Explore Washington State
Washington State Destinations
Washington State packs more geographic variety into one state than almost anywhere else in the country. In a single weekend, you can wake up to ocean fog on the Pacific coast, drive through old growth rainforest, and fall asleep under the stars in the high desert east of the Cascades. That kind of range makes trip planning exciting, though it can occasionally feel overwhelming.
This section is where we have gathered every destination guide, weekend escape, day trip, and local find we have published across the state. Every post is written by someone who actually made the drive, not a sponsored itinerary or filler content. Real trips, real opinions, real Washington.
We cover all corners of the state: the wild beaches and rainforests of the Olympic Peninsula, the ferry accessible islands of Puget Sound, mountain towns like Leavenworth and Winthrop in the Cascades, the wine country and wide open spaces of Eastern Washington, and the day trip destinations within easy reach of Seattle. Whether you are planning a family vacation, a solo road trip, or a quick weekend getaway, you will find something worth bookmarking here.
Browse recent posts below, or use the county and city tags on any post to find more content from a specific area. Washington rewards the curious traveler and there is always another destination worth discovering.
Grand Coulee Dam's laser show runs nightly through September 30. When to go, how to tour it, where to get the best view, and what the dam cost the river.
The bay doors are open and a forklift is backing a half ton bin of grapes toward the crush pad. Someone in purple stained gloves is pulling stems off the sorting line. The destemmer is running, the air smells like fermenting juice and diesel, and off to one side a fresh barrel of press juice...
Washington packs more variety into one state park system than almost anywhere in the country. In a single day you can walk beneath old growth cedars on a foggy island, then drive east and stand at the lip of a desert canyon carved by Ice Age floods. With 146 parks to choose from, though, the...
Most people picture Pride in Washington as one Sunday in late June, downtown Seattle, the parade down Fourth Avenue. That day is real, and it is the biggest single event in the state. It is also a small slice of what actually happens here. Pride season in Washington runs from the first weekend of June...
The Bainbridge Island ferry pulls away from Colman Dock and clears Elliott Bay in about ten minutes. If you are standing on the outdoor deck when it does, you get the full Seattle skyline receding behind you and the Olympic Mountains ahead. It is one of the best views in Washington State and it costs...
The Saturday Verdict: Handle the icons fast, then go find the neighborhoods. Most lists of things to do in Seattle hand you the same six attractions and call it a city. Pike Place, the Space Needle, a harbor cruise, done. That is the airport flyer version of Seattle, and it is the least interesting day...
Washington joined the Union as the 42nd state, so here are 42 fun facts to match: the only state named after a president, a Bigfoot refuge, a full size Stonehenge, and more.
There are 14 Columbia River state parks Washington has designated along its shores, and most visitors only know a few of them. The Columbia runs more than 300 miles through the state, from the Canadian border to the Pacific coast, and each park on its shores is completely different from the last. What makes this...
The Saturday Verdict: Worth it. But your real options are smaller than the search results suggest, and a couple of them disappeared in the last year. Two historic lodges. Two drive up campgrounds one that takes reservations. One year round campground that turned into a backcountry hike when a bridge was condemned in April 2025....
Saturday Verdict: Worth a Saturday for the drive and a hike. Worth a weekend if you fish, float, or camp. The Yakima River Canyon is the 25-mile stretch of State Route 821 that connects Ellensburg and Yakima through basalt cliffs and high desert. Most people on I-82 between Seattle and the Tri-Cities have never turned...
Have you ever had a place entirely to yourself? I pulled into the Fort Simcoe Historical State Park parking lot on a September afternoon and found it completely empty. Not a single other car. For a park that preserves one of the few surviving frontier forts from the 1850s in the Pacific Northwest, that kind...
The Saturday Verdict: Worth it. But plan to stay overnight. Visiting Hoh Rainforest means stepping into the wettest place in the contiguous United States. 140 inches of rain per year. Sitka spruce trees over 300 feet tall wrapped in so much old man’s beard lichen they look like something from a film set. Roosevelt elk...
