Basking in the Rain Shadow, No Umbrella Required

Northwest Travel Magazine, February 2007
By Roddy Scheer

With a climate more like Northern California than Western Washington, it’s no surprise that travelers taking in Pacific Northwest sights are flocking to the Olympic Peninsula’s rain shadow towns of Port Gamble, Port Townsend and Sequim for a little fun in the sun. Due to their location east of the Olympic mountain range — which effectively blocks precipitation coming from Pacific storms -- these towns get one-fifth the amount of annual rainfall as their neighbors to the west, yet offer all the amenities and natural beauty that visitors have come to expect on the Olympic peninsula.

Port Gamble

Most people begin their travels in the Olympic rain shadow with a visit to the company town of Port Gamble. Timber barons from Maine came west in the 1850s and set up the town around their mill at the mouth of the Hood Canal. The land grant they got from President Abraham Lincoln in 1853 -- now on display in the town’s museum below its still-operating old-fashioned general store -- made it official.

While the mill itself closed in 1995 after stocks of old-growth timber dried up, the current incarnation of Pope Timber Company has turned the town into a tourist destination par excellence. The elegant Victorian houses along the town’s main drag, Rainier Avenue, once housed the managers of the mill and their families, but today play host to a coterie of small shops designed to entice visiting tourists to while away an afternoon browsing. Those in search of that special something might just find it at Ms. Bee Haven Antiques (32180 Rainier Ave NE; 360-297-1804), Best Friends Antiques (32239 Rainier Ave.; 360-297-4848), Rugosa Rose (32319 Rainier Ave., 360-297-2604), or the Port Gamble Trading Company (32400 Rainier Ave., 360-297-7636).

When all the shopping is just too much, visitors can take a load off for high tea at the Tea Room (32279 Rainier Ave.; 360-297-4225), which offers a wide range chocolate and other sinful delicacies along with a wide selection of only the most proper teas. Or perhaps an ice cream cone from the Port Gamble General Store and Café (32400 Rainier Ave., 360-297-7636, http://www.genstore.net) would do the trick. The store, which originally stocked everything a mill employee could ever need, still manages to provide much more than bare necessities, including an assortment of souvenirs. Upstairs is the “Of Sea and Shore” Museum (www.ofseaandshore.com/museum/museum.php) showcasing an impressive collection of shells and other natural history relics from the Pacific Northwest and beyond. And downstairs is home to the town’s Historic Museum (open M-F in summer months only), which besides housing the Abe Lincoln land grant deed also features a re-creation of a 19th century Victorian parlor.

One of the best times of year to visit Port Gamble is late July, when the Kitsap Arts and Crafts Festival (360-297-2490, http://www.kitsapartsandcrafts.com) comes to town. The annual three-day event features hundreds of vendors and craftspersons, drawing art collectors and decorators from across the region. Held outdoors along the bluffs of Gamble Bay, vendors display and sell their wares from open air tents, making it one of the few outdoor shopping experiences available to Pacific Northwesterners – all thanks to the rain shadow, of course.

Port Townsend

Perhaps even more than Port Gamble, nearby Port Townsend feels like the town that time forgot. Originally settled in 1851, Port Townsend rose to regional prominence as a key port from which shipping companies could easily move goods east and west. The Union Pacific Railroad announced in 1888 that it would construct a rail link from Portland to Port Townsend, leaving trading rival Seattle out of luck. Eager to capitalize on the rail link, Port Townsend’s city fathers initiated a building boom to meet the increased demand for goods and services. But when plans for the rail link evaporated a few years later, so did the town’s dreams of becoming a major player in Pacific Northwest commerce.

But luckily for today’s visitor, the stately commercial buildings, not to mention elegant residential homes, from Port Townsend heyday remain on display for all to see. The town’s main drag, Water Street, looks like it was ripped right out of Seattle’s Pioneer Square, but here the brick warehouse buildings back right up to wharves on Admiralty Inlet, the ocean link between the Strait of Juan de Fuca and Puget Sound. These days commercial trading no longer dominates the town’s economy, but instead the hospitality business rules the roost. The many restaurants and hotels lining Water Street in downtown Port Townsend keep up their 19th century appearances quite nicely, while grand Victorian mansions dot the uptown bluffs.

Some of the more notable eateries in Port Townsend include the Belmont Restaurant and Saloon (925 Water St., 360-385-3007, http://www.thebelmontpt.com), where diners seated in lace-shaded booths or on dais overlooking Admiralty Inlet enjoy regional seafood delicacies, the Silverwater Café (237 Taylor St., 360-385-6448, http://www.silverwatercafe.com), which serves up creatively-prepared local cuisine in a more modern setting, and the Parisian-influenced Sweet Laurette & Cyndee's Cafe & Patisserie (1029 Lawrence S., 360-385-4886, http://www.sweetlaurette.com/cafe/), where breakfasts, brunches and lunches complement a diverse assortment of fresh-out-of-the-oven pastries and cakes.

No visit to Port Townsend would be complete without at least strolling by some of the historic Victorian mansions built by the region’s kings of industry in the 1880s. It seems that keeping up with, if not trying to surpass, the Joneses was a bit competitive back then. One of the more impressive examples is the Ann Starrett Mansion (744 Clay St. 800-321-0644, http://www.starrettmansion.com), uptown on the corner of Clay and Adams. Besides taking a tour of the house, visitors can spend the night in one of the well-appointed Victorian bedrooms.

Outdoor and history buffs alike will find something worth doing at Fort Worden State Park in Port Townsend. Fortifications, many of which are still in place, were constructed on the site between 1897 and 1911 in order to protect Port Townsend and Puget Sound from attacks by enemy armadas, none of which ensued. While Fort Worden is no longer a military installation, it does serve up miles of hiking trails and rocky beaches to keep hikers happy for days on end. The park is also home to the Port Townsend Marine Science Center (532 Battery Way, 360-385-5582, http://www.ptmsc.org), which features ongoing natural history and marine science exhibits, including the popular long-running display tracing the million-year history of salmon in the Pacific Northwest.

Port Townsend’s protected harbor offers lots of opportunities to get out on the water. Paddlers can rent and launch kayaks from PT Outdoors (1017-B Water Street, 360-379-3608, http://www.ptoutdoors.com). The Wooden Boat Foundation (380 Jefferson Street, 360-385-3628, http://www.woodenboat.org) offers its fleet of new and restored traditional wooden rowing boats for rent to willing oarsfolk by the hour or day. The foundation attracts thousands of wooden boat enthusiasts to the shores of Admiralty Inlet each year in early September for its renowned Wooden Boat Festival.

Meanwhile, Puget Sound Express Express (227 Jackson Street, 360-385-5288, http://www.pugetsoundexpress.com/) offers summer whale-watching and winter bird-watching excursions on its passenger boats departing from Port Townsend’s Point Hudson Marina. And fishermen can load up on flies and supplies in town at the Port Townsend Angler (940 Water Street, 360-379-3763, http://www.ptangler.com), and also sign up for a class, workshop or guided trip in the streams and tidelands around town and beyond.

For culture hounds, Port Townsend has lots to offer as well. In late July every year the Centrum at Fort Worden State Park hosts the Port Townsend Jazz Festival (223 Battery Way, 360-385-3102, http://www.centrum.org/index.php?page=Jazz-fest), featuring live performances by national jazz luminaries on idyllic stages overlooking Admiralty Inlet. And then in late September, the Port Townsend Film Festival (360-379-1333, http://www.ptfilmfest.com) gets rolling, showcasing the work of some of the best up-and-coming filmmakers from around the world over three days. Indeed, with so much going on, visitors may just never want to leave.

Sequim

Meteorologically speaking, Sequim (pronounced “skwim”) is the Olympic rain shadow’s ground zero, usually getting just 15 inches of rain a year. Sequim makes sure to draw attention to its vaunted position as the driest spot on the Olympic Peninsula by hosting an Irrigation Festival (http://www.irrigationfestival.com)
in early May every year. While it may seem like a joke to those on the wet western side of the Olympic mountains, the festival was first held in all seriousness 112 years ago by pioneering settlers in the region to celebrate the construction of an irrigation ditch to bring water from the Dungeness River to the “brown and parched prairie” of Sequim. Today the tradition lives on, and is marked by a series of events including parades, arts and crafts displays, design contests, royalty pageants, logging shows, strongman competitions, and other classic Pacific Northwest festivities.

But not only the soils are productive in Sequim these days. Birdwatchers and fisherfolk take note: the estuary of Sequim Bay, where the Dungeness River empties its glacially-silted freshwater into the salt-water of the Strait of Juan de Fuca, is known as one of the most biologically diverse spots in the Pacific Northwest, with migrant and resident avian and marine life feasting on the veritable cornucopia of nutrients. Human seafood lovers will particularly enjoy a visit to Sequim’s famous beach-front restaurant, the Three Crabs (11 Three Crabs Road, 360-683-4264, http://www.the3crabs.com), where locally-caught crabs, clams and oysters titillate the taste buds.

Where do locals go to walk off a big seafood lunch at the Three Crabs? The Dungeness Spit, of course, a 5 ½ mile long natural sand spit extending north into the Strait of Juan de Fuca. The spit itself is only a few dozen feet across at its widest, and the eastern side is off-limits to hikers as it is a part of a national wildlife refuge. More than 250 species of birds, 41 species of land mammals, and eight species of marine mammals have been recorded on or around the spit. It also is an important stopover for birds during migration. The 11-mile out and back hike to the end of the spit is one of the Pacific Northwest’s classic hikes, but even a short jaunt a few miles onto the spit is well worth an afternoon.

There is a lot else to do in Sequim, whether it’s getting face-to-face with wildlife at the Olympic Game Farm (1423 Ward Road, 360-683-4295, http://www.olygamefarm.com)
or playing a hand of blackjack at the S’Klallam tribe’s 7 Cedars Casino (270756 Highway 101, 360-683-7777, http://www.7cedarscasino.com). Many Sequim fans plan their visit there during July, when the town comes alive with the color purple during its annual Lavender Festival (877-681-3035, http://www.lavenderfestival.com). Tens of thousands of lavender lovers descend on Sequim to tour farms and walk up and down the festival street fair noshing on Olympic coast cuisine and ogling crafts from Northwest artisans. Could there be a better way to spend a weekend?

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While most tourists speed right by the Olympic rain shadow towns of Port Gamble, Port Townsend and Sequim, the few who do stop will never forget the sights they get to see and the gracious hospitality they are sure to encounter. And best of all, they can leave their umbrellas in the car.