Cascadia
Why It's Worth a Visit -
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The dramatic coastline of Cascadia is one my favorite places in the US.
The ragged rock cliffs, churning ocean coves and moody weather are unmatched.
(Cape Disappointment, true to it's name, is one of the foggiest spots in the country!)
Add to all that the many eponymous cascading waterfalls, picturesque lighthouses, the calm of the deep, moss covered forests, and the lively culture of
Seattle & Portland and you have a travel destination that's hard to beat.
The coast also makes for an amazing Roadtrip, even on a budget.!
CHECK OUT CASCADIA's...
The name Cascadia was first used by a town in Oregon in 1890. It referenced the Cascade Rapids, which in turn got their name from botanist David Douglas (for whom Douglas Firs, which can live up to 1000 years, are named.) Douglas wrote of "cascading waterfalls" of the Columbia River Gorge in 1825 during his Northwest expedition. In 1972 the term Cascadia was applied to the whole region in a geological textbook, and the name stuck.
@ a glance essentials:
Best Local Expression: You may have heard the term Muckety-mucks used with a negative connotation for 'important'
people, the phrase is an alteration of the regional Chinook word muckamuck (which literally means plenty to eat.)
But if someone calls you a Filthy Mucky-Muck don't be offended, in Cascadia filthy= very good.
Cascadia, or the Pacific Northwest, consists of the the upper northwest corner of the
United States. The Bio-region Cascadia actually starts in British Columbia, Canada and
extends south and east all the way through Idaho but for our purposes it will refer to just the
states of Washington and Oregon.
The region has been inhabitant since at least 9000 BCE, and was home to over 100 Native American tribes. It was first discovered by Europeans in 1774. Developed in large by fur tycoon John Jacob Astor in 1813 (the eventual name sake of Astoria, WA,) the Cascadia region was once consider an independent entity by the founding fathers; John Adams called it the "empire of Astoria." Over the years there have been calls by the Cascadia Movement, advocating for the independence of the entire Bio-region (pushing for succession from both Canada & the US.)
Fun Fact - There are some odd laws in the books in Cascadia. In Myrtle Creek, Oregon boxing with a kangaroo
is prohibited. InWashington you can't buy a mattress on Sundays, you can be fined $300 for riding an ugly
horse in the town of Wilbur, and in Skamania County it's illegal to kill Bigfoot.
The region is exceptionally wet, with around 200 cloudy days a year, creating a beautiful, unique, and very green environment.
Must Try Local Cuisine:
Wild Sockeye Salmon, Dungeness Crab, Geoducks & Oysters ▪️ Walla Walla Sweet Onions
Caveman Blue Cheese (aged Oregon caves) ▪️ Filberts (Hazelnuts - so good Nutella sources them) .
Almond Roca - a 100+ year tradition of buttery toffee ▪️ Washington Apples
Huckleberries, Rainier, WA Cherries & Oregon Marionberries (a type of Blackberry)- All great in pies!
📍 The Hoh Rainforest in Olympic National Park | WA - the only temperate rainforest in the continental US
📍 Out 'n' About Treehouse | Cave Junction, OR - a Treehouse Motel and Treehouse-building School.
📍 On Vashon Island | WA there is Bicycle stuck high inside the trunk of a Tree that's grown up around it
📍 A Bridge for Squirrels, built 6 yards above Olympia Way Road | WA in 1963 because so many squirrels where being hit by cars.
📍 In Maryhill, WA there is a perfect replica of Stonehenge
📍 The Way of The Bird King Thomas Dambo's Troll Statue series are scattered across the region
Surprising Finds:
Fun Fact - To get Point Roberts, WA you may need a passport. To go
by land you have to cross through Canada; the Point is isolated on
the tip of the Tsawwassen Penninsula, Vancouver.
Bird King Troll
My Favorite Spots:
📍 The Painted Hills | OR - spectacularly colorful striped landscape in the high desert
📍 Halls Hill Labyrinth Lookout | WA - a garden with Buddhist prayer wheel & elaborate mosaic labyrinth
📍 Elandan [Bonsai] Gardens | WA - a Bonsai Museum with trees up to 1000 years old accented with rock sculptures set among
ponds & waterfalls
Natural Hot Springs like:
📍 Olympic Hot Springs | Port Angeles, WA - rustic alkaline hot springs on the bank of Boulder Creek in the rain forest. 📍 Bagby Hot Springs | Clackamas County, OR - with 136°F waters in hollowed out cedar log tubs set in the forest 📍 Cascadia Soda Springs, Cascadia | OR - once a popular health destination and now a secluded park 📍 Juntura Hot Springs Juntura | OR - along the Malheur River
The many creepy Ghost Towns scattered about. Oregon alone has over 200! (the most of any state.) Some standout are:
📍 Northern State Hospital Farm | Sedro-Woolley, WA - a former farm staffed by mental patients that is now a public park 📍 Cloverland | WA - from the early 1900s; at it's peak, in 1910 it had a mere of 400 people. 📍 Elberton | Garfield, WA - 📍 Okanogan Highland Ghost Towns | Molson, WA - former Old West mining hubs 📍 Friend Ghost Town | Dufur, OR - a railroad town abandoned since the 1930s. 📍 Ryan’s Camp most popular in OR 📍 Barron Ghost Town | Winthrop, WA - a gold rush town that only lasted 2 years before being deserted
Nearly Always Attractions . . .
Unusual Cemeteries & Graveyards...
📍 Farr Cemetery | WA - also called Old Pioneer Cemetery; hidden in the woods, local lore claims it's a graveyard of early
wagon-train pioneers & settlers
Historic Churches & Chapels...
📍 The tiny Wayside Chapel in Monroe, WA that can accommodate a max of 8 worshippers at a time 📍 Nearly as small & just as quaint, Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Vesper, OR 📍 Tualatin Plains Presbyterian Church Hillsboro, OR- a beautiful Gothic church built 1878 📍 St. Paul’s Cathedral, Yakima, WA 📍 Advent Christian Church in John Day, OR
📍 The Brautigan Library of UNPUBLISHED MANUSCRIPTS | Vancouver, WA - (Anyone can submit their work.) 📍 The Tualatin Public Library | OR has 14,000-year-old bones of a female mastodon, found near Nyberg Creek on display 📍 For cozy fireplace reading try Estacada Public Library | OR with glass mosaics in the entry and medieval-style labyrinth in the garden. On Wednesdays the have ukulele jam sessions and a Lego Club that meets once a month. 📍 Chetco Community Public Library | OR has an interesting piece of war history, a 400 year old Samurai sword gifted by the Japanese fighter pilot, Fujita as an apology for his bombing of Oregon in WWII
📍Terrible Tilly, the decommissioned Tillamook Rock lighthouse on an isolated rock island a mile off shore subject to such brutal sea conditions that no local was willing to help build the light and the workers had to be brought in from out of town in 1881 and kept sequestered so locals couldn't talk them out of the dangerous work. After it's decommissioning it was temporarily turned into the Eternity at Sea Columbarium (repository for ashes of the dead), and the Columbarium warned all interested parties that, “their second choice better be to be buried at sea.” The Columbarium is closed now too but there are still around 40 remains stored on the island.
📍 Heceta Head Lighthouse | OR - the strongest light on the Oregon coast, first lit in 1894, & one of the most photogenic 📍 The Mukilteo Lighthouse | WA - one of the few wooden lighthouses on the West Coast. 📍 Cape Blanco | OR - atop a wind-swept bluff of the Pacific Ocean 📍 Cape Disappointment Lighthouse & North Head Lighthouse | WA (both in the area known as the Graveyard of the Pacific for the 100s of shipwrecks off shore.) 📍 Coquille River Lighthouse | OR - built 1895 has a rather cool and unusual blocky design 📍 Cape Meares Lighthouse - built in 1890 it's the shortest light on the Oregon Coast, at only 38 feet tall, (but on a high cliff so additional height wasn't needed) and named for Captain John Meares, the first to sail into Tillamook Bay 📍 Yaquina Head Lighthouse - the tallest light in Oregon, 93 feet tall, built in 1873 & Yaquina Bay Light - from 1871, the only existing Oergon lighthouse with the living quarters in the same building as the light (open for self tours) [2 of the 11 lighthouses in Oregon] 📍 Cape Flattery Lighthouse - the most Westerly lighthouse in the continental US in located in the Olympic Peninsula | WA
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... And Awe-inspiring Waterfalls...
📍 Multnomah Falls | OR & Palouse Falls LaCrosse | WA - that both look like they belong in Middle Earth 📍 Willamette Falls | OR - the second largest by volume in the US (only Niagara is bigger) & Proxy Falls | OR 📍 Marymere Falls, Nooksack Falls, Spokane Falls & Colonial Creek Falls | WA
Most Known For:
📍 Seattle, WA - with the Space Needle & Pike's Place Fish Market
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📍 The Puget Sound - bay inlet from the Salish Sea, separating the U.S. from Vancouver Island
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📍 Portland, OR - home of Powel Books & the Columbia River Gorge
📍 Oregon City - the final stop for wagons on the Oregon trail. (Trail began in Independence, MO)
they have an Interpretive Center with interactive displays of pioneer life
Many Incredible Natural Wonders like:
📍 Crater Lake | OR - deepest lake in the US, known for deep blue waters inside a volcanic crater
📍 Hells Canyon | OR - the most penetrating gorge in North America, it plunges more than 7,900 feet
(almost 2,000 feet deeper than the Grand Canyon) & Columbia River Gorge | OR
📍 Ginkgo Petrified Forest | WA - one of the largest petrified forests in the world
📍 Caves & Lava Tubes like Ape Cave | WA - the longest lava tube in the continental US, (2.5 miles),
Marble Caves, Lava River Cave & Redmond Caves - a sprawling network created by a single lava tube (All three in OR)
📍 The Cascade Mountains with Mount St. Helens & Mount Rainier - the tallest peak in the continental US
Seattle Space Needle
(both active volcanos.) Helen erupted in 1980, killing at least 57 people, with many more never seen again, and Rainier is classified as having a high eruption potential.)
Local Lore - Sasquatch sightings (of a huge human/ape like cryptid) in Cascadia go back to 19th
century. The North American Bigfoot Center is located in Boring, OR - dedicated to the 'history' of
the Squatch. There is even a non-ironic Bigfoot Trap in Jacksonville, OR built as part of a 1974
wildlife research project after a miner claimed to have found 18" humanoid footprints in the area
Cool Local
Festivals:
🔹 The cozy town of Leavenworth, WA in the Cascade Mountains, (modeled after a German village,) has one of the largest
Oktoberfests outside of Germany & a stunning Christmas Lighting Festival.
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🔹 Glide, OR hosts a Sasquatch Festival
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🔹 Daffodil Festival Parades are held every spring in Pierce County across four cities (Tacoma, Puyallup, Sumner & Orting, WA)
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🔹 The first Father’s Day was celebrated June 19, 1910, in Spokane by its creator, Sonora Smart Dodd whose father was a Civil
War veteran and single parent that raised six children
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Site Key:
Five Star Recommend
Make the Time!
Worth the Effort/ $
Not Really Worth It
Recommend Avoiding
Historical or Literary
Significance
World Heritage Site
WASHINGTON (WA)
WASH * ing * tun - /ˈwɑː.ʃɪŋ.tən/
Named after the first president of the United States, it's actually the only state named for a president. Not to be confused with Washington DC. - Known as the evergreen state for its evergreen abundant evergreen forests, (more than 50% of the state is forests.)
Birth place of Grunge & Starbucks, Washington has a vibrant music scene and coffee culture. Pickleball was invented in the state, as was Bike Policing, and the first Electric Bass Guitar. It was part of the Oregon territory until 1853, and then became the 43rd state in 1889.
In addition to the TWILIGHT series & SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE, both set in Seattle, HARRY & THE HENDERSONS was filmed in part at a WA coffee shop, the Espresso Chalet with it's iconic Bigfoot-shaped cookies (the cafe is easily recognizable by it’s giant 14-foot-tall smiling Bigfoot statue.) You can also visit the house used as Laura Palmer's home in TWIN PEAKS in Everett, WA.
OREGON (OR)
OR * u * gun - /ˈɔːr.ɪ.ɡən/
The etymology of Oregon is uncertain - there’s a 1715 French map that calls the Wisconsin river Ouaricon-sint and an English army officer that referred to it as “the river called by the Indians Ouragon” so it seems likely there was a Native American root name for the river that birthed the two cognate names, which would also be the parent word for the name of the State, but what it was or means is lost. There is also a theory that it's derived from the French word Ouragan, which loosely translates as hurricane or windstorm.
Known as the Beaver state for being rich in the rodents, (whose fur was prized in the 19th century,) Oregon boasts of a unique state flag with separate designs on the front & back; one side has the state seal emblem and on the reverse there's a golden beaver.
Oregon is a popular filming destination with classics like GOONIES, STAND BY ME & ANIMAL HOUSE on it's resume. On top of everything Portland has to offer, Oregon also boast the world’s Tallest Barbershop Pole, (72 feet,) the Prehistoric Gardens, (a prehistoric rainforest with life-size dinosaur replicas,) and the Largest Living Single Organism in the world; a Honey mushroom/ Armillaria Ostoyae, covering 2,385 acres of Malheur National Forest, believed to be between 2,400 and 8,650 years old.
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