Northwestern Washington: Places to Explore

The fishing port and college community of Bellingham is transforming itself from a grungy blue-collar area to the arts, retirement, and pleasure-boating capital of Washington's northwest corner. Downtown... Read more

Surrounded by snow-capped mountain peaks, Cashmere is one of Washington's oldest towns, founded by Oblate missionaries back in 1853, when the Wenatchi and their vast herds of horses still roamed free over... Read more

Long before the first American settlers arrived at the long, narrow lake, Chelan (sha-lan) was the site of a Chelan Indian winter village. The Indians would range far and wide on their horses in spring... Read more

On the Nooksack River and amid dairy farms, Ferndale is a pleasant town that has burst its seams in recent years as urban sprawl arrived. It has the best views of Mt. Baker in the county.... Read more

The Deception Pass Bridge links Whidbey to Fidalgo (fee-dal-go) Island. From the bridge it's just a short drive to Anacortes, Fidalgo's main town and the terminus for ferries to the San Juan Islands. Anacortes... Read more

The canyon village of Glacier, just outside the Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest boundary, has a few shops, cafés, and lodgings. Highway 542 winds east from Glacier into the forest through an... Read more

Morris Graves, Kenneth Callahan, Guy Anderson, Mark Tobey, and other painters set up shop in La Conner in the 1940s, and the village on the Swinomish Channel (Slough) has been a haven for artists ever... Read more

Leavenworth is one of Seattle's favorite weekend getaways, and it's easy to see why: the charming (if occasionally too cute) Bavarian-style village, home to good restaurants and attractive lodgings, is... Read more

Like Sedro-Woolley, Marblemount is a former logging town now depending on outdoor recreation for its fortunes. Anglers, campers, hikers, bird-watchers, and hunters come and go from the town's collection... Read more

This attractive riverfront town is the county seat of Skagit County and was founded in 1871. After a giant log jam on the lower Skagit was cleared, steamers began churning up the river, and Mount Vernon... Read more

On its way east from I-5, Highway 20 skirts Burlington and Sedro-Woolley, the latter a former mill and logging town now considered "The Gateway to the Cascades." Fronted by a huge black steam engine, the... Read more

Wenatchee (we-nat-chee), the county seat of Chelan County, is an attractive city in a shallow valley at the confluence of the Wenatchee and Columbia rivers. Surrounded by orchards, Wenatchee is known as... Read more

Before the cowboys came, the Methow Valley was a favorite gathering place for Indian tribes, who dug the plentiful and nutritious bulbs and hunted deer while their horses fattened on the tall native grasses... Read more