Pacific Northwest Travel Guide
While I’m a Northeast girl through and through, I’ve got a major soft spot for the Pacific Northwest. The nature is incredible and easily accessible, the climate is mild with a winter that isn’t bone-chillingly cold, and let’s be real, hipster food, drink, and activity abounds.
Lucky for me, my brother and one of my besties live out in Portland, Oregon so I have a great excuse to visit often. Dan and I took a week last fall and spent time in Seattle, Portland, Mt. Rainier National Park, and Olympic National Park, and I racked up a solid list of things I’d recommend along the way.
Here’s my Pacific Northwest Travel Guide:
Seattle
We flew in and out or Seattle but didn’t actually spend a ton of time in the city itself. We had a solid day of exploration though and even lucked out with some sunny (mostly, at least) weather. Here are a few things we enjoyed:
Pike Place Market: Dan and I had never done the tourist thing in Seattle so we started here, which I found to be a great intro to the city. We explored the market for a while, ate breakfast at The Crumpet Shop and followed it up with a post-breakfast snack (isn’t vacation the best?) at Piroshky Piroshky, and checked out The Seattle Gum Wall, which I found to be…kind of gross? I also bought a lovely ocean wave necklace from a local artist because jewelry is my favorite souvenir to buy.
Space Needle: We found out when we got here that it was $35 a person to go to the top and quickly decided that it wasn’t something that we needed to do. We settled for the views underneath, but I had a few Seattleite friends recommend Columbia Tower and Kerry Park for views that are apparently just as good.
Olympic Sculpture Park: This was fun to walk through and right on the waterfront so we were able to take a little break afterwards and breathe in some ocean air.
Cloudburst Brewing: We always seek out local breweries whenever we travel and this little microbrewery was great.
Mt. Rainer National Park
A cool thing about Seattle is that it has three National Parks within a few hours driving distance. We didn’t have quite enough time to hit all three, but we did make it to two, including Mt. Rainer, which quickly made it to the top of my favorite National Park’s list. I looooooved this park.
Our home base for park exploration was Olympia and I found it to be a good jumping off point and just a cute little town in general. We stayed at this Airbnb which was only about an hour and a half drive to Rainer and it had a hot tub out back—great for post-hike soaks.
Skyline Trail: A friend of mine recommended this hike and it was incredible. Truly one of the best hikes of my life. She sold it to me as having epic panoramic views the entire time and she wasn’t kidding. It was a challenging hike for sure, but the scenery was absolutely stunning. We lucked out with clear weather that day so it may not be as magical on a cloudy day, but man, if the weather is cooperating, I can’t recommend it enough.
Olympic National Park
This park was different than a lot of National Parks I’ve been to in the sense that you don’t necessarily drive into the park and start exploring from a central area. There isn’t a road that goes through it, rather you have to drive a full loop around the entire Olympic Peninsula because the main attractions are pretty spread out. While we were able to drive it all in a day, it was a LONG day (13+ hours in the car), so I’d definitely recommend splitting it up into a few days if you can.
Ruby Beach: This was our first stop and probably my favorite part of the park (no surprise there, the ocean always wins for me). It was so beautiful and expansive with a crazy amount of driftwood everywhere. Plus we met a couple who were on a road trip with their cats who they were walking around on leashes on the beach. All of my loves in one!
Hoh Rainforest: Did you know that there’s a rainforest in the state of Washington? I didn’t, and I was pretty excited to see it. We started the drive in and just about when everything started to look like Fern Gully, we got to a road block that informed us that the road to the rain forest was closed for construction. Ugh. What lesson did I learn though? Always check National Park Twitter before heading out because it’ll give you important updates that can save you lots of time.
Sol Duc Hot Springs: If I’m being honest, this place was…weird. It reminded me a bit of the baths in Budapest but minus the grandeur. It was basically a number of hot mineral spring pools heated to different temperatures. A soak in a hot spring is always nice so I won’t totally knock it, but I also wouldn’t go out of your way to try it out.
Hurricane Ridge: We were losing daylight pretty quickly by the time we made it up to Hurricane Ridge but we got there with enough time to catch an incredible sunset and crack a bottle of wine.
Portland
Out of any US city, Portland, Oregon is the one that I’ve visited the most. It has some of the most beautiful parks right within city limits, easy day trips to even more epic nature (so many waterfalls!), great shopping, awesome breweries, and truly my favorite food of any American city. These are some of my favorite Portland things compiled from my last few visits:
Where to Eat in Portland, Oregon: I’ll start here because this city absolutely crushes it. ¿Por Qué No? is so, so good for Mexican, Canteen is where I was introduced to the “bowl” and is my fav healthy/hippie place (get the Portland Bowl), Lovely’s Fifty Fifty is A+ for pizza and so is Virtuous Pie for vegan pizza, Shalom Y’All is an amazing Israeli street food spot, and Pine State Biscuits is great for breakfast.
What to Do in Portland, Oregon: Mt. Tabor Park is nice to walk around and has some great views of the city, it may be touristy but when the roses are in bloom, The International Rose Test Garden is actually really worth visiting, one of the largest “urban forests” in the US, Forest Park is unreal and has great hiking trails, the Portland Aerial Tram is really cool to take at sunset to catch beautiful views of Mt. Hood, the soaking pool at Kennedy School is a great and cheap place for a soak, and for breweries I enjoyed Ex Novo the most on our recent trip, but I want to do a more extensive beer tour on our next visit.
Day Trips from Portland, Oregon: Sauvie Island has some nice public beaches and the floating house community there is basically my dream life, the Columbia River Gorge is beautiful to drive through and has some amazing waterfalls like Multnomah Falls and Latourell Falls (which I personally enjoyed more), we also trekked out to Hood River and had a great lunch and solid beers at Pfriem Family Brewers and then a glass of wine at Marchesi Vineyards & Winery, and of course the coast is only about an hour and a half from Portland and Cannon Beach and Cape Kiwanda are great to visit.
A special thanks to my travel buddies: My brother Sean and his girlfriend Meredith (middle) and my husband Dan (right). And that’s me on the left of course, in awe of the beautiful Oregon nature.
