Every place on Explore Washington State gets checked before it goes up, and checked again after. Here is how we do it, and what we will never do.

Somebody went

Our stories come from people who went. When a writer tells you a trail is muddy in April or a cafe runs out of pastries by ten, that is because they were there.

Big roundups are different, and we say so. A guide to every Christmas market in the state is built from each organizer’s own page, not from a visit to all of them.

We check the source, not a summary

Dates, hours and prices come from the place itself: the business’s own website, the event organizer, or the agency that runs the park. Not a review site, not a search snippet, not last year’s article.

If an event has not posted its dates yet, we say the dates are not announced. We do not guess.

Everything carries a date

Directory listings are dated when we check them, and coffee listings show that date right on the page. Articles we have rechecked show the date we last verified them. If you see an old date, check before you drive.

A closed sign on a map is not enough

Map apps mark businesses closed all the time when they are not. Before we call a place closed, we read its own website and social pages. A small business with a stale listing deserves better than a guess.

Park closures come from Washington State Parks

Closure and alert notices on our park pages come from Washington State Parks’ own notices, and a person reviews each one before it shows up on a page.

Fire season changes what we recommend

From June through mid October, we check active fire areas before we name a place in a new story or a social post. A great trail is not worth sending you into smoke.

We know who took every photo

Every photo we publish has a known source, and we credit our photographers. If we cannot tell where a photo came from, it does not go on the site.

Writers keep their words

When a contributor writes for us, the story stays theirs. We fix facts, add links and handle the page around it. We do not rewrite their voice.

Money does not buy coverage

You cannot pay your way into an article or up a list. Some articles carry affiliate links, and we say so. The full version is on our About page, and the affiliate details are on our affiliate disclosure.

Found something wrong?

Tell us. Hours change, places close, and roads wash out. Send us a note and we will fix it.

Remember, there’s always more to explore.