIND + BODY
30
When coronavirus derailed Darhian Mills’ final track season, she took a step back, then started training again—with the same goals in mind.
38 ARTIST IN RESIDENCE
Miguel Maltos Gonzales depicts his bicultural life in his multimedia art— photographing and drawing in an effort to help others understand his experiences.
THINK 42 STARTUP
Wrench wants to make your car maintenance a simple, painless experience with its mobile mechanics.
44 WHAT’S GOING UP
Washington’s park facilities continue to make improvements and expansions in an effort to help locals get outdoors.
Sisters Area Chamber of Commerce
45 WHAT I’M WORKING ON
Your ferry ride is about to get a lot more green, thanks to the state’s plan to implement battery power in its fleet.
46 MY WORKSPACE
Lisa Holtby spreads joy and peace, one organized closet, desk and kid space at a time.
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Editor’s Letter 1889 Online Map of Washington Until Next Time
48 GAME CHANGER
Bayside Housing & Services has taken a worn-out hotel and made it new again, giving life to the business and to people in need of a place to call home.
EXPLORE 74 TRAVEL SPOTLIGHT
Roche Harbor Resort is hidden in the north end of San Juan Island, blending history and tradition with great hospitality.
76 ADVENTURE
Think you’re too old (or out of shape) for a bike adventure? Grab an electric bike and get moving again.
78 LODGING
Hotel Indigo in Spokane ups the charm factor for downtown Spokane.
80 TRIP PLANNER COVER
photo by James Harnois Leavenworth (see How to Travel Abroad Without Leaving the Pacific Northwest, pg. 50)
Try the Tri-Cities, and you’ll find a remarkable blend of wine, history and up-andcoming dining.
84 NORTHWEST DESTINATION
Sweet little Sisters in Central Oregon combines a Western theme with a depth of outdoor options and fantastic restaurants.
DECEMBER | JANUARY 2020
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CONTRIBUTORS
CARA STRICKLAND Writer Gastronomy
GRANT GUNDERSON Photographer Two-Wheeled Washington
CORINNE WHITING Writer Farm to Table
ELLEN SURREY Illustrator Startup
I’ve been following BROVO Spirits for the past few years, but with more time on my hands in lockdown, I finally got around to playing with some of the company’s incredible cocktail ingredients. I’ve gotten the hang of martinis and Manhattans made just the way I like them— rather than how a bartender wants to make them—over the last months, but these vermouths make the experience even more customizable. (pg. 24)
Being born and raised in Washington, it’s easy to take for granted the amazing recreation access we have right out the front door. Traveling the globe the last twenty years to produce ski and bike imagery, I have been constantly reminded that we really do live in the best part of the world. So anytime I am fortunate enough to be able to work at home in Bellingham or the nearby North Cascades, I know I am going to get some amazing images, whether it’s skiing or biking. (pg. 56)
This was the perfect pandemicera assignment to allow me to engage in some (safe) local travel and connect with welcoming, passionate business owners in their scenic, alfresco spaces. It also felt fitting to learn more about harvesting clams, a process that requires great patience and relies entirely on the cycle of the tides—something over which we have zero control yet can consistently rely on season after season, year after year. (pg. 26)
The car culture in the Western United States is substantial. In the last few years I’ve gotten to know these enthusiasts more intimately through my boyfriend, a mechanic and lover of older vehicles. For the piece on Wrench, I was able to draw on my personal experience, making it much easier to work out the concept. And it didn’t hurt having a mechanic on hand to ask a few questions. (pg. 42)
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DECEMBER | JANUARY 2020
EDITOR Kevin Max
MANAGING EDITOR Sheila G. Miller CREATIVE DIRECTOR Allison Bye
WEB MANAGER
OFFICE MANAGER
DIRECTOR OF SALES
SALES ASSISTANT
BEERVANA COLUMNIST
Aaron Opsahl Cindy Miskowiec Jenny Kamprath Elijah Aikens Jackie Dodd
CONTRIBUTING WRITERS
Melissa Dalton, Paul Letourneau, Liam McCann, Ben Salmon, Cara Strickland, Corinne Whiting
CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS
Jackie Dodd, Grant Gunderson, James Harnois, Aaron Theisen
CONTRIBUTING ARTISTS
Ellen Surrey, Jeffrey Veregge
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All rights reserved. No part of this publiCation may be reproduCed or transmitted in any form or by any means, eleCtroniCally or meChaniCally, inCluding photoCopy, reCording or any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of Statehood Media. ArtiCles and photographs appearing in 1889 Washington’s Magazine may not be reproduCed in whole or in part without the express written Consent of the publisher. 1889 Washington’s Magazine and Statehood Media are not responsible for the return of unsoliCited materials. The views and opinions expressed in these artiCles are not neCessarily those of 1889 Washington’s Magazine, Statehood Media or its employees, staff or management.
DECEMBER | JANUARY 2020
1889 WASHINGTON’S MAGAZINE 11
THIS WAS AN extraordinary year—one which many of us would rather forget and move past. To that end, this issue is full of recreation and places that will strip 2020 from your mind and put you in a different— better—place. In a sweeping feature, we identify and reveal twelve places in the Pacific Northwest where you will feel like you’ve traveled abroad. France, Italy, Germany, China and Scotland are all within a drive if you know where to go. Turn to pg. 50 and, when safe to travel locally, try some of these foreign proxies. One thing that COVID-19 hasn’t killed yet is the great outdoors. With public transportation restricted and fitness centers closed, Americans bought bikes at levels rarely seen before. Now what? In two separate pieces we look at the best bike trails across the state (pg. 56) and the advent of e-bikes and how that can change the lives of non-traditional cyclists (pg. 76). Just to feel a little better about the direction of the world, we caught up with Matt von Ruden, the director of Washington State Ferries. In October, the huge transportation department will begin converting its vessels to hybrid electric power, add new hybrids to the fleet and reduce gas consumption by 10 million gallons per year. That’s a breath of fresh air. (What I’m Working On, pg. 45) What the world needs now is new superheroes. Jeffrey Veregge, a member of the Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe, is a widely acclaimed artist who has created more than 100 covers for Marvel and Darkhorse Comics, among others, and brings a refreshing take on classic superheroes with his Salish formline style. Turn to pg. 64 to see Veregge’s Native update to monochromatic superheroes. Music is the best form of escape. It’s convenient to put it in your ears and mind and retreat to that place. Our masterful
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DECEMBER | JANUARY 2020
Jenn Redd
FROM THE EDITOR
music writer, Ben Salmon, culls his top twenty Washington albums of the year to save you hours of vetting and introduce some new musicians that you will follow well into the new year. Happy New Year!
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Looking up the 135-step staircase in the Grays Harbor Lighthouse in Westport. The lighthouse has been in operation since 1898 and, at 107 feet tall, is the tallest in Washington.
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SAY WA? 16 FOOD + DRINK 22 FARM TO TABLE 26 HOME + DESIGN 30 MIND + BODY 36
pg. 22 Logan Brewing, in Burien, opened its doors in the midst of the pandemic.
Jackie Dodd
ARTIST IN RESIDENCE 38
Check In, Get Rewards! Find safe and fun places to recreate in across beautiful Washington State. ADVENTURES.EXPERIENCEWA.COM
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say wa?
Tidbits + To-dos
Mack Provisions
Numerica SkyRide
If you have a baseball lover in your family, Mack Provisions makes delightful wallets, key chains and other swag from old mitts. There are readyto-ship options, or you can pick which glove is used to create your new treasure. Most of the gloves date from the 1930s through the 1970s.
Get up close and personal with Spokane Falls at Riverfront Park’s Numerica SkyRide. Climb aboard a cable car and whisk past City Hall, dropping 200 feet over the Huntington Park Natural Area, across the river and in front of the falls. Then travel under a bridge and head back to Riverfront Park. Don’t bring cash, though—during COVID-19, the ride is accepting cards only.
www.mackprovisions.com
www.my.spokanecity.org/riverfrontspokane/attractions/skyride
CAmark y LEN our DA R Periodic: A Pop-Up Shop Looking for a gift that’s truly special? Try Periodic: A Pop-Up Shop in Seattle, which has a constantly changing roster of global and local PNW brands. Through December, the shop will feature 4Twenty4, a Portland Black-owned online clothing store featuring styles for all sizes. www.periodicshop.com www.4twenty4.co
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say wa?
New Holiday Traditions A lot has changed in 2020, but one thing that hasn’t changed is that Washington is full of outdoor opportunities, no matter the season. Grab your family and try a new outdoor endeavor perfect for social distancing—Nordic or downhill skiing or snowshoeing will open up new possibilities for your winters.
Spruce Supply Co. If gift-giving season has snuck up on you, look to Spruce Supply Co., a Washingtonbased company that seeks out local, Pacific Northwest makers and curates their wares into adorable gift sets. You’ll find something for everyone on your list—and you’ll support local businesses at the same time. www.sprucesupplyco.com
Virtual museum events As coronavirus lingers, our museums are finding new ways to deliver content, either in person or virtually. For example, the Museum of Pop Culture is offering a virtual movie series through December, featuring coming-of-age tales. Or get a group together and try a virtual field trip with the Pacific Science Center—they’re designed for groups of up to fifty and cover a range of cool topics.
CA mar LE k yo ND ur AR
www.mopop.org www.pacificsciencecenter.org
DECEMBER | JANUARY 2020
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say wa?
written by Ben Salmon
THE COVID-19 pandemic may have halted live shows, but it didn’t stop Washington artists from recording and releasing terrific music. Here are twenty albums released by Washingtonians in 2020 that you should hear.
BEST OF
2020 Bell Witch and Aerial Ruin Seattle/Portland Stygian Bough, Volume I
Blimes and Gab Seattle / San Francisco Talk About It
Don’t let the heavy metal cover art scare you: Stygian Bough, Volume I is not loud or fast, or even particularly metal. But its vibe is unmistakably heavy. That’s the beauty of this collaboration between Seattle doom giants Bell Witch and Portland gloom-folk artist Aerial Ruin, who together conjure a sound that seamlessly fuses their respective styles. The songs here are long—two stretch past nineteen minutes—and painstakingly slow, as the trio explores the deep and dimly lit caverns between life and death. The sonic pictures they paint along the way are intensely funereal and breathtakingly beautiful.
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We are in a golden era of female rappers, with big stars like Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion racing up the pop charts and rock-solid MCs such as Rico Nasty, Rapsody and Little Simz not far behind. Meanwhile, the best Seattle-connected hip-hop album of 2020 is by two women wellestablished on the West Coast: Seattle spitter Gifted Gab and Bay Area battle rapper Blimes Brixton. Together, they pack a serious punch, firing off a steady stream of sturdy and clever rhymes against funky throwback beats. Best of all, Blimes and Gab are both blessed with big personalities that simply radiate from these tracks.
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Fleet Foxes Seattle Shore Fleet Foxes’ core creative force, Robin Pecknold, was arguably Seattle’s musician of the 21st century’s first two decades, with two all-time classics (2008’s self-titled and 2011’s Helplessness Blues) and an excellent third album (2017’s Crack-Up) anchoring the band’s catalog of wondrous, harmony-rich indie-folk. Where CrackUp was anxious, adventurous and challenging, Shore is like an hour-long sigh under an evening sun: relaxed, hopeful and effortlessly beautiful. It’s a perfect antidote for a difficult year and just the latest reminder that Pecknold is one of greatest songwriters on the planet.
say wa?
Jostaberry Bellingham Greener Grass Say hello to this list’s wild card, a genuinely strange but enjoyable album made by a previously littleknown artist with a funny name (it’s apparently pronounced “yostaberry”) from the northern edge of the state. Here’s the thing: Greener Grass is different. It’s weird, yes, but it also feels free and unfettered, as a one-man band (real name unknown) seemingly snatches his ideas about off-kilter rock and avant-pop out of the air and captures them in their purest form. Those ideas include unpredictable song structures, unconventional melodies, unexpected rhythmic shifts and dissonant sounds. Somehow, they all work, as long as your mind is wide open.
Rob Joynes Seattle and Spokane Back Forty
KO Solo Seattle Homeland
Parisalexa Seattle 2 Real
For years, saxophonist Kate Olson has been one of the busiest and most experimental jazz players in Seattle. She leads her own projects (KO Electric, KO Ensemble), collaborates with others in Syrinx Effect and Wayne Horvitz’s Electric Circus and is a well-known improviser and educator with a bunch of irons in the fire at all times. In 2019, one of those irons was Homeland, a work composed for a performance by the Catapult Dance group and performed entirely by Olson using live instruments and electronic elements. Even without the accompanying choreography, Olson’s music is daring, bold, exploratory and engrossing.
Thirty years ago, Seattle had more than its share of next-bigthing grunge and alt-rock bands. The same is true now, but about hip-hop, soul and R&B artists. For the past couple of years, the scene’s brightest star has been Parisalexa, an up-andcoming mega-talent who set the city on fire with her two excellent debut EPs in 2018. Her first fulllength followup, 2 Real, delivers on that promise with ten tracks of sleek, ultra-modern R&B that’s silky smooth and spilling over with swagger. Like stylistic forebear Dawn Richard, Parisalexa expertly blurs the lines between soul, pop and hip-hop and comes out sounding like a transmission from the future.
Nobi Tri-Cities Fulminate
Rob Joynes was the singer and frontman in a couple of Seattle bands, but his first official solo album, Back Forty, is “a whisper from (his) heart, buried somewhere in northern Spokane,” according to the website of his record label, Lovers Weekend. That’s appropriate, given the album’s wandering, woozy character, which more or less splits the difference between the ambient-flecked indierock that permeates the state’s biggest city and the somber folk songs you might hear in a small-town coffeehouse. Joynes is a patient and skilled songwriter whose tunes are deeply personal, modestly catchy and curiously addictive.
Supercrush Seattle SODO Pop
Long ago, hip-hop left the city and moved into the suburbs, small towns and rural areas of America, where it has dominated kids’ listening habits for decades now. That’s why rappers like Nobi come out of places like the Tri-Cities with everything they need—rhymes, flow, vision, savvy—to make a splash and a play for a wider audience. On the consistently terrific Fulminate, the young MC deftly uses his versatile voice as a melodic instrument and storytelling device (a la Kendrick Lamar) as he efficiently delivers thoughtful, socially astute raps over dope, often jazzy beats. The result is one of the best hip-hop debuts of the year.
What happens when a handful of musicians who came up in the punk and metal scene decide to chill out a bit, turn down the amps and focus on earworm melodies and honeyed vocal harmonies? In the case of Seattle’s Supercrush, they become one of the best up-and-coming power-pop bands around. After four pitch-perfect 7-inch singles over the past several years, Supercrush’s first full-length delivers ten tracks of gloriously fuzzedout, candy-colored pop-rock that follows in the tradition of hook-happy heroes like Teenage Fanclub and Sloan. This SODO Pop should satisfy any sweet tooth.
11 MORE LOCAL ALBUMS TO LISTEN TO Deep Sea Diver | Impossible Weight
Kassa Overall | I Think I’m Good
Western Centuries | Call the Captain
Gen Pop | PPM66
Polyrhythmics | Man from the Future
Lamp of Murmuur | Heir of Ecliptical Romanticism
The Microphones | Microphones in 2020 Clemm Rishad | To Whom It May Concern Tomo Nakayama | Melonday
Smokey Brights | I Love You But Damn
Perfume Genius | Set My Heart on Fire Immediately
DECEMBER | JANUARY 2020
1889 WASHINGTON’S MAGAZINE 19
say wa?
Bibliophile
Humor and Grit Tiffany Midge’s book was a finalist for a Washington Book Award interview by Sheila G. Miller
TIFFANY MIDGE HAS a lot to say. That seems to take some people by surprise. The award-winning writer is a citizen of the Standing Rock Sioux Nation who grew up in Washington. Midge’s razor-sharp, witty writing points out little-noticed hypocrisies and inequities in daily society, and brings a Native American point of view to media, pop culture and politics, an approach we rarely see in mainstream media. Her newest book, Bury My Heart at Chuck E. Cheese’s, was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award’s best creative nonfiction title, and was selected for the Spokane Is Reading list. This collection of pieces is so diverse. How did you pull it all together? The shorter pieces were columns that I had written for Indian Country Today (a national publication that recently changed to a digital format). The longer pieces, some of them, were ones that had been lingering around on my hard drive, some for ten or more years. The great thing about some of these university presses is that they take risks insofar as how books are put together. I don’t think a commercial publisher would have been on board with the variety—the irreverence, the bizarre sort of satire. Yours is not a common voice in mainstream media. It certainly does seem like there’s one narrative that is applied to Native Americans, particularly in publishing. It’s always fun to make fun of that. But we’re having a little excitement right now, movies and television and marketing is really catching on with Native stories. Today I opened an article and it 20 1889 WASHINGTON’S MAGAZINE
Tiffany Midge’s collection, Bury My Heart at Chuck E. Cheese’s, is funny and insightful.
was Oprah’s 31 best Native American writers. It’s sort of like we’re having a moment here. It seems like the main narrative is trauma. I make fun of the trauma aspect of it, but I don’t make fun of trauma. I do poke fun at the idea of that being the one thing about us. As to why that is, a lot of it is people have a lot to learn because of our history books, and what we were taught in our schools. Your writing really calls people out—it can be cutting and frank. Satire is supposed to do that, in a sense. It’s supposed to pick apart those sorts of things. There’s a columnist for The Washington Post, Alexandra Petra, and she’s absolutely brilliant. She has two book contracts for the same stuff I write about, sort of interrogating America, the history of America—finding its inconsistencies and drawing them out. I just think it’s interesting that it’s OK for a white woman from Washington, D.C., to satire and poke fun. From
DECEMBER | JANUARY 2020
a Native American, for a person of color to do that, there’s this added weight—there’s added confrontation and guilt attached for some readers to feel defensive. One of my pieces (“An Open Letter to White Women Concerning A Handmaid’s Tale and America’s Historical Amnesia”) got so much flak. There was a huge pushback—people felt very defensive. They obviously didn’t get the joke. What’s next for you? I’m going to be doing an audio version of my book, so I’m trying to gear up for reading it out loud. It feels like such a huge project—that’s going to be coming out sometime with the paperback version of the book. I have a book of poetry under contract through a small boutique press in Spokane run by Sharma Shields called Scablands Books. That book of poetry will be very comical and irreverent. And then I won this fellowship in Montana, the Eliza So Fellowship (which supports Native American writers’ book projects with a monthlong residency in Missoula).
everyone needs a remote-workcation
So why not come work here in Seaside? Just book a house or hotel with Wi-Fi and it’ll be like you’re working from home. Except you won’t be at home. You’ll be here. Then when you have a coffee break, or lunch break, or the work day is done you can go for a bike ride, or hop into a kayak, or fly a kite, or walk the Promenade, or just stroll along the miles of easy-to-socially-distance beach with incredible views and gorgeous sunsets.
seasideOR.com
seaside_1889_8.25x5.06_remote_workcation_coronavirus.indd 1
11/10/20 9:34 PM
food + drink
Cocktail Card recipe courtesy of Roquette Cocktails & Spirits, Seattle
Normandy Old Fashioned • 1½ ounces Calvados (Domaine du Manoir de Montreuil Réserve) • 1½ ounces American Apple Brandy • ¼ ounce rich simple syrup • 2 dashes Angostura bitters • 1 dash orange bitters • 1 dash pimento bitters Stir all of the ingredients with ice to chill, strain into an Old Fashioned glass over a large ice cube, then garnish with an orange twist and cherry. FOR RICH SIMPLE SYRUP • 2 cups granulated sugar • 1 cup water Combine sugar and water in a small saucepan over medium heat and stir until sugar dissolves. Remove the mixture from heat and let it cool to room temperature. Cover and keep refrigerated for up to 2 weeks.
22 1889 WASHINGTON’S MAGAZINE
FROM LEFT Owner Chris Palumbo named Logan Brewing for his brother. Logan Brewing opened in the midst of the pandemic.
Beervana
Brewery Opens Amid the Pandemic written and photographed by Jackie Dodd OPENING A BREWERY in the best of times is chaotic and stressful, but opening one in the middle of a global pandemic and national recession could give even the most seasoned business owner night terrors. Despite the challenges he’s faced opening Logan Brewing in August 2020, as well as the ones he’s still wading through, owner Chris Palumbo is all smiles. “I never expected, in pandemic times, for people to show up,” he said. “But they did.” It’s a brewery that began to form more than three years ago with the help of brewmaster Michael Woodruff, a UC-Davis graduate with a degree in fermentation science, and general manager Claire Conroy. Logan Brewing was originally slated to open in February 2020, a full year after the team moved into a space in a mixed-use building in Burien and turned an empty shell into a beautiful craft brewery and taproom. Construction issues pushed the projected opening date to early April, an ill-fated event that wouldn’t happen, at least not then. “With just a few weeks’ worth of work left, my construction team stopped,” Palumbo said. With a construction crew that no longer felt safe working on-site, a customer base unable to leave the house as the shelter-inplace orders hit, bars and restaurants ordered to close in-house service, and the bills mounting, the team pushed forward. There was no backup plan—this had to work. Over the next four months, Palumbo, Woodruff and Conroy pulled together to DECEMBER | JANUARY 2020
complete unfinished projects, add the necessary COVID-19 safety measures, and rework the dwindling budget. “We just had to scale back on almost everything,” Palumbo said. That meant buying used brewery equipment, tables and chairs, pushing back plans for the space and doing most of the finish work themselves, but they were able to survive an uncertain summer and open just before the chill of fall set in. The three partners haven’t taken a wage, surviving on the tips they make during bartending shifts and living together in the same house. The one thing they don’t cut corners on is the beer. The ever-changing tap list includes a fresh hop IPA, a few hazies, a Märzen, a red ale, a Baltic porter, and even a CDA made with coffee that’s quickly becoming a customer favorite. It’s running more smoothly than anyone could have hoped for during a time no one could have planned for. Palumbo even plans to follow through on his promise to donate to a mental health organization every year in honor of his late brother. Palumbo’s brother, Logan, the brewery’s namesake, died by suicide at just 25 years old. “I’ll donate this year,” he said. “It’ll just be a smaller donation than I had planned.” Logan’s picture hangs on the wall, framed in gold. The gamer theme carried throughout the brewery is a nod to Logan’s love of gaming, and the beer brewed in his honor is fantastic. Logan lives on in the legacy being created in his name on a charming street in Burien.
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food + drink
CRAVINGS
BROVO Spirits helps you elevate your home cocktail game.
PASTRIES If you’re in search of a pastry, look no farther than the beautifully crafted selection at Breadfarm in the artistic and delicious center of Bow/Edison. You’ll find classic morning fare like the croissant, pain au chocolat and seasonal fruit danishes, as well as special offerings like a Bakewell tart or something called a snack cake (sign us up). 5766 CAINS COURT BOW www.breadfarm.com
TACOS At Gracia, start with housemade corn tortillas, then top with carne asada, bacon, chorizo and roasted pork (campechanos) or applewood grilled chicken, avocado and corn salsa (pollo asado). If those aren’t enough, there’s more to choose from, along with a curated list of agave spirits so you can find the perfect pairing. 5313 BALLARD AVE. NW SEATTLE www.graciaseattle.com
Gastronomy
BROVO Spirits written by Cara Strickland ALTHOUGH THE NAME may sound masculine, it was a woman, Mhairi Voelsgen, who started BROVO in 2011 with the intention of making “real products from real ingredients grown by real farmers.” She and her team started with a line of liqueurs intended to highlight Washington state botanicals (Douglas Fir, Mexican chocolate, ginger and rose geranium). From there, they worked with bartenders around the country to create a series of amari. So far, BROVO has partnered with twenty-four bartenders from Boston, New York, San Francisco, Atlanta, Chicago and Seattle. Based on the favorable response to the liqueurs and amari, BROVO began a line of vermouths, then Boomerang (a spiced cherry liqueur BROVO partnered with Micah Melton of The Aviary to create) and Lucky Falernum, a spiced rum liqueur. The awards have been rolling in. To date, BROVO has won more than forty medals from a variety of organizations and received a nomination for the prestigious James Beard Awards in 2019. Mix up a cocktail for yourself and see what all the fuss is about. WOODINVILLE www.brovospirits.com
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TASTING MENU The doors to Mana only open once a night on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, but it’s worth it to experience the artistry of a creative culinary team in action, using beautiful, seasonal ingredients. Try a wine or non-alcoholic elixir pairing and spend a few hours in a relaxed, luxurious oasis. 1033 COMMERCIAL ST. LEAVENWORTH www.manamountain.com
GRILLED ARTICHOKE Artichokes were made for the grill— pair Cowiche Canyon Kitchen + Icehouse’s smoky, buttery appetizer with housemade aioli and you’ll discover what makes it so craveable. 202 E. YAKIMA AVE. YAKIMA www.cowichecanyon.com
food + drink
BEST PLACES FOR A
REUBEN SANDWICH THE TAV Maybe you wouldn’t expect a standout Reuben sandwich at a tavern in Ellensburg, but we have it on good authority that this one is well worth the stop. Who knows, it just might become your new road trip destination. 117 W. 4TH AVE. ELLENSBURG www.facebook.com
PUBLIC HOUSE 124 A friend of ours calls this Reuben “life-changing.” With special touches like spicy blue cheese remoulade, it’s a wonder we aren’t there right now. 124 E. MAIN ST. WALLA WALLA www.ph124.com
SIRENS PUB If you’re craving a Reuben but want to mix it up a bit, Sirens’ Cape Cod Reuben might be for you. Enjoy the sandwich’s beer-battered cod with fresh cabbage and cajun tartar, all with a view of the water. 823 WATER ST. PORT TOWNSEND www.sirenspub.com
THE ELK Housemade brisket and classic kraut and dressing make this sandwich a Reuben, but the execution makes it a standout. You get a choice of sides, but we suggest the spicy corn pasta salad—the serving will be generous, but never enough. 1931 W. PACIFIC AVE. SPOKANE www.wedonthaveone.com
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP Wooden City Spokane opened this year. Beet ravioli is on the menu, as are decadent burgers.
Dining
Wooden City written by Cara Strickland RESTAURANT INDUSTRY VETERANS Jon Green and Abe Fox met in Seattle a little over four years ago. They hatched an idea for a place that would offer a big-city quality of food and experience somewhere smaller—Fox had recently moved to Tacoma and fell in love with the area. He and Green were excited to create food they loved to eat and a place they wanted to be regulars. Tacoma embraced their eclectic menu—the salmon toast, Hungarian wax peppers and beet ravioli paired with burgers, roasted chicken and fresh pasta keep people coming back. They’d been planning to expand to another up-and-coming area—Spokane—and the coronavirus didn’t stop their 2020 opening. At each of the restaurants, you’ll find a classy, comfortable interior, well-made food, handcrafted cocktails and stellar service. You just might become a regular, too. 714 PACIFIC AVENUE, TACOMA 821 WEST RIVERSIDE AVENUE, SPOKANE www.woodencitytacoma.com www.woodencityspokane.com
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farm to table
Farm to Table
Coveting Clams
Slurp the season’s best from a revived San Juan farm and new Issaquah eatery THERE’S NO DENYING San Juan Island is touched by something special, and visiting Westcott Bay Shellfish Co. merely elevates the experience. On this family-owned aquaculture farm, a hardworking team sells clams, oysters and mussels raised on their tranquil tidelands. Since 1978, shellfish have been farmed here, and the story of its current owners—Andrea and Erik Anderson—is a winding, charmed tale. The couple visited the farm to purchase oysters for more than thirty years while spending summers on Henry Island. They started dating during freshman year at the University of Washington and often joked they’d love to work at the oyster farm. Fast forward several decades, when they boomeranged back to Henry Island to build a home. When they learned the farm property was being put up for sale as a home site, they decided to buy the land. “We realized the farm would forever be gone,” Anderson said, “so Erik and I looked at one another and said, ‘How hard can this be?’ In September 2013, we signed the purchase papers for the land (the farm was long gone and hadn’t been planted with shellfish for at least a decade), and started learning everything we could about farming oysters, clams and mussels.” Over the next four years, they worked tirelessly to restore the property, wanting to honor its community legacy and carry on a philosophy of environmental stewardship. While scrambling to figure things out, they cherished early guidance from Frank Raue and Mark Billington, who worked at the former shellfish farm for nearly thirty years. “The only paid employees in those early days were Frank and Mark,” Anderson said, “but any family or friends who visited would be put to work mending old nets or planting and harvesting shellfish in exchange for oysters, clams, mussels and a day of fun and camaraderie.” “Clams are the easiest of our shellfish to grow,” Anderson explained, “as we don’t have to do anything during their threeyear growth until they are ready to harvest.” The harvesting, however, proves incredibly labor intensive. Workers must get down in the mud to dig by hand, later lugging 50-plus-pound totes back to the dock, where the harvested clams are sorted and cleaned. They are then placed in upper tanks, as water from the bay is continuously pumped in to purge any remaining mud and sand. Anderson explained that shellfish are flavored by the environment in which they grow. “Westcott Bay has a unique mix of algae and salinity,” she said, “influenced by a fresh-water stream at the top of the farm and a big tidal flush from Haro 26 1889 WASHINGTON’S MAGAZINE
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Photos: Westcott Bay Shellfish Co.; top left: Caroline Mulloy
written by Corinne Whiting
Strait that creates a flavorful, briny clam. We grow Manila clams, which are plump and bursting with flavor.” Clam harvesting is entirely dependent on the tide cycle. During summer months, the low tides happen during daylight hours; during winter, low tides occur late at night. Because of this, Anderson said, “Once the weather turns too cold and difficult, we stop going out in headlamps to harvest, which is why we don’t sell clams during winter months.” Although their bustling al fresco restaurant—The Tide Tables—is open from Memorial Day through Labor Day, retail sales of most shellfish continue throughout the off season
farm to table
“We now employ twenty-two people—the majority of whom have grown up and lived on San Juan Island their entire lives. Our Westcott crew consists of a family of extremely hardworking, creative souls who strongly believe in community and stewardship of our natural resources.” — Andrea Anderson, co-owner of Westcott Bay Shellfish Co.
(Fridays and Saturdays; pre-orders are encouraged.) Fresh clams return in late spring. Anderson admits it has been surprising to watch the farm evolve into a coveted destination. They estimate at least 10,000 people visit the farm each summer month. The biggest reward is the incredible team, she said. “We now employ twenty-two people—the majority of whom have grown up and lived on San Juan Island their entire lives. Our Westcott crew consists of a family of extremely hard-working, creative souls who strongly believe in community and stewardship of our natural resources.”
Anderson’s favorite way to enjoy clams? “Our Manila clams are packed with a briny flavor, so they don’t need much help,” she said. “But you can never go wrong with steaming them in a little sautéed garlic and onions in olive oil and white wine, topped off with freshly squeezed lemon and parsley once they open.” On the mainland, diners enjoy clams at Enzo’s Bistro & Bar in Issaquah, where chef Nick Novello brings his grandmother’s recipes to life. Growing up in an Italian-American household, clams were simply part of the routine. “I had no idea other kids thought these were icky,” Novello said, “until I went to dinner with a friend’s family and ordered the bucket of clams appetizer as my entrée. I was 11.” When it comes to selection, Novello advised tossing uncooked clams that appear open. When cooking, you can try to assist the opening process with a gentle pry. “If [the shells] are still locked closed,” he said, “stop, toss it. Chances are, it’s full of sand.” “Clams are fun for the whole family,” Novello said. “I encourage clam digging, as it’s a blast.” His preferred way to enjoy the local delicacy: “I’m a slurp-from-shell guy,” he said, “I get the most clams in my mouth per minute that way.” Novello sources from Penn Cove Shellfish. Clams are out of the water no longer than twelve hours before landing in his kitchen. “Why would you not use the best,” he asked, “when it’s located right here in Washington?” CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT Westcott Bay Shellfish Co. was revitalized by the Andersons in 2013. Harvesting clams means digging in the mud. Westcott’s Manila clams have a briny flavor. Erik and Andrea Anderson visited the farm for decades before purchasing it.
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farm to table
Washington Recipes
Clams with Roasted Butternut Squash, Leeks and Spiced Yogurt Friday Harbor House / FRIDAY HARBOR Jason Aldous
Classic Clams
SERVES 4
Silence of the Clams Clam Chowder
Woodblock / REDMOND Heather Hilt SERVES 4 • 4 stalks celery, chopped small • 1 bunch leeks (white only), chopped small • ½ yellow onion, chopped small • 1 tablespoon garlic, chopped • 6 ounces butter • 6 ounces flour • 1 quart milk • 2 cups heavy cream • 8 ounces clam juice • 10-ounce can chopped clams • 1 teaspoon red chili flakes • 1 bay leaf • ½ lemon, juiced and zested • 1½ teaspoons fresh thyme • 1 tablespoon salt • 2 teaspoons pepper
Clam Linguini
Enzo’s Bistro & Bar / ISSAQUAH Nick Novello SERVES 4 • 3 tablespoons canola oil • 1 pound fresh Manila clams • 1 tablespoon fresh garlic, peeled and finely chopped • 1 tablespoon shallots, peeled and finely chopped • ¼ cup white wine • ⅓ cup clam stock • 1 teaspoon, kosher salt • ¼ bunch Italian parsley, chopped • ¼ stick unsalted butter • 6 ounces fresh linguini
OPTIONAL • 2 tablespoons butter • 2 tablespoons oil • ¼ cup white wine • 1 pound whole clams Melt butter in a pot over medium heat. Add all the vegetables and sweat them out. Add chili flakes, thyme and bay leaf and cook for 2 minutes. Add flour and make roux, then cook for 2 minutes. Add lemon juice, clams and juice, milk and cream. Bring to a boil, stirring occasionally. Season with salt and pepper. Optional addition: In a separate pot, heat the butter and oil on medium-high heat. Toss in the whole clams and white wine, then cover the pot with a lid. Give them 4 to 5 minutes to open, then remove the lid and cook off the wine for 1 more minute. Add to your clam chowder base.
Heat sauté pan with oil. Once oil is smoking, add clams and cover pan. Add garlic and shallot to top of the shells as the pan is really hot and you’ll have lots of sizzling. Cover quickly—the steam from the clam shells will keep your garlic from burning. After a minute and once you hear action in the covered pan, add white wine. Let the wine dissipate and then add clam stock. Finish with salt, parsley and butter. Heat and toss pasta, then plate shells on top of the dish and add the remainder sauce left in the pan.
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• 1 pound clams • ½ cup white wine • 1 butternut squash, about 3 pounds • 1 tablespoon neutral oil, like grapeseed or canola • ½ teaspoon Kosher salt • 2 leeks • 1 teaspoon neutral oil • ¼ cup pumpkin seeds or almonds • ¾ cup plain Greek yogurt • ¼ teaspoon Kosher salt • ½ teaspoon Ras El Hanout (Moroccan spice blend) If unavailable, use a pinch each of as many of these as you have: cumin, cardamom, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, coriander, anise or fennel seed, clove, turmeric, allspice, cayenne • 1 tablespoon honey • Sprigs of fresh thyme, stems removed • Sprigs of fresh oregano, stems removed Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Rinse the clams with cold water and discard any that are open, and do not attempt to close when nudged. Place the clams in a bowl covered with ice water and a pinch of chili flakes or a few dashes of hot sauce. Keep them in the spiced water for about 30 minutes to remove any sand they may be holding onto, then discard the water and rinse one more time. Cut the butternut squash in half lengthwise and scoop out seeds with a spoon. Cut the squash into 2-inch wide strips and toss them with 1 tablespoon oil and ½ teaspoon Kosher salt. Place them skin-side down on a baking sheet and roast until very soft and starting to brown, about 30 minutes. Remove dark green tops and roots from the leeks. Rinse leeks thoroughly and between layers near the top. Toss with 1 teaspoon oil, wrap in foil and place in a 400-degree oven until soft, about 25 minutes. Lightly toast the pumpkin seeds or almonds in the 400-degree oven for 3 to 5 minutes until lightly browned. Sprinkle with a pinch of salt while still hot, unless they have been preroasted and salted. Place ¾ cup Greek yogurt in a bowl and stir in ¼ teaspoon salt and ½ teaspoon Ras El Hanout (or substitute). Place a lidded pot over medium high heat until hot. Working in batches if necessary, add the clams and wine to the pot. Cover and turn the heat up to high for 3 to 5 minutes, just until the clams open. Remove the clams from the liquid and discard any that do not open. Remove the skin from the roasted butternut squash and discard. Cut the squash into smaller pieces and put them on a plate. Cut the leeks into 1-inch rounds, season to taste with salt and scatter them among the squash. Place clams on the squash and leeks and drizzle with the spiced yogurt and honey. Sprinkle with the pumpkin seeds or almonds and the herbs.
Woodblock
Woodblock’s Silence of the Clams clam chowder.
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home + design
Modern and Meaningful The new kitchens in these Mid-century Oregon homes spark owners’ joy written by Melissa Dalton
IN 2011, KRISTEN and Saul Becker bought their Burien home from its original owner, a Boeing engineer who had commissioned the house in 1954. The couple were relocating from Brooklyn to Saul’s home state of Washington, and Kristen was pregnant with their second child, so they didn’t touch the kitchen right away, instead living with its glossy green cabinets and floral wallpaper for five years. Turns out, “It had this very original charm, but it was not very functional,” Saul said. By 2016, the storage had proved insufficient, and Kristen was tired of standing on her tiptoes at the higher-than-average counters. The “floating ’50s hipster upper shelving that blocked all of the view” also needed to go, said Kristen, an architect who worked with Seattle’s Olson Kundig Architects. That year, the couple embarked on two new endeavors: opening their own design studio with architect Jim Friesz, called Mutuus Studio, and the next day, starting kitchen demo. Having previously worked in construction and as a shipwright—the couple met on a tall ship—Saul was comfortable tackling the labor. “I really wanted to touch every part of it,” Saul said. He did, from installing the electrical and plumbing, to building and staining the cabinets, and leveling and laying the rubber and cork composite floors. (The only task hired out was the concrete counters.) Since the family lived in the house throughout the remodel, they finished the kitchen in stints over three years, testing ideas as they went: “We really used it like a laboratory,” Saul said. With the shelves and a partial wall removed, the view was expanded, enabling sight from the kitchen sink into the backyard, to the front door and driveway, and into the living room. The smart cabinetry layout “maximizes every square inch that you possibly can, like a boat,” Kristen said. Custom details, like cabinets made from marine-grade plywood with a Meranti veneer, a material common in boatbuilding, and a hidden laundry chute for dirty dish towels, keep the plan high-functioning. The materials let the scheme read as furniture rather than skewing too utilitarian in the new open plan. The seating bar that separates the kitchen from the living room is now the preferred spot for the kids’ breakfast or homework, or to pause with an evening cocktail. “It becomes this really nice moment,” Kristen said. As a studio artist for twenty years before forming Mutuus, Saul brought an artistic eye to the kitchen’s accents, torching stainless steel to blacken it 30 1889 WASHINGTON’S MAGAZINE
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Mutuus Studio
Burien: A labor of love for a design duo
home + designexpanded the The homeowners view by eliminating a partial wall, and maximized cabinetry.
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home + design
for a moody backdrop for the open shelves, and shaping a linen and resin composite into cabinet hardware and pendant lighting. “The linen in that material is the same linen that I used to paint my paintings on,” Saul said. “It was really about embedding that kind of meaning in the kitchen.” Taking this hands-on design approach in their own home now informs the firm’s work with clients: “If we were to capture the spirit of what Mutuus Studio is about as a kitchen item—it would be a cast-iron skillet,” Saul said. “It’s versatile; it’s functional; as it patinas, it becomes more beautiful over time, and only gets better with use. Who could ask for more than that?”
Edmonds: Palm Springs in the PNW On Maureen Wood’s very first walk-through of her 1956 rambler in Edmonds, she loved the home’s atomic charm, right down to the kitchen’s original refrigerator, a wall-hung GE unit that was teal on the exterior and pink on the interior. “It was mint,” Wood said. “I mean, it looked like it could have been put there a few months before I first saw it.” Unfortunately, after moving in, Wood quickly learned that the refrigerator couldn’t keep food cold, when the first load of groceries she unpacked spoiled inside. “It was a true time warp,” interior designer Heather Kirk said of the home. In 2019, Kirk, principal of Kirk Riley Design, helped Wood modernize. “It just wasn’t working anymore. Everything was past its prime and had done its lifelong duty.” Still, as only the second owner, Wood felt an obligation to preserve the home’s history, just not all of it. The existing cabinet layout made for tight maneuvering, “like you were in a closet,” Wood said, and there wasn’t
To pay homage to the house’s Mid-century roots, the project motto became “Palm Springs in the Pacific Northwest,” drawing on the California city’s reputation for perfectly preserved Mid-century modernism. 32 1889 WASHINGTON’S MAGAZINE
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FROM LEFT This ’50s home got a kitchen upgrade that kept era-appropriate touches, like the orange oven. A new island and bright colors make the space feel bigger.
Photos: Julie Mannell
home + design
enough storage or prep space. When the first owners had built the home, “The wife didn’t want anyone in the kitchen,” Wood said. “She’d deliberately had the architect design a one-person kitchen.” Wood asked Kirk to make room for a few more people, and reconfigure the layout without changing the location of any doors, windows, or the exposed baseboard heating system, which were all original to the home. The question for the designer became: “How do we make it feel bigger?” within the exact same 156-squarefoot allotment. Working with Birrenkott Construction, they removed the constricting cabinets that hemmed in the layout, and Kirk added more efficient storage on the perimeter and within a large central island. New oak floors seamlessly meet with the original flooring in the rest of the house. “It makes a space feel that much larger when you have continuous flooring throughout,” Kirk said. To pay homage to the house’s Mid-century roots, the project motto became “Palm Springs in the Pacific
Northwest,” drawing on the California city’s reputation for perfectly preserved Mid-century modernism. A medley of white and maple cabinets, the latter which echo other cabinetry in the house, are offset by a cheery robin’s egg blue wall color. That hue “is not super common in Washington, but it’s really fresh,” Kirk said. “And if you like those bright, clean colors, it bounces off the glossy white cabinetry and the bright white quartz countertops.” The white hexagon backsplash got a twist, by varying flat and dimensional tiles with glossy and matte finishes to create a subtle flower pattern. And then there’s the bright orange Bertazzoni range, which caused Wood to light up when she first saw it. Auxiliary storage, via two additional freestanding units on Mid-century-style steel legs, looks right at home. It all comes together to deliver that vintage vibe Wood has always loved, and now, can enjoy well into the future. “Certain Mid-century aesthetics just make the cells in my body happy,” Wood said. DECEMBER | JANUARY 2020
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home + design
Julie Mannell
The right kitchen appliances can elevate a space.
DIY: Tips for Choosing Kitchen Appliances START EARLY “We build kitchens around the appliances,” interior designer Heather Kirk said. Planning to remodel your kitchen on your own? Start thinking about what appliances you need early in the process, so their size and features can be accommodated in every plan decision that comes after. HOW DO YOU COOK? Choosing an appliance, Kirk said, is “a combination of what features you want and need for how you cook, combined with how they look.” Take the stove: first you’ll need to know the fuel preference (gas, electric, or induction) and those installation requirements. Then choose a finish, whether that’s the ever-popular stainless steel, or a dash of color like in Maureen Wood’s kitchen, and a profile that works for the overall style of the kitchen. For instance, a modern home might feature a sleek cooktop, while a pro-style range can look at home in a traditional abode. 34
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SIZE MATTERS Do you want a large cooktop with many burners, or will a standard 30-inch range suffice? Do you need a big refrigerator for a large family, or do you like to store meals in a separate freezer? Kirk encourages her clients to choose a counter-depth refrigerator; at around 24 inches deep, the unit won’t jut out past the cabinet line and will elevate the look of the room. SHHHH … For the dishwasher, check the decibel level, especially if you live in an open plan and don’t want to hear the wash cycle while you’re in the nearby family room. ASPIRATIONS ARE OKAY “It’s okay to be aspirational in your appliance selection,” Kirk said. “You may not be there yet, but if that is your goal [to improve your cooking and baking skills], purchase for that to give you the tools you’re going to need.”
home + design
Artsy Kitchen Goods Upgrade your look with these fun finds
Artist and craftsman Lynn Read started Vitreluxe Glass Works in 1999, but still likes to explore various media. Nowhere is that more apparent than in the Crystal Dish, a sculptural, multi-faceted glass bowl with a drop of color that evokes a watercolor painting, one of Read’s early pursuits. Fill the small dish with flaky finishing salt for an eyecatching stoveside accent. www.vitreluxe.com
Portland illustrator and maker Elana Gabrielle fashions paper goods and printed textiles inspired by the wild West Coast landscapes of childhood. The linen Iris Tea Towel is screen-printed with a floral design that brings a dash of whimsical pattern to the towel rack. www.elanagabrielle.com
Protect the table surface with the Lift Trivet, a simple, curved resting spot for warm pots or platters. Designed by Seattle’s fruitsuper, the trivet is fashioned from a swirl of solid, uncoated brass that will gain a pleasing patina with every use. www.fruitsuper.com
Photos: Skip Zinn/University of Washington
mind + body
Darhian Mills Track and Field Athlete
Age: 23 Hometown: Bothell Residence: Seattle
WORKOUT “Typically we lift weights twice a week. Then we have two days a week that are geared toward sprints, and two days a week that are more long, endurance and power training.”
NUTRITION “I don’t eat dairy and I stay away from processed foods as much as possible, especially during the season and during the week. I might allow myself a cheat meal on the weekend, but I stay away from fried foods, I minimize red meat, and I drink almost nothing but water.”
INSPIRATION “Growing up, I wasn’t a sports kid, I didn’t have a lot of passions. So I think being able to find something that I’m not only good at but I do enjoy—even though I say I don’t like to run, I do have a love for it— it’s shaped me into the person I am. I love all of the opportunities that I’ve been given because of this sport, and I feel like I owe it to myself to reach my potential, and I don’t think I’ve done that yet. I’ve gotten so many experiences and beautiful memories and great friends and it’s not done yet. I’m not done yet.”
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Darhian Mills hopes to podium at the NCAA outdoor track championship this spring.
Staying on Track
Darhian Mills is waiting patiently to complete her college track career at the University of Washington written by Sheila G. Miller
WHEN DARHIAN MILLS STARTED her fifth year at the University of Washington, she had big plans. The track phenom had already earned her bachelor’s degree and was going to pursue her master’s. She also intended to reach the NCAA championship in outdoor track and field again, and this time she planned to be on the podium for the 400-meter hurdles. But in 2020, everyone’s best-laid plans were sidelined by the coronavirus, and now Mills has recalibrated and is looking forward to the 2021 track season. DECEMBER | JANUARY 2020
mind + body
“What was kind of the glimmer of light was that it wasn’t just us. It wasn’t just track athletes that the season got canceled for, it was the entire world. It was like, OK. Everyone is going through something crazy.” — Darhian Mills, on the effects of coronavirus Mills was in the midst of track practice when word came down that COVID-19 was shutting down the winter NCAA championships, as well as in-person classes, her practice and spring season. “It took me a minute to realize what was happening,” she said. “And then for the longest time I think I held onto the idea that it was postponed, not canceled. ‘Things are going to be fine!’ And when I realized it wasn’t, it was a big setback.” Mills never anticipated being a college athlete for five years— she redshirted her freshman season—let alone six. She’d fulfilled the education side of her plan—to earn two degrees—but the other half of her plan, to get on the podium at the NCAAs, would have to wait. “What was kind of the glimmer of light was that it wasn’t just us. It wasn’t just track athletes that the season got canceled for, it was the entire world,” she said. “It was like, OK. Everyone is going through something crazy.” After coronavirus canceled her spring season, Mills took a couple weeks off as she waited to figure out the landscape. There was nothing left to train for, really. “But then I realized, if we stop now in March and come back in September, that’s way too much time of not doing anything,” Mills said. “So for me, my goals of going to the NCAA championships again, it wasn’t going to happen in my head if I didn’t continue to train like I still had a season.” She repurposed things around the house for weight training, and enlisted her dad and brother to go out to the track for training. Mills had written down every workout she’d done the prior season, so she had a log to base her running workouts on. “It was really nice to have my family there to keep the morale up,” she said. “It’s hard to train by yourself. It was great to have two people there to at least try to do the workouts with me.” She kept up her training through when the championships would have taken place, then took her regularly scheduled time off.
Mills finished seventh at the 2019 NCAA outdoor track championship.
Mills never intended to be a hurdler. She started track in her sophomore year of high school and thought she’d try out to be a long jumper or triple jumper. Her coach introduced her to the 400-meter hurdles, one of the hardest races in track and field. “I hate running, I was not a runner,” she said. But her coach had different plans. “I said, ‘No I came here to jump.’ And he was like, look at your legs and your body type. … I ended up being pretty good,” she said. “It kind of stuck.” More than that—Mills placed seventh at the NCAA Outdoor Championships and earned first-team All America honors in 2019. In June, Mills earned her master’s degree from the University of Washington. She will re-enroll this winter and spring in post-baccalaureate undergraduate classes and use her final year of eligibility for the spring track season. She’s hopeful about the 2021 season, especially seeing what other outdoor professional sports have been able to do in the midst of the global pandemic. “The pro circuit in Europe for track has put on meets, they’ve been competing,” she said. After her final season as a Husky, Mills has no plans to stop competing. She is a quarter Filipino, and is in the process of seeking dual citizenship so she could run for the Filipino national team. If that doesn’t work, she’ll seek a spot on the U.S. Olympic team at this spring’s trials. “I don’t foresee myself not running track in the near future,” she said. DECEMBER | JANUARY 2020
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Bicultural Beauty Miguel Maltos Gonzales shares his life experience through his art written by Sheila G. Miller
WHAT IS IT LIKE to walk a line between two cultures? Check out Miguel Maltos Gonzales’ artwork and you’ll get a sense of how it feels. Gonzales is a Mexican-American artist who grew up in San Antonio and now lives in Spokane. He plays with duality in his work—his pride in both his indigenous and Mexican heritage as well as his American roots—to great effect.
“Mijo at the MAC,” a piece by Miguel Maltos Gonzales.
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artist in residence
His love of art began in the darkroom, where his father taught him the art of developing film at age 9. Gonzales’ mother was a painter, so he learned color and composition and other aspects of art from her. But photography was his first love. In high school and college, he began incorporating illustration into his work. “At first it was something that I would paint onto the photo paper itself, but then once I got into high school and started using Adobe Illustrator, I started really refining it.” Gonzales draws people of color onto photos to demonstrate biculturalism. He often adds bright yellow circles as well, which he said symbolize sunbeams—a tribute to his ancestry. San Antonio sits on the tribal land of the Payaya people, who were known as the People of the Sun. It’s a combination of two types of media—film photography, an analogue process that takes a long time to do right, and digital drawing that is quick and modern. His art is all meant to demonstrate the experience of a person who lives life in two cultures, moving between them seamlessly. “It symbolizes both my indigenous and Mexican ancestry, as well as my American heritage,” he said. For example, a piece called “Tejano en Spokane” shows an illustrated man playing his accordion and dancing in a photograph of Spokane’s Manito Park rose garden. Gonzales likes using film photography to capture the places we live—he said the photography captures things accurately. “Trees are trees, parks are parks, it’s all a common space,” he said. “It’s not open to interpretation, it is as it’s given to us.” Then he draws people of color into the locations. “Wherever we go, no matter where we are in this world, we take our culture with us,” he said. “We don’t flip a switch and think only in English or flip a switch and think only in Spanish. … When you’re truly bicultural, you have a thought, and it’s just expressed. It just is what it is, sometimes it comes out in one or both languages in a single sentence.” Gonzales said that type of bilingualism, sometimes called code switching, was common in San Antonio. You heard Spanish spoken all over, no matter the neighborhood. The city supported a bilingual media and advertisements and street signs were routinely in both languages. That’s a lot different from Spokane, where Gonzales initially moved because of his role in the Air National Guard, and for a job. Spokane, Gonzales said, is diverse but in a quiet way. “There is quite a bit of diversity here in Spokane, it’s just not openly expressed,” he said. “When I first moved up here, I was like, ‘Where’s my gente?’ I couldn’t find anything until we went to an event and met a person from the Hispanic Business/Professional Association. From there, it was like a door had been opened to a whole new community.” Gonzales hopes that his art, as well as his interest in sharing more Latinx culture with the Spokane community, will help people here realize that there are people from diverse backgrounds among them. “These people live among you, they live right next door to you and go to the same church and the same school,” he said. “Their kids probably play with your kids.”
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP “Tejano en Spokane.” Gonzales is a Spokane transplant. “Mama Doesn’t Raise Mensas.”
Gonzales said he wants to build community through inclusion. To that end, Gonzales created LTNX Artes, an online marketplace platform. He built it specifically for artists of color but noted all artists are welcome to be a part of it. “My goal with this website is to create an online space where we can, as a community here in Spokane, show the rest of the world that we have a community of color in the Pacific Northwest and we’re doing awesome things,” Gonzales said. Next, Gonzales plans to turn LTNX Artes from a website into a physical space. The idea, he said, is to have a safe space where artists of color can gather, speak in whatever language they please, have art exhibits and more. “When you’re in a borrowed gallery space, it’s like living in somebody else’s house,” he said. “It’s a comfort thing—you can’t quite be yourself. You’ve got to be polite. There are rules, unspoken rules that can stifle creativity and expression.” In Gonzales’ planned space, he said, artists will be able to create and connect, then return to the general public. He said he hopes the public will also come and learn more about artists’ culture and heritage. “It’s a back and forth, a flow,” he said. “An inhale, exhale.” His art continues to evolve—the same way his bicultural identity does. “Here in Spokane I’m the minority, but in San Antonio I’m the majority,” Gonzales said. “It’s that whole concept of how you change communities, you travel between them. You can be a single person and you can walk between the two.” MORE ONLINE
Learn more about the LTNX Artes online marketplace and artist collective at www.ltnxartes.com
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STARTUP 42 WHAT’S GOING UP 44 WHAT I’M WORKING ON 45 MY WORKSPACE 46
pg. 46 Lisa Holtby makes organization into an art form.
Strazzanti Photography
GAME CHANGER 48
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startup
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startup
Maintenance On Demand Seattle startup Wrench brings the car mechanic to you written by Sheila G. Miller | illustration by Ellen Surrey
EVERYONE WHO HAS ever heard a mysterious chunk-a-chunk sound while commuting to work knows how it feels—that pit in your stomach, that feeling of helplessness. What is wrong with my car? When will I find time to take it into the shop? How much is this going to cost? And will it make it back home after work? A Seattle startup called Wrench eliminates much of that guesswork. The premise is simple. Wrench serves as a mobile mechanic, delivering a mechanic to your door (home or office) to get your car fixed while you get other things done. Ed Petersen founded Wrench with Doug Stevens and Casey Willis after years of consumer frustration—hours spent in dealership or mechanic waiting rooms feeling uncertain about cost and quality. Petersen said they saw multiple trends they could capitalize on. First, the mechanic industry is very fragmented— there are 300,000 independent mechanic shops in the United States. Add to that customer satisfaction is consistently low in the industry, partly because of inconvenience. Then there’s the increase in what Petersen calls the culture of convenience—the desire to press a button and have someone provide what you need—as well as the increase in fast shipping and delivery. The trio capitalized, and started Wrench in 2016. Today, the startup offers three main services—on-demand inspections of used cars, which is available in all fifty states; on-location consumer maintenance and repair, and onlocation fleet maintenance and repair for companies. Wrench’s maintenance and repair business is in about twenty-three markets, primarily in the West, as well as in Texas, Chicago, Florida and New Jersey, among other spots. Wrench has also seen its fleet business grow quickly—it works with more than 800 fleets around the country. What sets Wrench apart, Petersen said, is it can eliminate the fleet vehicles’ downtime—Wrench does the work at the business, during off hours. “We can eliminate the fleet being out of commission,” he said. The company also offers a warranty for the work it does— 12,000 miles and twelve months. One way in which Wrench is upending the industry is in its pricing, which is the same no matter the mechanic or the location. “That’s one of the core ideas that we’re trying to solve, that transparency,” Petersen said. “We are clearly breaking down the
price for people. A computer has no idea who you are, whether you’re a man or a woman or young or old or anything. The computer is going to give you the same answer no matter what.” The company is also developing artificial intelligence that allows most maintenance and repair diagnoses to be done via the app, so the mechanic knows what the problem is, even if the owner can only describe the issue in layman’s terms (chunk-a-chunk is not a technical term). Unlike many gig economy startups, Wrench hires its mechanics as employees. “Our mechanics are really smart. They go to school. It’s a trade. They spend tens of thousands of dollars on their tools. We think it’s important that they’re W-2 employees. We’re not going to connect you with some random guy.” Contactless service has never been more popular than during a global pandemic—“and we invented that before it was cool,” Petersen said. Users can schedule maintenance or repairs entirely through the app, then leave a key in an available location. The mechanic cleans all common touch points on the vehicle and does the maintenance or repair, all without having to interact with the car’s owner. “You don’t have to go to a waiting room or talk to anyone, none of that,” Petersen said. “That has really resonated in this environment.” Petersen is particularly pleased to see the repeat customer rate increasing. “Sometimes we get a customer who will say, ‘OK, I’m going to have you look at my daily driver.’ And then we come over and fix that, and they’re pleased and they say, ‘Hey while you’re here, what about this car?’ That’s something I’m proud of because the amount of vehicles per household and the number of repeat customers is going up.” And Petersen said the company will continue to grow. “The world of maintenance and repair is always going to be there,” Petersen said. “We want customers to keep coming back to us, and we will continue to streamline the process and get better.”
Contactless service has never been more popular than during a global pandemic— “and we invented that before it was cool,” Wrench co-founder Ed Petersen said.
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What’s Going Up
Parks on Point New projects around the state provide more places for recreation written by Sheila G. Miller WE’VE LEARNED TO treasure our neighborhood outdoor areas even more since the global pandemic took hold. Around the state, cities are developing new parks, adding on to existing ones, and completing longneeded projects. In Seattle, longtime favorite Seward Park is finally getting a replacement torii, a Japanese gate. The park, a 300-acre beauty on the shores of Lake Washington, installed a 26-foot torii in 1934 as a gift from the city’s Japanese-American community. It was removed in the mid-1980s because it had fallen into disrepair. Now, a new one is under construction and the park is expected to have it in place by the end of 2020. In Spokane, the newest park project is a big one— The Podium, a world-class championship sports venue that is connected to Riverfront Park on a 15-foot basalt overlook of downtown Spokane. The 135,000-square-foot facility will feature a six-lane banked 200-meter indoor track and a 4,000-seat capacity. In addition, it will be able to accommodate sixteen volleyball courts, nine basketball courts or twenty-one wrestling mats. The project is to be completed in fall 2021. And in Vancouver, North Image Park is nearing completion. The 5.57-acre swath of land on the east side of Vancouver will have a large lawn area, outdoor fitness equipment, a dinosaur-themed play area and paved walking trails.
In Spokane, The Podium is a world-class athletic facility connected to Riverfront Park.
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what i’m working on
vessel pulls in to offload and onload passengers, they will be charging. It’s normally a twenty-minute time period, and we’re going to have a robotic arm that reaches out from the vessel to plug itself in and that will connect to shore power and charge batteries. The first two new vessels are going to operate on the ClintonMukilteo run, and then the next two will operate on one of our longest runs—the Seattle-Bremerton run, which is a 17-mile trip. ABOVE Jumbo Mark II ferries will be converted to hybrid electric propulsion in 2021. AT RIGHT Matt von Ruden, the director of vessels for Washington State Ferries.
Cutting Carbon
Ferries are getting an environmentally friendly upgrade interview by Sheila G. Miller
YOUR FERRY RIDE could soon be a lot more environmentally friendly. The Washington State Ferries are in the process of converting its largest vessels to hybrid electric propulsion, and building smaller ferries with similar technology. The result, according to Matt von Ruden, the director of vessels for Washington State Ferries, will be a dramatic reduction in diesel use and by extension, greenhouse gas emissions. The conversions are expected to take place in October 2021 and be in service by spring 2022. Can you explain as simply as possible what this conversion looks like? We’re converting our largest vessels, called our Jumbo Mark II vessels— they were built in 1997 and 1998. We have three of them and they operate on our busiest routes, Seattle to Bainbridge and our Edmonds to Kingston run. They’re 460 feet long and carry 1,800 passengers and 202 vehicles. They are diesel electric vessels, so they’re already electric—they each have four diesel engines on board that drive generators to make electricity, that is then sent to the motors in a different part of the boat, which turn propellers. That makes them good candidates for conversion because we can remove a couple generators and diesel engines and install battery banks to be an alternative
source of power. They monitor each individual cell for its voltage and temperature to make sure they stay healthy. And then there’s another system like in your hybrid car that would decide whether power is coming from the battery or diesel engines going to the battery—that’s the power management system. What about the new ferries? These are medium-size, 144-car ferries, and we just finished building four of those. This will be a new propulsion system from the ground up, so there are some slightly different techniques. The idea is that the batteries will eventually be charged from shore power. The source of power will ideally be from renewable energy. Under that idea, every time a
What kind of fuel and cost savings will this provide? We think the three Jumbo Mark II vessels will eventually save 5 million gallons a year of diesel, and then the same thing with the medium vessels—overall another 5 million gallons. This is really central to our goal of reducing our greenhouse gas emissions. There’s a state greenhouse gas reduction goal for 2030 for all state agencies to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions to 45 percent below our 2005 levels. Ferries can’t really do this unless we have these big initiatives. We’ve done a lot of small things, like moving to 10 percent biodiesel, but to get these types of reductions, we need big initiatives. We believe it will overall save us money as well. The conversions, for the remaining forty years for these vessels, could save $60 million. And the money to do this project comes from the Volkswagen settlement? The Department of Ecology administered grant money from the Volkswagen settlement. The department allocated different amounts to different sectors, and part of it went to the maritime sector and ferries. We won a $35 million grant, and also got funding from the federal Department of Transportation—from the Federal Transit Administration we received $6.5 million, and from the Maritime Administration we got $1.5 million.
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my workspace
Everyone who has quarantined this year has a newfound respect for the power of organization—whether it’s trying to find the board games you know are tucked away somewhere, wondering how you ended up with twenty-seven screwdrivers, or bemoaning your packed closets, it’s sure nice to know what you have and where to find it when your home has become the beginning and end of where you spend time. Seattle’s Lisa Holtby, a professional home organizer and yoga instructor, seeks to simplify your life, now and post-pandemic. “This is a frequently tough world, and one place that we have agency is in our homes,” Holtby said. “I very much want my clients to be relieved and happy when they come home, to a home that is a place of refuge and peace.”
Everything in its Place Lisa Holtby is a professional organizer with a deep reason for her work written by Sheila G. Miller
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Holtby, who has been organizing professionally for three-and-a-half years, said it doesn’t matter to her what people choose to keep or get rid of. “I just am a cheerleader for being happy in their homes,” she said. “I don’t care what they declutter or don’t—there is no right answer as to what is enough for people. … My job is asking those questions to help them discern for themselves what is right. Everyone’s aesthetic is different. Everyone’s sense of abundance versus scarcity is different.” One of Holtby’s favorite questions? “Do you want the stuff or do you want the freedom?”
my workspace
Brand New Soul Photography
Holtby focuses on one space at a time, working with clients to create a system that works for them. That may mean labels for some people, a loose pile filing system for others. “Organizing is just a skill set, and some people didn’t learn that skill set,” Holtby said. “Some people have a lot of shame or embarrassment around their homes, and that’s why I emphasize that organizing is a skill set rather than some moral failing.”
It’s about changing the environment, not changing the person, Holtby said. That’s more important now than it’s been in a long time. Holtby put a hold on her business while there was a stay-at-home order in place, but over the past few months she’s back to work five days a week. She has more work than she can handle, and much of it is about transforming spaces for home offices, kids’ learning spaces, and areas like garages that will be useful for social-distance meetups. “Everybody’s got to be much more efficient with their space,” Holtby said. “People need the space and the freedom.”
Photos: Strazzanti Photography
“It’s very intimate work,” Holtby said. “We go right for their drawers and cupboards. … We work on a personal level just for the family so that when they open their doors, it’s delightful for them in the cupboards and closets. It’s just for them.”
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game changer
Home is Where the Hotel Is Bayside Housing & Services is fighting homelessness in Port Hadlock, with a twist written by Sheila G. Miller
GARY KEISTER SAW a need in Port Hadlock, a small community on Port Townsend Bay on the Olympic Peninsula. He also saw the answer in the form of a rundown property, once an alcohol plant and then a stately hotel. The Old Alcohol Plant, constructed in 1910, was owned and operated by Charles H. Adams, the father of famed photographer Ansel Adams. It had a brief life making alcohol from sawdust for the Classen Chemical Company before closing its doors in 1913. It remained that way until 1978, when a couple spent nine years and $4 million to create a hotel and resort called the Inn at Port Hadlock. The inn shut its doors in 2011. Keister had been involved in homeless and housing issues in the Seattle area. As he watched the historic building deteriorate, he thought it was unacceptable. His idea would bring new life to the building and create new opportunities for those in need. “I asked my wife, ‘Do we have one more in us?’” The answer was yes. In 2013, Keister saw the building was in foreclosure. “I kept thinking, ‘What could we do with this?’” he said. “This whole area was just fraught with homeless and people living in squalor.” Long active with St. Vincent de Paul, Keister and a couple friends got together and decided to buy the property out of foreclosure. After two years of renovation, the group opened the property in April 2016 with a new name and a new mission. Today, Bayside Housing & Services provides transitional, temporary housing to people in need, while also operating the Old Alcohol Plant Inn. A tower building houses those in transitional housing, while the other building houses a restaurant, event space, art gallery, gift shop and fifteen executive suites. Some of those in transitional housing work at the hotel and restaurant, and the model helps offset the cost of running the nonprofit. Keister calls those in transitional housing Bayside’s guests. When guests arrive, case managers help them reestablish their forms of identification—that may be a driver’s license, social security card or voter registration. The case manager also helps people access any pensions or other funds they may be eligible for. With an address at Bayside, they’re able to apply for work, and pre-COVID-19, most transitional guests were indeed working. “There simply isn’t housing for anyone around here,” Keister said. “It’s the working poor, which is a new term. … I wrote an article not too long ago for the local paper and I did a survey with several employers. That was the number one issue in
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hiring. There’s just no place to live. It’s extraordinarily costly to live here now.” Guests pay 30 percent of their income to stay in the facility. That could be $25 or it could be $250. That, plus restaurant and hotel revenues and fundraising events, help offset costs. Many of the transitional guests also volunteer their time in the garden or doing things around the property to help out. Guests receive a meal from the restaurant every afternoon and work with staff on other services that will help them succeed. If anything, the pandemic has only made the housing issue in the area more stark. According to Keister, no affordable housing has been built in Jefferson County for thirty years. He doesn’t expect it to get any easier—coronavirus has meant a moratorium on evictions, but when that ends Keister expects to see a surge in people in need. “We have several people staying with us today who could be out on their own if they could find a place,” Keister said. “The majority of those who have left haven’t stayed in the county.” Before COVID-19, Bayside traditionally had between twenty and thirty people on its waiting list. In late October, there were 118 people waiting for a spot at the facility. To deal with the squeeze, Keister is converting eight more rooms for mothers with infants. “We need to get them off the street,” he said. Bayside has also started a community-build tiny house program and is considering converting a motel to create more space, as well. “It’s not the easiest time to get financing for nonprofits,” Keister said. “That’s why we’re working on the tiny houses. That’s a semi-BandAid but a lot of these things are. You have to go down two tracks at the same time—one deals with the immediacy of the problem and then the other is to find permanent housing.” But Keister knows while there’s always more to be done, Bayside is making a difference. “It’s been a challenge, but a real blessing at this stage of our life to do something with intrinsic value to it,” Keister said, mentioning a woman who works in the kitchen who recently stopped him as he walked through. “She broke down in tears and told me, ‘I might not be alive if I didn’t get into Bayside. That sounds really good, but there are so many out there who need to be in here. One step at a time.”
The Kitsap Peninsula~ The Natural Side of Puget Sound Kitsap Peninsula National Water Trails
Port Orchard
Point No Point - Hansville
VisitKitsap.com
Easy to get to by ferry, bridge, bike, boat, bus or auto.
Best Western Plus Silverdale Beach Hotel 360-698-1000 | tinyurl.com/vytj6kc Comfort Inn on the Bay - Port Orchard 360-895-2666 | tinyurl.com/h8ovrzw Fairfield Inn & Suites - Bremerton 360-377-2111 | tinyurl.com/y7pg95bo Guesthouse Inn & Suites - Poulsbo 360-697-4400 | tinyurl.com/y313dyaz Hampton Inn & Suites - Hilton - Bremerton 360-405-0200 | bremertonsuites.hamptoninn.com
Oxford Suites - Silverdale Waterfront 888-698-7848 | oxfordsuitessilverdale.com Port Gamble Guest Houses 360-447-8473 | portgambleguesthouses.com Poulsbo Inn & Suites - Little Norway 800-597-5151 | poulsboinn.com Bainbridge Island Lodging Association DestinationBainbridge.com Airbnb - airbnb.com. Type in the name of town to find a place to stay on the Kitsap Peninsula.
Poulsbo
Places to Eat & Drink on the Kitsap Peninsula
HOW TO
TRAVEL ABROAD WITHOUT LEAVING THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST
TWELVE PLACES IN THE PNW THAT TRANSPORT YOU TO OTHER CULTURES written by Kevin Max | illustrations by Allison Bye
FOR THOSE OF US with wanderlust, the pandemic greatly curtailed our travel plans, confining us exclusively to local destinations, and only those where it is safe to go. Thankfully, the Pacific Northwest brings with it many amazing proxies for foreign travel. In this piece, we explore the regions, towns and venues throughout the Northwest that share some stunning similarities with their European, Scandinavian and Asian counterparts. If you can’t hop on a plane right now, jump in your car and satisfy your wanderlust while contributing to the local economy. Here are twelve places that will transport you abroad.
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Washington
Leavenworth BAVARIA
Poulsbo NORWAY
The sons and daughters of Norway are alive and well in the tiny Norwegian town of Poulsbo on Washington’s Kitsap Peninsula. Known as Little Norway on the Fjord, Poulsbo was first settled in 1875 by Ole Stubb, a Norwegian immigrant born in Naustdal, Førdefjord, Norway in 1821. More Norwegians flocked to the area for land and fishing in Liberty Bay, then called Dog Fish Bay for its abundance of dogfish. The town was built to resemble
the small seafaring towns of Norway. Today, Poulsbo punches above its weight with craft breweries such as Valhöll Brewery and Slippery Pig, with its culture-conscious Norwegian Sunburn amber rye. Hit Marina Market for Norwegian foods or kick back at Poulsbohemian Coffeehouse with some of the best views on Liberty Bay. When festivals are back in swing, plan to visit during Viking Fest, Midsommer Fest or Julefest.
AT LEFT Poulsbo is known as Little Norway on the Fjord, for good reason. (photo: Brittany Kelle Photography) ◦ ABOVE, AT RIGHT Bavarian architecture in Leavenworth’s downtown core transports you to Europe. (photo: Icicle TV)
There are few places outside of Germany that evoke Bavaria in such a demonstrable way as Leavenworth. In the Cascades of Central Washington, Leavenworth is a Bavarian village of Alpinestyle architecture along its downtown core on Front Street. If not for the signs in English, you’d swear you were in a small Bavarian mountain town. Lined with bierhauses and biergartens serving steins of beer, and German restaurants such as München Haus and Bären Haus with bratwurst and schnitzel on the menu, chocolate shops and a nutcracker museum, this town will transport its visitors to the southern Bavarian town of GarmischPartenkirchen in the Alps. Each year, Leavenworth’s signature event, Oktoberfest, is a rollicking good time with accordions, oompah bands and outdoor biergartens.
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Winthrop
SCANDINAVIA Winthrop is a two-season escape to the vast network of ski trails of Norway, where parents send their kids outside in the morning and tell them to be back in time for dinner. It’s a place where ski trails connect towns and people in a culture that hearkens back to Norway, where Nordic skiing is the national pastime. In the Methow Valley and on the edge of the North Cascades, a Scandinavian ethos pervades the community-run trails and the remote-but-civilized feeling of the valley.
The winter snow and tons of ski trails in Methow Valley invoke a Scandinavian ethos. ◦ BELOW, AT LEFT Seattle’s ChinatownInternational District is buzzing with restaurants and markets. (photo: Visit Seattle/ Alabastro Photography)
Seattle’s Chinatown-International District CHINA, JAPAN
Chinese people first immigrated to Seattle beginning in the late 1850s, finding work on the docks, as fishermen and in canneries. They fought persistent racism and the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 to build an enclave of Chinese culture on the south side of Seattle, which, in 1998, earned the sanctioned title of Chinatown. Today, the International
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District is nearly half Asian, with a plurality of Chinese. Vietnamese, Filippino, Japanese and Koreans are the next populous ethnicities. Enter the west side of the district through the Historic Chinatown Gate on King Street and through its Paifang-style arches, composed of 8,000 ceramic tiles made in southern China, and lose yourself in herb
shops, markets, galleries, rice bowls, Chinese candies and collectibles. For Japanese submersion, head to the Uwajimaya supermarket on 5th Avenue South and transport yourself to a bustling market setting in Japan. Take home the authentic ingredients for traditional udon or soba dishes and soak in the flavor of Japanese culture.
Oregon
Bandon
SCOTLAND The Oregon coastal town Bandon on the Sea sounds like it was swept off the coast of the British Isles. Bandon Dunes Golf Resort proves the case. This rolling course in a rugged traditional Scottish links design was built on gorse-choked cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Its chief architect is David McLay Kidd, a Scotsman and second-generation golf celebrity. His father was a
longtime superintendent of the famed Gleneagles course in Scotland. The course has wide fairways, but the fast links style is merciless. Balls roll forever. The rough is difficult—natural sagebrush—and you must sink your putt or your ball may end up far from its intended destination. “Golf as it was meant to be” is Bandon Dunes’ motto and a nod to its origin in Scotland.
Mount Angel BAVARIA
AT LEFT If it’s that Italian wine lifestyle you seek, DANCIN Vineyards will deliver. (photo: DANCIN Vineyards) ◦ BELOW Oregon’s Mount Angel throws a huge Oktoberfest and has a Glockenspiel Building to prove its Bavarian roots. (photo: City of Mount Angel)
Wine Country ITALY
In Oregon wine country, you can travel to Italy and France without leaving the I-5 corridor. For an Italian experience, go to DANCIN Vineyards, in the verdant hills west of Medford. The vineyard makes Barberas, Sangioveses and ports through traditional
Oregon’s Bavaria is centered in Mount Angel, along the western flank of the Cascades. Bavarians had already immigrated to this rural area in the 1880s when Benedictine monks from Engleberg, Switzerland established Mount Angel Abbey, a Benedictine monastery. Mount Angel is a translation of the Swiss town, Engleberg. Nonetheless, Bavarian culture is a compelling force, and soon Mount Angel became Oregon’s Germanic enclave. The centerpiece of German culture is Mount Angel’s Glockenspiel building, with carved figures and a working town square clock. Naturally, Mount Angel is home to an enormous Oktoberfest every year and a Wurstfest in February. Take home locally made wurst from Mount Angel Sausage Company and continue the festivities with friends and neighbors.
winemaking techniques. Its vineyard tasting room and piazza-like setting is a beautiful place to take your love, don big sunglasses and your best shoes, order a thin-crust pizza from the pizza oven and drink a bottle of classic Italian wine in a setting reminiscent of Piedmont.
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Wine Country FRANCE
Likewise, if you need to escape to France to sip its burgundies and pinots, cut your travel time to a quick drive to Domaine Drouhin in the Dundee Hills, where Veronique Boss-Drouhin plies her French winemaking family tradition. The Drouhin family roots go back to the 1880s in Beaune, France, the heart of the Burgundian wine experience, where Joseph Drouhin, Veronique’s great-great grandfather, began buying vineyards and making excellent wines. That rich family tradition continues in both Beaune and the Dundee Hills, where you can sit
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back, look over the vines transported from France and truly have one foot in the terroir of Beaune. Other wineries in Oregon where French winemaking is de rigueur include: Phelps Creek Vineyard in Hood River, where French winemaker Alexander Roy is the director of winemaking; and Chapter 24 Vineyards, where renowned Burgundy vingeron Louis-Michel Liger-Belair consulted the winemaking team that also included Michael Etzel, winemaker at Beaux Freres, another Oregon winery with Dijon clones and Frenchstyle wines.
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ABOVE, CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT Domaine Drouhin has true French winemaking roots. Redmond’s Porter Brewing is a cask ale lover’s dream. The Jennings Hotel in Joseph is the best basecamp for your Oregon Alps adventures. (photos: Domaine Drouhin, Cj Juan/Porter Brewing Company, The Jennings Hotel) ◦ BELOW The Wallowas are often referred to as Little Switzerland.
The Wallowas SWITZERLAND
The Wallowas in Northeastern Oregon are often called Little Switzerland for their size, shape and feel. Accessed from the mountain arts community of Joseph, visitors can plan day hikes with water, a sandwich from Old Town Cafe and chocolate from Arrowhead Chocolates, then off you go into Eagle Cap Wilderness, a smaller-scale Alpine outing. If you’re going to make the trek all the way, you might as well go big—either with a multiday wilderness camping experience, or use the Scandinavianesque The Jennings Hotel as your refined base camp for healthy day hikes up to breathtaking wilderness tarns.
Idaho
Ketchum AUSTRIA
Real Ales ENGLAND
The 3 Legged Crane Pub and Brewhouse in Oakridge. (photo: Melanie Griffin/Eugene Cascades Coast.org
Sometimes just the culture of one venue can completely transport you to a different place. Such is the case with The 3 Legged Crane Pub and Brewhouse (formerly Brewers Union Local 180) in Oakridge, where real ale is served British-style from the cask and firkin. Hand-pumped like pubs in England, cask-conditioned ale retains its yeast once pit into casks, where it undergoes a secondary fermentation while cellaring in casks and served at an optimal 53 degrees—slightly warmer than most Oregon craft styles. The journey to the tiny hamlet of Oakridge will add to the experience, as will the mountain biking if you want to challenge yourself in a different way. Perhaps the only other bold experiment with real ale pulled from casks in Oregon is Porter Brewing Company in Redmond, where patrons can sit down to small-batch caskconditioned imperial pints of real ale.
Sun Valley Resort was the brainchild of Count Felix Schaffgosch, an Austrian who scouted the West on behalf of Averell Harriman, Secretary of Commerce under President Truman. He soon created the famed Sun Valley Resort in the image of great ski resorts of Austria. The feeling is certainly old-school Europe. The service level is modern American. Stars from the golden era of Hollywood (Ingrid Bergman, Clark Gable, Gary Cooper) adopted Sun
Valley as their new place to be seen. A second generation of actors such as Bruce Willis, Demi Moore and Arnold Schwarzenegger are also Sun Valley aficionados. If you’d like a more modern version of how stars visit Sun Valley, book the new Limelight Hotel right in downtown Ketchum and be close to all the famed restaurants and taverns. Its outdoor, heated pool in the shadow of the famed Bald Mountain is a great spot to après ski in style.
Boise has a strong Basque community, and its culture is nowhere more apparent than on the Basque Block and the Basque Museum & Cultural Center. (photo: Basque Museum & Cultural Center)
Boise
BASQUE COUNTRY One interesting facet of Boise takes us right into the Basque country of northern Spain. The Basque Block in old downtown Boise has a cultural center, a Basque museum, and Basque market dancing events, restaurants and Basque
descendants, originally drawn to the area for silver mining and sheep ranching. Some prominent Idahoans are of Basque descent and can be found eating lamb stew and Basque peppers at Bar Gernika on S. Capital Boulevard.
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If you’re one of the many people who purchased a bike during the 2020 quarantine, start 2021 by putting it to good use. (photo: ©Grant Gunderson Photography, Inc., All Rights Reserved)
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TwoWheeled Washington TOP SCENIC PLACES TO BIKE AROUND THE STATE written by Paul Letourneau
When the pandemic hit the United States in early 2020, the scourge forced offices to close, fitness facilities to cease operations and public transportation to pause. People were left to their own devices to navigate the pandemic-era of fitness and transportation. Bikes—bikes of all kinds—became the antidote and the hottest commodity of the year. Sales of bikes and bike gear soared 75 percent year over year from March to June, according to a report from NPD Group, a New York-based data and analytics firm. Within the report, sales of lifestyle and leisure bikes, mountain bike and road bikes far outpaced an already strong 2019 year of sales. If anything good has come from the pandemic, it’s that many more Americans now have bikes. Now what? If you’re one of these bike consumers in Washington, you’ll be joining the world-class network of mountain bike routes, gravel trails and road rides throughout the state. “Nothing compares to the simple pleasure of a bike ride,” President John F. Kennedy reportedly said. Even less compares to a bike ride along the pastoral paths of Washington. We put together a slew of our favorite rides across the state to inspire your next ride. We focused on the three main categories of road, gravel and mountain bike trails for this piece and for your enjoyment.
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SAN JUAN ISLANDS Lime Kiln Point State Park
Lavender, Lime and Whales
The Burke-Gilman Trail is a rite of passage for any Seattleite. (photo: Seattle Parks)
SEATTLE Magnolia Loop
Puget Sound Pedaling This urban ride puts Seattle’s Magnolia neighborhood and the picturesque Elliott Bay front and center. In a moderate 16-mile lollipop ride that begins and ends in downtown’s Pike/Pine corridor near Monorail Espresso, one of Seattle’s earliest coffee carts and now a walkup window at the corner of 5th Avenue and Pike Street. This ride heads west to the famed Pike Place Market, then meanders north up the waterfront bike path with Elliott Bay and views of the Olympic Range in the distance. This ride loops around the Magnolia neighborhood and the border of hiker-friendly Discovery Park. Bike: Road bike / Location: Seattle / Rating: Moderate / Distance: 35 miles / Vertical: 900 feet / Style: Loop
Burke-Gilman Trail Rails-to-Trails Round Trip
One of the better urban examples of the rails-to-trails movement, BurkeGilman Trail begins at 11th Avenue in west Ballard and follows the Lake Washington Ship Canal east between Chittenden Locks and Lake Union before turning north and east to Bothell. The 18.3 miles are paved for cyclists and accommodate sight-seeing cyclists to pure-carbon roadies. This is a Seattle (or Bothell) rite of passage! Bike: Road bike / Location: Seattle-Bothell / Rating: Moderate / Distance: 18.3 miles / Vertical: N/A / Style: Out-and-back or point-to-point
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This 18-mile rolling ramble takes cyclists through farm country and beneath views of the Olympic Range, before ending at Lime Kiln Point State Park and one of the best shores from which to spy orca, minke, humpback and grey whales. The namesake lime kiln around which the 42-acre park was built is a 1919 relic of its lime-producing era. Bring a pack and hit farmstands to make your own San Juan Islandsourced dinner back at your digs. Bike: Road bike / Location: San Juan Island / Rating: Moderate / Distance: 18.3 miles / Vertical: N/A / Style: Outand-back or point-to-point
Orcas Island
Vertical Velo with Views For a roadie mini Alpes D’Huez challenge of your cardiovascular constitution, meet Mount Constitution on Orcas Island. This steep, 5-mile, 2,409-foot summit takes its victors through many switchbacks and up to the highest point on the San Juan Islands and an observation tower. The Cascades band the sky to the east, the Olympics to the west and Canada to the north. In the greater Moran State Park lie miles more terrain for road and mountain biking. Bike: Road bike / Location: Orcas Island / Rating: Difficult / Distance: 5 miles / Vertical: 2,900 feet / Style: Out-and-back
OLYMPIC PENINSULA Olympic Discovery Trail Adventure Route The Breakthrough Gravel Route
Get your gravel (or mountain bike) on at this newly connected 25-mile singletrack point-to-point dirt trail through the Olympic National Park. Beginning 7 miles west of Port Angeles, the Olympic Adventure Trail, or OAT, heads west through a verdant forest draped with moss to its western terminus at Lake Crescent. This route has 3,793 feet of vertical in it, but, aside from the first few miles, you may not notice it. Bike: Gravel, mountain bike / Location: Olympic Peninsula / Rating: Difficult / Distance: 25 miles / Vertical: 3,793 feet / Style: Point-to-point
Quinault Lake Loop A Ramble Through the Rainforest FROM TOP Bring your bike on the ferry and get ready for some delightful San Juan Islands riding. At Lime Kiln Point State Park, whales are often visible. (photos, from top: James Harnois, James Mead Maya/San Juan Islands Visitors Bureau)
Ride this one counterclockwise, beginning at Quinault Lake Lodge and circling southwest along the perimeter of Quinault Lake. This mixed-surface route is best done on a gravel or mountain bike. Start at the Quinault Lake Lodge and get ready to feast your eyes on the Quinault Rainforest and the Rain Forest Resort Village, where you can hit the General Store for snacks. Though it’s 30 miles, the Quinault Lake Loop is not difficult for moderate riders. Bike: Gravel, mountain bike / Location: Olympic Peninsula / Rating: Moderate / Distance: 30 miles / Vertical: 1,647 feet / Style: Loop
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NORTH CASCADES Bear Creek and Balky Figure Eight Until You Eat
We’re going to recommend that you start and end this awesome gravel ride in Twisp for two culinary reasons—Tappi Italian restaurant and Linwood, an upscale pan-Asian restaurant. Everything in between— the riding—is eye candy. Winthrop has its own merits if that is where you’re staying. This ride is essentially a figure eight with ascending loops around Winthrop and Twisp and connected by the Twisp-Winthrop Eastside Road. Early to midsummer are the best times to catch the explosion of meadow wildflowers. Bike: Gravel bike / Location: Methow Valley / Rating: Moderate / Distance: 35 miles / Vertical: 2,763 feet / Style: Figure eight
Buck Mountain mountain bike Wildflower Explosion
Buck Mountain trails bring riders a classic overlook of the rolling hills of the Methow Valley and the North Cascades in the offing. Riders rave about the Buck Mountain loop for its flowers and flowing descents on singletrack. Because that won’t be enough riding for one day for many riders, add on the nearby Rendezvous Loop for another showy 11 miles of trail with 2,500 feet of climbing. Bike: Mountain bike / Location: Methow Valley / Rating: Moderate / Distance: 14.5 miles / Vertical: 1,400 feet / Style: Loop
Biking in the North Cascades combines beautiful scenery with killer trails. (photo: James Harnois)
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Chuckanut Mountain has a variety of mountain bike trails in a forested wonderland. (photo: ©Grant Gunderson Photography, Inc., All Rights Reserved)
BELLINGHAM Chuckanut Mountain Puget Sound Pumping
Getting pumped up on the Puget Sound is pretty easy when you’re bombing Chuckanut Mountain on a mountain bike or downhill mountain bike. Banked turns with steep, flowing singletrack will get your adrenaline pumping. All in, Chuckanut Mountain has twenty-nine trails of varying difficulty, but the showpieces are the advanced downhill trails. This is a wonderland of lakes, streams and waterfalls in Larrabee State Park and with views of Mount Baker and the San Juan Islands. Bike: Mountain bike, downhill mountain bike / Location: Bellingham / Rating: Moderate to Difficult / Distance: 29 trails / Vertical: N/A / Style: Park and ride
Tour de Whatcom
The Great Northern Farm Ride This is a 22-mile out-and-back easy road bike cruise with only 575 feet of elevation gain along the way. This ride will dazzle you with green as it trails out of the city and follows the contours of the Nooksack River north. Before you know it, you’ll hit the midpoint turnaround in farm country on Douglas Road. End your ride back in town at the Boundary Bay Brewery & Bistro for a spacious indoor or covered outdoor local craft beer. Bike: Road bike / Location: Bellingham / Rating: Easy / Distance: 22 miles / Vertical: 575 feet / Style: Out-and-back
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Centennial Trail runs between Spokane and Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. (photo: Jon Jonckers)
THE VOLCANOES Lewis River Trail
Silver Creek Trail
The Lewis River in the southeastern shadow of Mount St. Helens is one of Washington’s sparkling treasures. The singletrack Lewis River Trail along its banks makes this one of the most spectacular riverine rides with the lower, middle and upper falls for added majesty. This 28-mile out-and-back trail takes you through the old-growth forest of the Gifford Pinchot National Forest and, for those old enough to remember, the Mount St. Helens eruption of 1980.
Getting away from the crowd is not always easy at Mount Rainier, but now it’s imperative. Silver Creek Trail is a less-trafficked alternative to the popular Mount Tahoma Trail System. South of Mount Rainier and east of Ashford, Silver Creek Trail along Silver Creek is accessible for most riders. The views of Lookout Mountain are good. Farther on, the vistas of Mount Rainier are better. If you make this ride in midsummer, bring a bag to harvest huckleberries, which line the trail in different spots.
Bike: Mountain bike / Location: Southwest Washington / Rating: Moderate / Distance: 28 miles / Vertical: 2,700 feet / Style: Out-and-back
Bike: Mountain bike / Location: Southwest Washington / Rating: Moderate / Distance: 11 miles / Vertical: 1,300 feet / Style: Loop
The Lewis River Flow
Mount Rainier Therapy
THE COLUMBIA RIVER GORGE Mount Adams Loop
Klickitat Trail
This awesome ride begins in Trout Lake, 17 miles north of White Salmon on the Gorge. This ride takes you on a roadie delight, with lots of climbing and thrilling descents, with most of this playing out on scarcely traveled blacktop forest roads. Old-growth forests, waterfalls and views of Mount Adams and Mount Hood make this a rite of passage for cyclists. Take note though—this is remote and challenging with a couple of short sections of gravel, so be prepared for extra time and tubes.
Want to feel the Columbia River Gorge and the adjacent remote canyons? Klickitat Trail, beginning in Lyle, is a 31-mile mixed-surface on-ramp for that journey. For the first 13 miles between Lyle and Klickitat, riders will be spoiled with views and sounds of the Gorge. After Klicktat, as the trail turns east toward Goldendale, the ride (and cell phone service) is more stark in the Swale Canyon. Depending on the time of year and time of day, rattlesnakes can be spotted. Nonetheless, this 50-mile out-and-back is a Western gravel classic.
Double Mountain Passage
Bike: Road bike / Location: Trout Lake / Rating: Difficult / Distance: 52 miles / Vertical: 4,433 feet / Style: Loop
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Gorgeous Gorges
Bike: Gravel bike / Location: Lyle / Rating: Difficult / Distance: 50 miles / Vertical: N/A / Style: Out-and-back
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SPOKANE Camp Sekani / Beacon Hill
Mountain Bike Mecca For a mega-network of mountain biking in Eastern Washington, hie thee hither to the Camp Sekani and Beacon Hill complex just east of Spokane and along the Spokane River. This area boasts sixty trails rated from beginner to very difficult. If your crew has riders of varied experience, this will be one place where everyone can be happy. Plan for a full day on the month’s-worth of trails here. Bike: Mountain bike / Location: Spokane / Rating: Beginner-Difficult / Distance: 30 miles / Vertical: N/A / Style: Park and ride
Centennial Trail Two-State Tripping
Centennial Trail is a two-state, 63-mile National Recreation Trail between Spokane and Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. Named not for its length but for its construction birthdate—at Washington’s centennial of 1989—Centennial Trail was designed for multiuse by all people. Paved its entire length, it is best addressed on a road bike, or a cruiser for shorter rambles. This path is well used and highly engaging as it follows the Spokane River east of town through Riverside State Park and Nine Mile Falls into Idaho and Coeur d’Alene. Commandos can plan this as their long ride and as an out-and-back from Spokane, or shuttle a car to the Coeur d’Alene Resort and make a pampered landing there before driving back to Spokane. Bike: Road bike, cruiser / Location: Spokane / Rating: Beginner / Distance: 63 miles / Vertical: N/A / Style: Out-and-back, shuttle
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A NEW TAKE
ON AN OLD CLASSIC JEFFREY VEREGGE BRINGS SALISH FORMLINE STYLE TO CLASSIC COMICS artwork by Jeffrey Veregge IF YOU CARE at all about comic books, you’ve seen
to show off indigenous characters. That comes after
Jeffrey Veregge’s work. Veregge, a member of the Port
Veregge’s pieces were featured for fifteen months in
Gamble S’Klallam Tribe near Kingston, has made a name
the Smithsonian in New York City—the show, “Jeffrey
for himself with more than 100 comic book covers for
Veregge: Of Gods and Heroes,” featured his take on clas-
Marvel, Darkhorse Comics, IDW and others. And if you
sic superheroes. Two of Veregge’s 50-foot murals were
don’t care about comics, Veregge’s exquisite designs, us-
added to the Smithsonian’s permanent collection. He’s
ing the Salish formline style, might change your mind.
now in the process of creating a large mural for Climate
This year, Marvel introduced “Marvel’s Voices: Indigenous Voices #1,” recruiting Native artists like Veregge
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Pledge Arena, which will be home to Seattle’s new NHL team, The Kraken.
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TRAVEL SPOTLIGHT 74 ADVENTURE 76 LODGING 78 TRIP PLANNER 80
pg. 74 Roche Harbor Resort is as much a delight in winter as during the high season.
Roche Harbor Resort
NORTHWEST DESTINATION 84
Whisk Away Someone Special for that Weekend Getaway SPEND A WINTER WEEKEND RECONNECTING AND FINDING THAT ROMANCE IN THE SERENITY OF BEAUTIFUL MOUNT RAINIER NATIONAL PARK Adventure together to pristine waterfalls, open vistas, snowy lakes, and the enjoy the endless glistening white landscapes. Snuggle up together on the grand front porch and capture the gorgeous alpine glow or enjoy a relaxing drink by the cozy fireplace after the sun goes down. Share an intimate picnic spread under the breathtaking starry skies of beautiful Paradise.
SPECIAL PACKAGE INCLUDES Two nights’ accommodation, a bottle of private label wine, keepsake glasses and local truffles along with breakfast for two delivered straight to your guest room. Lodging only mid-week special (SundayThursday) starts at $99 and weekend special (Friday & Saturday) starts at $149*. NATIONAL PARK INN 47009 Paradise Road E, Ashford, WA 98304
MtRainierGuestServices.com Reservations: (855) 755-2275 *See website for details. Subject to availability. Blackout dates may apply. Must be over 21 years of age with valid photo ID (required at check-in) to receive the wine portion of the package.
GSI20_MTR_Ad_1889WinterRomance_9x10-875_20201111.indd 1
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travel spotlight
Roche Harbor Resort
Roche Harbor Resort on San Juan Island has been a getaway for decades.
Hotel Hideaway Roche Harbor Resort’s history makes it a romantic winner in the San Juan Islands written by Sheila G. Miller MOST PEOPLE think of San Juan Island as a magical mix that combines the sea, farms and down-home island living, and they’re right. But tucked away at the northern shore of the island is Roche Harbor, home to the Roche Harbor Resort and its compelling history. Thanks to a huge deposit of lime at Roche Harbor, the Tacoma and Roche Harbor Lime Company was thriving by 1886, and a twenty-room hotel was built that year around a Hudson Bay post. A company town—complete with a lime factory, church and docks—grew up around the hotel, and the area thrived for decades. Today you can still stay at the Hotel de Haro—check out the original logs still visible from the Hudson Bay post. Walk among the ruins of the lime factory and the beautiful gardens, or check out the yachts, fishing boats and pleasure craft that call this marina home. All 4,000 acres of the harbor were purchased in 1956 by a Seattle businessman, who restored the hotel and turned the area into the resort you see today. Visitors stay in the hotel, as well as in a variety of homes, cottages and other options, and eat at one of the three restaurants at the resort. The experience truly feels like you’ve stepped out of time and into an enchanted storybook.
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adventure
As they’ve increased in popularity, the variety of e-bikes has grown as well. Nearly all bike companies now have an e-bike line, and there are road, cruiser, mountain and commuter e-bikes to pick from, plus other specialty types.
Pick the electric bike that will fit your lifestyle, then zoom away.
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adventure
E-Bike Excitement
Here’s how to get into the outdoors on electric bikes written by Sheila G. Miller
LIVING IN THE Pacific Northwest, we are accustomed to seeing our neighbors load outdoor gear onto the backs of their vehicles every weekend, headed for the ocean, the trails or the mountains. They’re skiing and climbing and surfing and biking. But some of us may feel left behind. Maybe an injury has prevented our heading back up to the slopes, or age is catching up with our ability to get quite as upright on the surfboard as we once did. Or, hey, maybe we just aren’t in great shape and the thought of hiking to the top of South Sister makes our knees hurt. That doesn’t mean we don’t want to access the outdoors. And it doesn’t mean we have to sit inside crocheting and playing pinochle, either (though if those are your jam, by all means go for it). There can be a middle ground, and my husband and I have discovered that middle ground in the form of electric bicycles. Ebikes have opened up a range of possibilities for us, and we are ready to share the gospel. We have a number of professional cyclists among our close friends, but neither of us has ever been able to keep up with them enough to ride side by side. For my husband, an e-bike changed that. He zoomed along at speed with his pro friends, still getting a workout but never making them stop to wait up for him. He came home thrilled, exhausted, and eager to get me on an e-bike. The following summer, I suggested we rent e-bikes for a date. We headed to a shop in Bend to start our day, and learned a valuable lesson about the variety of options. I was able to ride a pedal assist bike—which allows you to gain speed and power from your electric motor as long as you’re pedaling—but my husband was handed a throttle bike, meaning he controlled his speed entirely with the throttle by the handlebars. The feel is different, as is the effect—riding a throttle e-bike can feel a little like you’re on a moped rather than getting a workout from pedaling with an extra dash of speed.
As they’ve increased in popularity, the variety of e-bikes has grown as well. Nearly all bike companies now have an e-bike line, and there are road, cruiser, mountain and commuter e-bikes to pick from, plus other specialty types. In the United States, the bikes now generally fall into three classes—20 mph pedal assist, 20 mph throttle and 28 mph pedal assist. There are positives and negatives to each option, so do your research. And know that e-bikes can get expensive really fast, ranging generally from about $1,000 to $10,000, depending what you’re looking for. Rules and laws about where you can ride these bikes vary around the country, so make sure you know what’s allowed. E-bikes have faced some scrutiny about whether they should be allowed on trails in Oregon and beyond. The U.S. Forest Service, for example, is currently considering how to incorporate e-bikes into its land use policy, because traditionally federal law has considered e-bikes motorized vehicles. Right now, about 40 percent of Forest Service trails around the country are open to the bikes. Make sure to check the rules where you want to ride and remember to be polite to all trail users. Last month, in need of a change of scenery, we hit the road and ended up on San Juan Island for a few days, where we rented e-bikes and cruised the island, zooming up hills, glimpsing incredible views of the water and crisscrossing farm roads. The pedal assist meant we still had to put in the effort, and we were exhausted by the end of the day, picking out new routes to explore and vowing the next time we visited the e-bikes we rode would be our own.
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lodging
ROOMS The 112 rooms feature calming gray and pastel blues, with beds that are luxurious and nicely clad in white bedding. Each room’s wall-size mural evokes a past era and an implicit longing for simplicity. Though trains rumble by on tracks just one block south of Hotel Indigo, guests might never know unless they looked out their window and saw it with their own eyes. The bathrooms are also spacious, with clean lines of black and white tile. The showers dispense Gilchrist & Soames bath products instead of using wasteful individual bottles.
DINING Magnolia and its French bistro menu is a breath of fresh air in downtown Spokane. Daily specials include items such as wild mushroom risotto, braised pork shank and bouillabaisse. For those who hue closer to the American palate, Magnolia has a fantastic burger and onion soup from Walla Walla onions. Eat at tall tables in the bar or in the adjacent common seating area. Chef Steven Jensen makes regular appearances in the dining room to talk to patrons about their meals. The murals by artist Daniel Lopez add sophistication to an experience that is already trending in that direction.
FEATURES The building is an engaging art tour of Spokane’s past. A small fitness center features a collage of historic photos as a grand nostalgic painting. Valet parking is available and the enclosed parking lot is an added security feature for visitors. Sameday dry cleaning and laundry are a touch of service from a bygone era.
AMENITIES Hotel Indigo has a full offering of amenities you would expect from a luxury boutique hotel serving Spokane visitors, including a restaurant and full bar, room service, valet parking, meeting spaces, twentyfour-hour fitness and business centers, and is pet friendly.
Lodging
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP Simple luxuries abound in Hotel Indigo’s rooms. Historic touches remain in the hotel. The building is on the National Register of Historic Places.
Hotel Indigo Spokane written by Kevin Max IN THE QUICKLY GROWING city of Spokane comes a reminder that lodging can be stylish and traditional at the same time. Using the bones of the historic Otis Hotel, Indigo has more than renovated this site—it has reimagined it as a calming urban retreat at 110 Madison Street. Many developers saw the potential of this beautiful brick building, but balked at the plumbing architecture from its communal bathrooms. To get it right, this site called for a developer who would make this a passion project. Curtis Rystadt was up to the challenge and bought the building—already on the National Register of Historic Places—in 2017 for a reported $1.4 million. The real investment began after he bought the building. Inside Hotel Indigo, the lobby is buffeted by dark wood columns that tie into ceiling beams, giving it a stately and traditional aura. Modern chandeliers and sconces challenge its timeless look in form, not function. Traditional buttonedleather armchairs blend seamlessly with low-slung modern incarnations of 1920sera furniture. All of this sits on antique and meticulously restored stone tiles. To the right of the lobby is the entrance to Magnolia, a French-inspired bistro under chef Steve Jensen, a veteran of the Spokane-area restaurant scene. The menu includes mussel and frites, Caesar Provencal, chicken piquant and the Magnolia Smash Burger with caramelized onions and garlic frites. The open, airy space could be an attraction for those who like to be a part of an urban buzz or annoyance for anyone who relishes a quieter experience. 110 S MADISON ST. SPOKANE www.ihg.com
MOSES LAKE
ROAD TRIP!
Your Home Base for Winter Adventure
CHECK OUT MOSES LAKE FOR WINTER HOCKEY Come eat, play and stay in Moses Lake. We’re only a gas tank away! Save the hockey tournament dates for your next outing: • January 15 & 17, 2021 • January 29 & 30, 2021 • February 12 & 13, 2021 All tournaments take place at the Larson Recreation Center, 610 Yakima Ave. For a list of hotel/motels, restaurants, and other attractions, visit www.tourmoseslake.com. While you’re there, start planning your next vacation. We’ve got water, sun and room to play!
For upcoming events, visit www.tourmoseslake.com
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trip planner
Try the Tri-Cities A Cold War and good wine journey through time written by Liam McCann
TRI-CITIES IS a region of contrast. Long known for its relics of the Cold War with the decommissioned Hanford B Reactor and the sail of the nuclear submarine USS Triton staged near the Columbia River in town, Tri-Cities is also a burgeoning wine-growing area. Perhaps the best way to tackle the Tri-Cities is to take yourself on a three-day peaceful wine and Cold War retreat.
Day
Visit Tri-Cities
HANFORD SITE • ATOMIC BREWS
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The B Reactor at the Hanford Site was the first largescale nuclear reactor built and now a National Historical Park. One of three pieces of the top secret Manhattan Project, Hanford has nuclear counterparts in Los Alamos, New Mexico and Oakridge, Tennessee. This facility was built in 1943 as a secret large-scale production site for plutonium, the fissile material for nuclear weapons. In that year, Soviet troops forced Hitler’s forces to surrender at Stalingrad, handing the Nazis their first major defeat in WWII. Back in the United States, Dwight D. Eisenhower took control of Allied troops in Europe as American war casualties topped 9 million. There are few monuments in the United States that evoke such intense time travel as B Reactor at the Hanford Site. AT LEFT Tri-Cities’ terroir is gaining in popularity, so make sure to check out the excellent wines being grown here.
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After such a solemn history lesson, it’s best to seek a suitable place for reflection and good beer. Atomic Ale Brewpub in Richland puts a kitschy spin on the dawn of the nuclear age with a woodfired oven for pizzas and Nuclear Age craft beers. Atomic Amber or Plutonium Porter are good choices during the colder months. The barracks that housed the women who helped in the building of the Hanford Site, for measure, were directly across the street from here before they were razed. One of the region’s newer legacies is in its soil— its terroir. Tri-Cities has more than 200 wineries in a 50-mile radius. One of those is Tagaris, a renowned vineyard with a highly recommended restaurant. Specializing in single varietal wines, Tagaris winemaker Frank Roth creates beautiful cabernet sauvignon, merlot, as well as Gewürztraminer and chenin blanc. Stay for dinner and wine at Taverna Tagaris, a Greek-inspired cozy tavern on the premises. Head down to Howard Amon Park and stroll the Columbia Riverfront Trail south to Longship Cellars to extend your local wine tasting into the evening, or pop back out of the park and try the new nearby Moniker Bar, a spot with Palm Springs-era décor, craft cocktails and pan-Asian cuisine. If you couldn’t find a reservation at Taverna Tagaris, try The Bradley back in town. The Bradley has craft cocktails, some local wines and upscale small plates. The menu’s best items include ceviche, rainbow carrots and farro and a red winemarinated beef burger served with harissa fries.
Atomic Heritage Foundation
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Day Start your day getting lost on the trails of the Yakima River Delta, the confluence of the Yakima and Columbia rivers. This is an ecologically protected area that is home to hiking trails, wildlife and kayakers. You can get there on foot by walking or biking the Columbia Park Trail about 2 miles south of the downtown core. Then head out for your daily dose of culture and Cold War. The REACH Museum is an architecturally beautiful cover for the stories of the people of the region. The 14,000-square-foot building, designed by architect Terence L. Thornhill, houses exhibits that recount the ancestral lands of the Wanapum People, Yakama Nation, Confederated Tribes of the Colville, Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Reservation and the Nez Perce. Another 82 1889 WASHINGTON’S MAGAZINE
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Ross James/Port of Benton
RIVER DELTA • REACH MUSEUM • WINE
standing exhibit brings a pop culture aspect to the Hanford Site and the Nuclear Age. For truly good wine in a bucolic setting, get to J. Bookwalter tasting room. J. Bookwalter wines were born out of generations of farming. One generation, with Jerry Bookwalter as its patron, detoured into winemaking in the San Joaquin Valley before moving his family to the Tri-Cities to start his own winery. His son, John, who was raised in the industry, soon took over and built on the brand’s reputation. Today, J. Bookwalter wines are made by noted winemaker Caleb Foster, who is known for his rich red blends. Visit the tasting room and sip these lovely wines while nibbling on farm-to-table fare of avocado fries or a housemade fennel sausage pizza from Fiction, its restaurant. The latest inhabitants of the region’s soil have done well with its cultivation. For dinner, go back in time to pre-war Italy. Bella Italia in Kennewick is true Italian fine dining. Its owners, Leonardo and Nadine Luzi, are transplants from Rome who decided to go big and traditional with Tuscan villa-style of architecture, extensive Italian menu and a wine list that covers all of Italy and some of the Tri-Cities region. Though an anomaly among big box stores, Bella Italia is a world apart.
Day
The Bradley
REACH Museum
SUBMARINE • BREAKFAST BURRITOS Stay on the Cold War trail and head to the USS Triton Sail Park, home of the sail (upper chamber) of a storied nuclear submarine. Measuring 447 feet long and 37 feet wide, Triton was the first vessel to circumnavigate the globe underwater in 1960 as part of Operation Sandblast, led by Captain L. Edward Beach Jr. Over sixty days, Triton and crew covered 26,723 nautical miles in a feat that would be touted in a meeting between President Eisenhower and Soviet Premier Nikita Krushchev. Though the Triton is currently closed due to COVID concerns, visitors can still visit the park to see the structure. Check the website for reopening dates. Before you end your Cold War and history melange, warm your journey with Victrola coffee from The Local Coffeehouse, a barista-run and baristaowned shop on Gage Boulevard in Kennewick. If this story behind the fissile material for atomic bombs “the Little Boy” and “the Fat Man” conjures breakfast burritos, hit up El Fat Cat Grill for a Morning Farmers burrito. DECEMBER | JANUARY 2020
TRI-CITIES, WASHINGTON
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CLOCKWISE FROM TOP Touring Hanford’s B Reactor is a true step back in time. The REACH Museum’s insightful exhibits give context to the region. The Bradley offers craft cocktails and excellent small plates. USS Triton Sail Park lets visitors get up close and personal with a Cold War-era nuclear submarine.
EAT Taverna Tagaris www.tagariswines.com The Bradley www.atthebradley.com Atomic Ale Brewpub www.atomicalebrewpub.com Fiction www.bookwalterwines.com/ FICTION-RESTAURANT The Local Coffee House www.wearethelocal.com El Fat Cat Grill www.elfatcatgrill.com
STAY The Lodge at Columbia Point www.lodgeatcolumbiapoint.com Courtyard by Marriott www.marriott.com/hotels/ travel/psccy-courtyardrichland-columbia-point
PLAY B Reactor, Hanford Site www.manhattanprojectbreactor. hanford.gov USS Triton Park www.portofbenton.com Reach Museum www.visitthereach.org Sacagawea Heritage Trail along the Columbia www.visittri-cities.com/heritage/ sacagawea-heritage-trail Tagaris Winery www.tagariswines.com J. Bookwalter Wines www.bookwalterwines.com Hedges Vineyards www.hedgesfamilyestate.com Barnard Griffin www.barnardgriffin.com Kiona Vineyards www.kionawine.com Smasne Cellars www.smasnecellars.com Longship Cellars www.longshipcellars.com
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northwest destination
Sisters Area Chamber of Commerce
Cascade Avenue in Sisters is the town’s main drag.
Spectacular Sisters
This western-themed Central Oregon town is the perfect winter getaway written by Sheila G. Miller
THERE MAY BE no place more magical in the winter months than Sisters, Oregon. To be fair, it’s pretty magical every time of year—the small Central Oregon city, population 2,750, combines a Western theme with high-end dining, art and outdoor adventure. Add to that a dusting of snow and a cozy cabin and you’re officially in the romantic getaway zone. First, choose your perfect home base. FivePine Lodge is a perennial favorite, especially for those looking to rekindle the romance. Pick your favorite little cabin, then enjoy the surrounding campus—a gorgeous spa, free access to the Sisters Athletic Club and lawn games. Nearby are the Sisters Movie House and Three Creeks Brewing. Another option is to stay twenty minutes outside Sisters at The Suttle Lodge, which was purchased and renovated in 2015. It feels a little like a Portland outpost in the woods, but in a good way—the lodge is casual, with eleven rooms and a small cocktail area, as well as a variety of cabins and a restaurant in the Boathouse. Beyond the amenities, the wooded area and Suttle Lake will delight your need to commune with nature. Or try out the new Sisters Bunkhouse, which is a downhome option in the heart of downtown Sisters. 84 1889 WASHINGTON’S MAGAZINE
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SISTERS, OREGON
Sisters Area Chamber of Commerce
northwest destination
EAT The Cottonwood Cafe www.cottonwoodinsisters.com Hop & Brew www.hopnbrew.com The Open Door www.opendoorwinebar.com Three Creeks Brewing www.threecreeksbrewing.com
STAY FivePine Lodge www.fivepinelodge.com The Suttle Lodge www.thesuttlelodge.com Sisters Bunkhouse www.sistersbunkhouse.com
PLAY Hoodoo Ski Area www.skihoodoo.com Black Butte Ranch www.blackbutteranch.com
Sisters Area Chamber of Commerce
Downtown Sisters www.sisterscountry.com Blazin’ Saddles www.blazinsaddleshub.com
COVA
Eurosports www.eurosports.us
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP The Open Door has hearty meals perfect for cold days. Catch a flick at the charming Sisters Movie House. FivePine Lodge is a perfect place to warm up while you slow down.
Sisters is charming and quaint, especially in the winter, when the nearby mountains are covered in snow and everything takes on a storybook look. Take a stroll through downtown and check out the city’s many independent shops. The Stitchin’ Post is the center of all things Sisters Quilt Show, a world-renowned event each summer. Bedouin has home goods, local artists’ jewelry and pretty clothes to browse. Get your Westernwear fix at Dixie’s. Swing into Paulina Springs Books, a beautifully curated little bookshop that often hosts writers and other events. When you need a warmup, Sisters Coffee Co. has all the treats and the hot drinks to get you geared up for a second go at the chilly outdoors. Rent a bike from Blazin’ Saddles or Eurosports to tool around the local trails or streets. If the snow hasn’t arrived yet, there are tons of trails perfect for hiking in the nearby wilderness. Check for any closures remaining after the recent wildfires. And if the snow has arrived, you still have options—hit the slopes at
nearby and very affordable Hoodoo Ski Area, a locals’ favorite just a half hour away from Sisters. Head to Black Butte Ranch in the winter for horse-drawn carriage rides and other winterthemed activities. All this activity will have you hungry. While Sisters is a small town, it has wonderful restaurants. The Cottonwood Cafe inside a little cottage and adjacent backyard creates casual but delicious breakfast and lunch. Local ingredients shine here, as does variety—yes, you’ll find eggs and bacon, but you’ll also find shakshuka. Hop & Brew is a delightful little pizza/coffee/brew shop that also has a variety of sandwiches and salads. Stop in, try the local beers on tap, and take a pizza to go—you won’t be disappointed. Or head to The Open Door for the perfect hearty dinner, like lasagna or meatballs with marinara. Then retreat to your cozy room for a nightcap by the fireplace and get ready to come back in the summer. DECEMBER | JANUARY 2020
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1889 MAPPED
The points of interest below are culled from stories and events in this edition of 1889.
Friday Harbor
Newport
Marysville Everett Chelan
Seattle Bellevue
Port Orchard
Shelton
Tacoma
Colville Okanogan
Whidbey Island
Olympic National Park
Republic
Winthrop
Coupeville
Port Townsend
Aberdeen
North Cascades National Park
Mount Vernon
Port Angeles Forks
Oroville
Bellingham
San Juan Islands
Leavenworth
Renton Kent Federal Way
Wilbur
Waterville
Spokane Davenport
Wenatchee Ephrata Ritzville
Montesano Olympia
Mount Rainier N.P.
Ellensburg Colfax
Chehalis
South Bend
Pullman Yakima Pomeroy
Long Beach Kelso
Cathlamet
Longview
Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument
Richland
Mount Adams
Prosser
Pasco
Dayton
Walla Kennewick Walla
Goldendale Vancouver
86
Stevenson
Live
Think
Explore
16 Mack Provisions
42 Wrench
74
Roche Harbor Resort
22 Logan Brewing
44 The Podium
76
Lime Kiln State Park
25 Public House 124
45 Washington State Ferries
78
Hotel Indigo
36 University of Washington
46 Lisa Holtby
80
USS Triton Sail Park
38 LTNX Artes
48 Bayside Housing & Services
84
Sisters, Oregon
1889 WASHINGTON’S MAGAZINE
DECEMBER | JANUARY 2020
Asotin
Discover the unsearchable Discover the forest
Find a trail near you at DiscoverTheForest.org
Until Next Time photo by Aaron Theisen Riverside State Park, in Spokane, is one of my favorite winter photography spots, the steam mingling with sun above places like Bowl and Pitcher to create magical scenes. On this early January morning, I managed to convince my sister, who was in town for the holidays, to go for a sunrise run with me and take some running photos. With temperatures in the single digits, running was the only way to keep our digits unfrozen.
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