Friday Harbor is the only incorporated city on any of the 172 islands that make up the San Juan archipelago. It is located on San Juan, the second largest and the most populated of all of the islands. There are various ferries that take you and your car or semi truck from Anacortes to the …
Anacortes was founded in 1879 by a railroad surveyor. He promoted the city as the “New York of the West”. With the promise of eventually being a major terminus for the railroad, people flocked to the area, but the idea never came to fruition. The Anacortes city website explains it best, “smugglers, bootleggers, sailors, fishermen, …
Water Street couldn’t be a more perfect name for the the historic downtown street of Port Townsend. Port Townsend became an official European-American settlement in 1851. It is situated on the northeastern side of a small peninsula within Olympic Peninsula. This Victorian seaport village is crammed full of neat shops, galleries and restaurants. Water Street …
Hoh Rainforest in Olympic National Park is one of the largest temperate rainforests in the United States. Temperate rainforests are those that form in oceanic moist regions around the world, and support layers of vegetation called understory (a canopy of trees with mosses, ferns, and berries being sustained below). The trails in Hoh Rainforest can …
John’s Beachcombing Museum in Forks is amazing. There is nothing else like it in the world, not to this magnitude. John began beachcombing in 1976. His entire collection is on display in his museum, which used to be his plumbing shop before he retired seven years ago. There are tons of items in the museum …
Ruby Beach is part of Olympic National Park. It is full of driftwood and sea stacks (vertical columns of rock formed by wave erosion). It is also a great spot to explore tide pools in solitude. Being from Southern California, it is hard to get used to cold, summer beach days, but this empty beach …
Centralia sounds like a made up name, but it’s not. And it hasn’t been since the 1850s. It used to be a stagecoach stop exactly between Tacoma and Kalama. The downtown area is full of pristine century-old architecture. McMenamins Olympic Club Hotel opened in 1908, was remodeled in 1913, and hasn’t changed since. We went …
Four Points Bulletin 