• Washington State Tourism and Hotels Guide. Includes: Bellingham, Chelan, Ellensburg, Forks, Leavenworth, Olympia, Port Angeles, Port Townsend, Seattle, Spokane, Tacoma, Walla Walla, Yakima and Toppenish.
  
  Although Seattle is one of the most likeable and vibrant cities in America, well worth a few days of anybody's time, perhaps its greatest asset for visitors is its proximity to the glorious rural scenery of the Puget Sound. The islands here are stepping stones to the Olympic Peninsula to the west, whose mountains are home to rare elk and lush vegetation that merges into rainforest, and whose wilderness beaches have remained unchanged for centuries. The Olympic National Park, which occupies the bulk of the peninsula, is dazzling, and a hike along one of its clearly laid-out trails can be a highlight of any trip. Just make sure that you don't mind the wet, often stormy weather of western Washington, which only offers predictably warm temperatures and blue skies during the summer.
  
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  Not quite as rainy as the mountains to the north east, the southern coast is flatter and more accessible but not as alluring, littered with industrial towns and glum holiday resorts. The nearest worthwhile destination lies a few hours east, where you can marvel at the wasted volcanic scenery of Mount St. Helens.
  
  Much drier and more desolate, the sprawling prairie plateau that makes up most of eastern Washington is a long, slow grind with little of interest, though if a cross country trek takes you through Spokane, the Grand Coulee Dam is worth a detour. Otherwise you are only likely to come out here if your traveling the Cascade loop, a memorable 400 mile round trip through the stunning Washington State Cascade Mountains.
  
  Learn About These Popular Washington State Tourism Destinations: Bellingham, Chelan, Ellensburg, Forks, Leavenworth, Olympia, Port Angeles, Port Townsend, Seattle, Spokane, Tacoma, Walla Walla, Yakima and Toppenish.
  
  Washington State Cascade Mountains
  The idyllic beauty of the snowcapped and pine-covered Cascade Mountains actually conceals awesome volcanic power - as demonstrated by the 1980 explosion of Mount St Helens . But away from the truncated, rocky stump resulting from the blast, the Cascades offer mile upon mile of forested wilderness, stretching from Canada down to Oregon, traversed by a skein of beautiful trails - which, for all but a few summer months, you'll need snowshoes to follow. The most popular access point is Mount Rainier , set in its own national park some ninety miles southeast of Seattle, while the protected zone around Mount St Helens also rewards a visit for its eerie scenery. Further north, the North Cascades National Park demands more time; Hwy-20, the high mountain road that crosses the Cascades, is by far the most spectacular route to eastern Washington.
  
  Eastern Washington State Tourism
  Big, dry and hot, eastern Washington has little in common with the green, western side of the state: faded olive-colored sagebrush covers many acres, and massive red rocks loom over the prairies, while huge bare patches of basalt and torn away groundcover from centuries of Ice Age floods give the area the unattractive geological moniker of the channeled scablands. Further south, the lower Yakima Valley is a vast agricultural belt with miles of orchards and farms that flank the Yakima River. With over 300 sunny days a year, this region is the largest producer of apples in the world, though that claim is increasingly threatened by cheap fruit imports from the Far East. In the last 20 years, however, this has also become one of the Northwest's major wine regions. The area towns are agricultural and commercial centers, and only Spokane has any degree of cultural life. Nevertheless, some are excellent bases for winery tours or outdoor activities such as rafting, fishing, hiking, paragliding and skiing.
  
  Olympic Peninsula of Washington State Tourism
  The broad mass of the Olympic Peninsula projects across Puget Sound, sheltering Seattle from the open sea. Small towns are sprinkled sparingly along US-101, which loops the peninsula's coast, but at the core the Olympic Mountains thrust upwards, shredding rain clouds as they drift in from the Pacific and drenching the surrounding area. In the western river valleys, the dense vegetation thickens into rainforest, and the forests and unspoiled Pacific beaches provide habitat for a huge variety of wildlife and seabirds.
  
  Although much of the peninsula is now protected land, and large areas of national forest surround the rugged and verdant preserve of Olympic National Park , the legacy of timber clear cutting provides an all too visible scar on the landscape, especially if you venture off the main roads into an ecological dead zone riddled with ugly stumps and uprooted vegetation. The lumber trade brought the first Western settlers here in the nineteenth century, and while almost every town has a sawmill, the industry is in crisis and ecologists favor tourism as the lesser environmental evil.
  
  Puget Sound
  The broad and deep Puget Sound hooks far into Washington, a clutter of tiny islands and ragged peninsulas teeming with yachts, oceangoing ships, fishing trawlers and even nuclear submarines. At first, the dense forest deterred homesteaders, but soon small logging communities sprang up, and the Sound became a vital waterway. As more settlers arrived, the demand for land grew, and in the 1850s treaties confining Native Americans to reservations were put before tribal leaders. Some signed, including Chief Sealth of the Suquamish, but others refused and accusations of forgery flew. A legacy of injustice was created, with which modern courts still struggle.
  
  The southern end of the Sound is increasingly urban, and from the colorless vantage point of the I-5 freeway, this is all that less inquisitive visitors see of it. Although there's little to attract visitors to industrial Tacoma or the small state capital of Olympia, all around are appealing mountains, forests and lakes. Popular weekend escapes include rural parts of Whidbey Island, and the beautiful San Juan Islands further north.
  
  Seattle Tourism
  Curved around the shore of Elliott Bay, with Lake Washington behind and the snowy peak of Mount Rainier hovering faintly in the distance, SEATTLE Washington has a magnificent setting. The insistently modern skyline of glass skyscrapers gleams across the bay, an emblem of three decades of aggressive urban renewal.
  
  Seattles beginnings were inauspiciously muddy. Flooded out of its first location on the flat little peninsula of Alki Point, in the 1850s the town shifted to whats now Pioneer Square, renaming itself after the Native American Chief Sealth hence Seattle. This was soggy ground, and the small logging community built its houses on stilts. As the surrounding forest was gradually felled and the wood shipped out, Seattle grew slowly until the Klondike Gold Rush of 1897 put it firmly on the national map. World War I boosted shipbuilding, and the city was soon a large industrial center. Trade unions, based around the shipworkers, grew strong, and the Industrial Workers of the World, or Wobblies, coordinated America's first general strike here on February 6, 1919.
  
  Since the beginning of the twentieth century, the Boeing airline corp. was crucial to the citys wellbeing, booming during World War II and employing one in five of Seattle Washingtons workforce by the 1960s. The prosperity that Boeing and more recent success stories such as Microsoft and internet shopping site have brought the city is obvious, reflected in a restored old center, a nationally acclaimed arts scene with vibrant movie and music industries, and a flood of coffee houses and excellent seafood restaurants. No longer overshadowed by the two big California metropolises, Seattle now regularly tops magazine surveys of desirable places to live, attracting migrants across the social and economic spectrum, which has led to both exponential growth and increasingly nightmarish traffic jams. As if to round out the turbulent decade, a February 2001 earthquake shook Seattle Washingtons foundations, and reminded its residents that they're just as prone to Pacific Rim tremors as their southern counterparts in the Golden State.
  
  Despite the dizzying expansion, Seattle Washington's more established neighborhoods remain distinctive, and Seattle Washington has a pleasantly down to earth ambience. However, its new found affluence jars uncomfortably with a visible street community of teenage runaways and homeless people, as well as a growing radical scene that splashed across the worlds newspapers and TV screens with the WTO trade conference in 1999, an event that saw black clad anarchists rioting amidst diplomatic protesters in turtle outfits.
  
  Seattle Washington - The City
  One of the main attractions in Downtown Seattle is the Space Needle, surrounded by busy stalls and cafés of Pike Place Market and the restored nineteenth century Pioneer Square, lined with restaurants and taverns. A stroll along the more touristy waterfront lets you enjoy fabulous views of Elliott Bay. At the Seattle Center in the north, the Space Needle presides over cultural institutions and carnival rides, as well as the Seattle's latest draw, the Experience Music Project. Several outlying districts are often livelier than downtown: Capitol Hill s cafés and bars are the heart of the hipster gay scene in Seattle, and the University District is a student area with inexpensive cafes and up-tempo nightlife.
  
  Spokane Washington Tourism
  The wide open spaces and drab little towns of eastern Washington don't prepare you for SPOKANE "spo-CAN". A few miles from the Idaho border, it is the region's only real city, and its scattering of grandiose late nineteenth century buildings built on the spoils of Idaho silver mines, sport some unexpectedly chic touches. But its heyday came and went, and shades of the dreary freight town it became still haunt the modern city. It's not a place to linger long, but its pleasant parks and unusual architecture can easily fill a day.
  
  Spokane's nexus is the hundred acre Riverfront Park, sprawling over two islands in the middle of the Spokane River. Originally planned by Frederick Olmsted of Central Park fame, the park was not laid out as specified until just before Spokane Washington hosted the 1974 Worlds Fair. Bisecting the park, the river tumbles down a series of rocky shelves known as the Spokane Falls, once a fishing site for native peoples and later the home of the first pioneers. Attractions include an ice-skating rink which shares space with the IMAX theater, the charming hand-carved Looff Carousel , and the Gondola Skyride cable cars summer Sun-Thurs 11am-8pm, Fri and Sat 11am-10pm; $4.75 which run above the falls from the west end of the park.
  
  Most of the relics of Spokane's early grandeur can be found several blocks southwest on W Riverside Avenue, where neoclassical facades cluster around Jefferson Street. The city's nineteenth-century highlights include the Davenport Hotel , the Clark Mansion, and the Tudor Revival Campbell House Tues-Sun 10am-5pm, Sun opens at 1pm; $4, part of the Cheney Cowles Museum at 2316 W First Ave., a regional history museum holding an impressive collection of artifacts.
  
  Tacoma Washington Tourism
  It's hard to avoid passing through TACOMA Washington on the main Seattle Portland route, and passing through may be all you wish to do, given the city's bad reputation as a military oriented industrial town with pervasive pollution and a toxic brew of chemicals still lingering in Commencement Bay. In recent years, though, the massive Tacoma Dome has become a major concert venue, and the downtown historical district has slowly been renovated, improving it somewhat. The two block long Antique Row on Ninth Avenue and Broadway features some great Victorian buildings worth perusing if you have the time.
  
  Olympia Washington Tourism
  Just a muddy little logging community when picked as the State of Washington's capital in 1853, OLYMPIA has never really become the metropolis its founders had hoped, instead continuing to remain somewhat a backwater locale despite government efforts to spruce it up. Its downtown area is small, with a few blocks of stores and restaurants presided over by the neo-Romanesque Old Capitol at Seventh Avenue between Washington and Franklin, home mainly to bureaucratic offices. Nevertheless, it's quite a busy little town, with state employees knocking around during the day and students from the Evergreen State College, a popular liberal arts school, pepping up the nightlife. There's a well-established Farmers' Market downtown at 401 N Capitol Way (April-Dec weekends, and occasional weekdays, north of which is a boardwalk with some decent places to dine.
  
  Washington state offices are arranged around neat lawns on the Capitol Campus, just south of downtown. It's worth taking a tour of the imposing neoclassical Legislative Building (daily 10am-3pm; free; ) completed in 1928 after more than three decades of work, if only to wonder at the sheer energy of the pioneers who set out to construct a close replica of the Capitol building in Washington, DC, in what was then a backwoods on the far side of the continent. Eight blocks south, the small State Capitol Museum , 211 W 21st Ave (Tues-Sun 10am-4pm, weekends opens at noon; $2; ), juxtaposes a restored dining room with displays of Native American basketwork and local natural history.
  
  A short drive south of Olympia Washington, tiny TUMWATER was Washington's first pioneer community, settled in 1845 by a group that included Bing Crosby's grandparents. Its name comes from the tumbling water of the Deschutes River, which is still used at the Olympia Brewery , Schmidt Place and Custer Way off I-5 exit 103 tours Mon-Sat 9am-4.30pm free. As the last remaining national brewery in the region (ironically producing Rainier and Henry Weinhard brews, two of its former rivals, which were swallowed up by current owner Miller Beer), the Olympia complex overlooks Tumwater Falls , now part of a park but once a rich salmon-fishing site for the Nisqually tribe.
  
  Yakima and Toppenish Washington Tourism
  The agricultural hub of YAKIMA Washington is rather grim terrain: the railroad yard is pretty much its aesthetic high point. Though its attractions are few, it is an excellent base to visit the tasting rooms of the award-wining wineries scattered throughout the Yakima Valley for information call the Yakima Valley Wine Growers Association, tel 1-800 258-7270. The only appealing part of downtown Yakima is among the brightly painted railroad cars at Yakima Ave at N First Street, where Track 29 houses a small assortment of shops and food stalls.
  
  Wine tour maps, as well as lodging and dining information, can be found at the visitor center, 10 N Eighth St Mon-Fri 8.30am-5pm, also summer weekends 9am-4pm; tel 509 575-3010 or 1-800 221-0751. Greyhound stops nearby at 602 E Yakima Ave. Motels and diner-type restaurants abound along N First Street. Located in the old train depot is America's first brewpub, Grants Brewery Pub , 32 N Front St. tel 509-575-2922, which serves quality hand-crafted ales and tasty pub food, just as Gasparettis, 10 N First St tel 509-248-0628, provides solid, affordable Italian fare. Santiago's , 111 E Yakima Ave tel 509 453-1644, is a decent Mexican restaurant, but for the real thing, super cheap, check out Salsita Antojitos Mexicanos , N Second St at Yakima Ave tel 509-425-9515. There is camping across the Yakima River on Hwy-24 at Sportsman State Park tel 509-575-2774 or 1-800-562-0990.
  
  Twenty miles south of Yakima Washington, TOPPENISH, the main town on the Yakima Indian Reservation, has a Wild West feel enlivened by buildings with historic Western murals. The visitors center , 11 S Toppenish Ave tel 509 865-3262, supplies brochures on the murals and has a list of local hotels. The modern and comfortable Toppenish Inn Motel, 515 S Elm St tel 509 865-7444 or 1-800 222-3161; $50-75, is the best choice, and there are also a few good Mexican restaurants, notably Los Murales , 202 W First Ave. tel 509 865-7555. In nearby Sunnyside, Snipes Mountain Brewery and Restaurant, 905 Yakima Valley Hwy tel 509-837-BREW, serves great regional food and wine.
  
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  Washington State Tourism: Seattle Tourism, Seattle Hotels and Destination Information Websites.
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