How Jennifer Hackett Is Creating the Most Comprehensive Recreation Maps in Washington

Meet Jennifer Hackett, the force behind Northwest Portal—a one-of-a-kind platform mapping all of Washington’s recreation!

Jennifer’s passion for making recreation accessible to everyone, leveraging GIS, and creatively compiling data from fragmented sources really stands out. Not only does she blend her expertise in resource management and mapping, but she’s built an incredible system to keep this data current—no small feat in a state as diverse and dynamic as Washington!

Episode Key takeaways:

• Centralizing Recreation Information: Jennifer started Northwest Portal to solve a real problem: public recreation info in Washington was siloed across countless agencies. Now, you’ll find trails, parks, campgrounds, boating, dog parks, and more in one cohesive, filterable map—benefiting locals and visitors alike.

• Staying Current is an Art (and a Science): From wildfire closures to seasonal road changes, Jennifer goes beyond automated updates. She monitors agency feeds, social media groups, and collaborates directly with land managers to keep the data fresh and accurate—showing real commitment to quality.

• Opportunities for Collaboration: The system she’s designed isn’t just for outdoor enthusiasts. Businesses, communities, and content creators (including podcasters) can embed custom maps or collaborate to highlight local assets, better connect visitors with experiences—and even support local economies.

If your work (or play!) involves exploring Washington or connecting communities, you have to check out what Jennifer has built at northwestportal.com.

Recreation Maps Jennifer Hackett Episode Transcript

Hello, friends, and welcome to the Exploring Washington State podcast. My name is Scott Cowan, and I’m the host of the show. Each episode, I have a conversation with an interesting guest who is living in or from Washington State. These are casual conversations with real and interesting people. I think you’re gonna like the show. So let’s jump right in with today’s guest. Welcome back to this episode of the Exploring Washington State podcast. My guest today is Jennifer Hackett from Northwest portal.

Scott Cowan [00:00:34]:

Jennifer, this I’m gonna kind of set the stage what little I know, and then we’re gonna let you fill in the blanks. Okay? So you’ve had an interesting career, but you’ve spent the last twenty some years in Ellensburg. And you went you you went to Central and you and you took GIS. Is that correct? Am I

Jennifer Hackett [00:00:55]:

So I got my resource management degree at Central, a master’s. And while I was there, I got into GIS. I’ve always loved maps, and I did

Jennifer Hackett [00:01:02]:

that as part of my coursework.

Scott Cowan [00:01:04]:

So Northwest portal is this interesting mapping site that I’m not gonna do justice to, but I wanna know we’re just gonna start off with this. What was your vision when you decided did you, like, wake up at 3AM ago, I’m gonna start a mapping site? Or what what led us to where we are today?

Jennifer Hackett [00:01:25]:

So it evolved a bit. When I moved to Ellensburg, I had two small children. I’m not originally from Washington State. My husband is. We met overseas. We were both foreign service. And when I moved here, we’re surrounded by great recreation, but it was really hard to find places to go and things to do. There was just we have a lot of different agencies and organizations doing the recreation.

Jennifer Hackett [00:01:47]:

There’s a lot of recreation in this county that isn’t even on maps. And I just wanted to know where can I take my kids to the playground to go for a hike, to go camping? And when I would try to find information, not having any local knowledge of Washington state, The the information I needed wasn’t there. I wanted to know where can I go nearby that has an easy hike that doesn’t require a pass at the trailhead? Where can we go camping that has a flush toilet because my kids did not like porta potties, that has a playground, that has a boat launch or fishing for my husband. You know, those those were the questions that I was asking, but the information was, well, here’s the Forest Service website. Here’s the National Park website. Here’s the state parks. Oh, and there’s DNR and there’s BLM and there’s the ports. And I just wanted to say, we wanna go to this area and what can we do? So a couple years after I moved here, I had taken a couple of years off and was now looking to get back into the work world.

Jennifer Hackett [00:02:42]:

My husband was retired, but I was too young to be retired, and my son was starting kindergarten. So I started the I, did the resource management program at Central Washington, and I love the program, but most of the jobs in resource management are government. And I spent sixteen years working for the defense department, and I wasn’t really that crazy about getting back into the government. And I love mapping. And I saw a lot of need. There was a lot of, stories that could be told by maps, but mapping is expensive and it just wasn’t getting told. So I started out working with local fishery groups, chambers, even law firms doing doing mapping. And as I got into this, I realized that one of the big misses was if you wanna tell the story of recreation.

Jennifer Hackett [00:03:30]:

So if you wanna be able to answer the question, where can I go out to do x that has y, you need to have everything in one place and that just didn’t exist? So there was a ton of data out there. There were also places not in the data, but the data was discombobulated. It was in different sources, even had different standards. One of the things I like to describe to explain this, is think of a horse camp. The forest service and the National Park Service both have horse camp as a category for their campground. But if you go to a national forest horse camp, it’s a place that you drive your rig to, park your horse rig, and then you ride your horses from there. So a a a motorized truck RV accessible campground that has facilities and horse trails nearby. If you go to a horse camp in the national park, it’s something where you park your rig down the trail 10 miles and then you ride your horse in.

Jennifer Hackett [00:04:28]:

So it’s the same term, but it’s a totally different experience. And so how do you gather all of this information then fill in the blanks, and then be able to take that and tell a story. So I started working with the Kittitas County Chamber on some mapping projects and focused on Kittitas County. And then I decided I personally wanted to know more about the state. So I expanded it out to cover the entire state. And I’ve had the fortune to work with the recreation and conservation office on a couple of projects. So they use our data for all of their analysis, or their their big analysis, and so they needed the gaps filled in. So, for example, if I pull in every city, county, agency, and nonprofit dataset, I’m not going to get the parks in Adams County because Adams County doesn’t have any data.

Jennifer Hackett [00:05:20]:

You know, the small the small cities don’t have data to pull. And so working with RCA, we were able to go and, like, do that scrub. What are we missing? And and and enhance the data. So we have information on about 20,000 recreation opportunities. So that’s trails, trailheads, boat launches, recreation lands. And so we have we have the area that covers it, the routes, the roads, the the trails. So put it all together and then what do you do

Jennifer Hackett [00:05:49]:

with it? And, my original model had been that I would do maps or provide data to organizations that wanted the information. I like doing the data more than I like doing the sales, so I was never as successful at

Jennifer Hackett [00:06:02]:

that as I’d like. Plus, a lot of

Jennifer Hackett [00:06:05]:

people are used to free data and even though you get what you pay for, it becomes a bit more challenging to get people to pay for quality data. And I do have some data clients, but I then started looking at how else can I get the information out? And that’s where the Northwest portal, which we original which was originally called Washington hometown was born. Okay. And so the idea is using maps as a portal to tell stories. So we have our own maps. We have an outdoors and off roading. We have a food tourism one that was not as well maintained right now. We have a dog map, a boating map.

Jennifer Hackett [00:06:37]:

So these all pull from the common dataset to tell unique stories, a winter map. We had apps until the end of

Jennifer Hackett [00:06:45]:

the year, but we decided that the, we

Jennifer Hackett [00:06:48]:

simply didn’t have the funding for those. Again, I’m not as interested in selling as I am in doing, and I kept hoping to find a partner who would be interested in working with me. And not finding that, I decided to focus on what I love instead of, you know, trying to do what I didn’t.

Scott Cowan [00:07:05]:

Alright. You and I connected over something that just changed. And and so I’d like to talk about that specifically because this this is gonna to me, this is an interesting thing. So the Fairfax Bridge, recently, Washington State Department of Transportation has deemed it to be unsafe for, foot traffic and or vehicles at this point in time. With no at the time that we’re recording this, there is no update. This may be a permanent condition. It may we don’t we just don’t know. But the minute that that was announced, your map became inaccurate Through no fault of yours, but it just, you know, the so how do you stay on top of changes like that that happen? You have a massive dataset.

Scott Cowan [00:07:54]:

So how do you how do you stay on top of the changes within the state of Washington?

Jennifer Hackett [00:08:05]:

So we do it a couple of different ways. So in the case of the Fairfax Bridge, I’m on a number of Facebook groups, which even though a lot of people kinda poo poo Facebook, a lot of people talk there. Yes. And also a lot of agencies and whatnot. And so I saw the announcements in the Evans Creek motorized group and the DNR pages about the bridge closure. And incidentally, my maps are now accurate. As of yesterday, the bridge is marked as closed. The trail heads that and trails that are only accessible from the bridge are marked as closed.

Jennifer Hackett [00:08:35]:

And there is a statement that says these are closed because the bridge is out and there is no alternate route, which is really important because a lot of people, particularly people who wanna use Evans Creek, keep talking about detours. The problem is that the detour crosses private land. Mhmm. The landowner is willing to allow residents to cross their property so they can access their homes, but they do not want the recreation travel to cross. Okay. And so a lot of people are very frustrated, but the fact is they private land owner has reasons for not wanting this traffic. They’ve historically had problems with with it. And so basically, I’m constantly keeping my files.

Jennifer Hackett [00:09:11]:

I’m on, you know, forest service watch list and whatnot. Our biggest closures are the, fires in the summer, and so I keep up on those. I go to NC Webb, and also because some fires don’t show up on NC Webb. I’m constantly looking for information about new closures. And then when there is a fire when there’s a fire, then I go and I say, okay. Here’s the fire. What agency’s recreation land is covered in that fire area? And some of these can be really complicated because each agency only reports fire closures for their own land. And so particularly in the North Cascades, we’ve had fires that have touched, National Park Service, National Forest, and DNR lands, and some Fish and Wildlife lands, all are closed.

Jennifer Hackett [00:09:55]:

So if you wanna know where you can go and what’s close to that area, you wanna know that area. But we have now four different sites that each update information differently. So I’ll go through. I’ll say these four different entities have land, and then I’ll go to them, their pages, their information, find the closures and map them. And then I kind of I have a little field where I can explain why it’s closed and where it’s updated. And then I go back periodically. So if I have anything shown as a temporary closure, I go back every couple of weeks or every month and say, is it still closed? So for example, we still have a bunch of closures in the North Cascades National Park from last summer’s fires. And so in May, at the beginning or I’ve just done the one for May, but mid May, I’ll be going back in and saying, are they have they reopened these? Other closures we’ve got, we have a closure up in, the Mount Saint Helens area.

Jennifer Hackett [00:10:47]:

The road to one of the, sites is was closed and so I’m constantly tracking that. And they updated to say it’s walk in so you can still get there. You have to walk in. I just did an interesting one. Have you ever been out to Damon Point in, Ocean Shores?

Scott Cowan [00:11:04]:

Oh, wow. One time a long time ago.

Jennifer Hackett [00:11:07]:

So this was a peninsula. If you went all the way down Ocean Shores, which is on the Northern Side of Grays Harbor, there was this absolutely amazing spit of land that went into the ocean. It was, you know, narrow, but it was incredible. You could park. There was just a tiny little DNR parking area at the entrance with private land on both sides. One of my favorite places in the entire state. I never got to the end of the peninsula because the times we went, our kids were always young. Mhmm.

Jennifer Hackett [00:11:32]:

And so one of us had to stay with the kids and it always ended up being me, so my husband got to walk out to the end. But even just sitting on the peninsula and we build sand castles with my kids, well, that’s washed out. In fact, DNR and the county has had to rescue people who walked out, in low tide and then got trapped. And so and and DNR has posted this amazing video showing the channel, and it’s a very active channel between that. So they’re closing the parking lot because the beach on either side of the parking lot is private, and you can’t get to the point. So I just note notated that as an update in my database this morning, and when I push out my May 1 updates, we’ll get that changed. We also do seasonal updates. So there’s a lot of things.

Jennifer Hackett [00:12:18]:

There’s campgrounds, roads, and trails that close on a regular sequence. Mhmm. And so if we know what that sequence is, we identify what months it’s closed and even down to the half month. So when the shell shoulder seasons, like, things will open mid April, mid May. And so we can go out and basically do a bulk update and say, okay. If it’s if it’s closed in March but not in April, then April 1, I’ll toggle the status from seasonal closure to open.

Scott Cowan [00:12:45]:

So let’s use for give me a let I’ll give you a a specific example. So let’s say, do you mark the North Cascades Highway as closed?

Jennifer Hackett [00:12:52]:

We don’t. Just because we’re not currently doing highways, we could. Okay. But so that that’s one that we we probably should do that, and we probably should do, the Chinook Highway.

Scott Cowan [00:13:07]:

Chinook. Okay.

Jennifer Hackett [00:13:08]:

But But things but things coming off of that would, you know, that are that are subject to a seasonal closure Mhmm. We would do. But there’s a lot of there’s a lot of campgrounds and trails. We also do seasonal motorized closures. I just fixed that up because a lot of agencies, their data is a little bit weird. So I might have, you know, you might have a block of trails that’s all closed and one trail that says on the website it has a seasonal closure and the other one doesn’t. And so I realized as I was doing my my my switch for this month that I had these weird gaps where where I would have a couple trails closed and open. So I actually called the range the Cle Elum Ranger Station.

Jennifer Hackett [00:13:43]:

It was nice enough to get somebody. They’re very understaffed right now and will be for the foreseeable future. But she identified that there’s only a legal closure in one area, and then there are other trails that the forest service website says they’re closed, but they’re not really closed. It’s just please please please don’t go on them, until the ground is dry. And so those trails we put in a comment that’s, you know, that said, please don’t use until dry because there’s a difference between a legal closure and a please be nice.

Jennifer Hackett [00:14:15]:

And then we do a

Jennifer Hackett [00:14:15]:

major scrub every year for this for the winter trails. And for winter, we do snowmobile trails in Washington, Idaho, and Oregon. Mhmm. And those ones we have contracts with a couple of mapping companies for that data. So we go through and we go through every agency and work with the clubs in Oregon and we do a major scrub on that on an annual basis. The, stuff in Washington state, we try to update but we’re

Jennifer Hackett [00:14:40]:

a very small organization, mostly me. And so we

Jennifer Hackett [00:14:43]:

don’t get to it all as often as we’d like. So we’re kind of relying on heads ups. And if we don’t get those, we may miss stuff.

Scott Cowan [00:14:52]:

Okay. I’m currently on your dog map. Mhmm. So I’m I literally just loaded the map up. I have it’s zoomed out just showing the state of Washington. I actually so where where is your data stored?

Jennifer Hackett [00:15:17]:

A little bit embarrassing, but I have a access database that I keep wanting to transition to something sophisticated. But you know what? I can program access. So I have an access date. I’ve twice tried to convert it, and both times I had people say, oh, this is great. We can do it. And then it didn’t work. The last guy’s like, oh, I’m gonna do all this thing in his grand. Then he wrote it as SQL, and I have to be able to click, you know, for options, I have to be able to change easily.

Jennifer Hackett [00:15:41]:

And he built it without us. Well, you can just do SQL commands, and it’s like, no. Yes. I could theoretically do it, but this is a huge database. Data management is the biggest piece. You didn’t give me the core piece of it. So yeah. So it’s just a lot of so it’s literally, it’s an access database and then I I don’t know if you know anything about GIS, but their shape files are the GIS component files and so points, lines, and polygons that I work with ArcGIS.

Jennifer Hackett [00:16:07]:

The reason and so what that lets me do is I can connect multiple. So I can map something as a trail and a line and an area if there sometimes something will have all three components to it.

Scott Cowan [00:16:18]:

Okay.

Jennifer Hackett [00:16:19]:

And I so I just have a database record. I just have a unique identifier in the database that ties to those pieces. I can also produce, you know, c s s, CSVs, Excel spreadsheets, KMLs, whatever you want. Data is data. And then I I have a script that combines all of that, meshes it together, cleans it up, adds filters. Because you’ll see in the database, there’s a ton of filters. Like, if you go to the dog map, you can say, I want a dog park that has a bathroom and a playground or a park that has an off leash area and and it’ll pop up those.

Scott Cowan [00:16:50]:

Right.

Jennifer Hackett [00:16:51]:

And so I have a script that says, you know, if if this criteria is met, put this two character diagraph in and that’s in the background. So we generate all of those. And then I use a company called Mapbox, which is is a mapping program, which I like because if you put stuff on Google Maps like people do, you’re stuck with Google Maps in the background and you’re laying stuff on top. So polygons look messy. You’re putting stuff over other stuff that’s not right. You know, the Google Maps does a horrible job with it with recreation. And so with Mapbox, I can control everything. So I push the data up into Mapbox, and then I can tell different stories.

Jennifer Hackett [00:17:27]:

So, for example, in the dog map, you’ll notice that I have a light green for recreation areas that don’t allow dogs because the national parks generally do not allow dogs except in very specific circumstances, and most fish and wildlife areas don’t allow dogs. On this map, I show all of the trails, but I color code the trails based on whether dogs are allowed, and I’m trying to think it. Dogs are allowed, or they’re not allowed, and I’d let no dogs on trail. And if I get my on leash off leash better, I might add a third color for that. Okay. So this map and on this map, dog parks are highlighted because that’s an important story. Now if you go to my off

Scott Cowan [00:18:06]:

roading map Alright. I’ll

Jennifer Hackett [00:18:08]:

go there. The only trails that I show are trails that are open to motorcycles, ATVs, or ORVs. The trails are color coded by those and roads are color coded by those specific categories. The filters are expanded for those activities and narrowed for other things so that you could really highlight and dig down, what you’ve got and so that you’re telling that story of of what you have. If you go to my summer map, the trails are coded by motorized or unmotorized and of course closed trails because to me on the summer map, I, as a hiker, would prefer to go on a trail where I’m not gonna run into a motorcycle, ATV, or Jeep.

Scott Cowan [00:18:48]:

No. Wait a second. I I’m not seeing summer. I’m seeing outdoors, off roading, Chase Northwest, winter sports, community, dogs, snowmobiling, and water sports.

Jennifer Hackett [00:18:58]:

Is that on the main page?

Scott Cowan [00:18:59]:

Hold on. Page.

Jennifer Hackett [00:19:03]:

So oh, because that yeah. Go if you go to north nwpmaps.com/adventure or nwpmaps.com, you’ll and click on the web maps you can access in your browser. You’ll see outdoors. And I have to fix that if my other page isn’t working. So go to nwpmaps.com and then click on the maps tab. Are you seeing that?

Scott Cowan [00:19:32]:

I am on the web maps?

Jennifer Hackett [00:19:35]:

Yes.

Scott Cowan [00:19:36]:

Okay. And I’m still not seeing the summer.

Jennifer Hackett [00:19:40]:

Oh, outdoors. I’m sorry.

Scott Cowan [00:19:41]:

Oh, outdoors. Gotcha. Okay. Now I’m seeing outdoors. Okay. Mistake. Yeah. So I have a couple questions.

Scott Cowan [00:19:47]:

I I warned you this would bounce around a little bit. Yeah. But you’ve got this number one, first question, is access still even supported by Microsoft?

Jennifer Hackett [00:19:54]:

Probably. Well, yes, sort of. I mean Okay. So I so so I have the offline version because I hate subscriptions.

Scott Cowan [00:20:00]:

Sure. Sure.

Jennifer Hackett [00:20:01]:

So not heavily supported. And eventually, you know, eventually, it’s either going to have to migrate or it’s gonna die, and I know that.

Scott Cowan [00:20:09]:

Okay. So so I would but here’s the thing. This is my takeaway. We we seem and I’m with you on the whole subscription thing because you like the way access is running right now, and then they you know, the vendor no no no shade on Microsoft, but you like the you like the software you’re using. And then they put in some new feature that you’re like, this this just That breaks my studio. You know? My beef is with Adobe and the changes.

Jennifer Hackett [00:20:37]:

Esri Esri is doing this. My ArcGIS software is dying, except I’ll still be able to use it. They want me to go to their their ArcGIS online, which is not only subscription, but it’s not 100% compatible.

Scott Cowan [00:20:48]:

Right.

Jennifer Hackett [00:20:48]:

And so I don’t wanna rebuild everything.

Scott Cowan [00:20:51]:

So about how big is your total database size?

Jennifer Hackett [00:20:58]:

So I have, about 20,000 or 30,000 records. There’s some of that that I’ll be able to clean up, you know, places that are no longer open. It’s got about 12 tables. So it’s not an impossibly large set of data, but it’s complex because I have because a lot of the way that things relate. So for example, for a place, I have information about the location. I have information about how it’s used. I have some tables that have that have that I I had to split some of that data out because I maxed out the number of columns you could have in Access. And I have a lot of what Access calls multi value fields.

Jennifer Hackett [00:21:38]:

So for example, for amenities, does it have a bathroom, a picnic shelter, a picnic table Right. Electric hookup, all of these different options that are trying to capture information across all of these different capabilities. And so I can go in and click those boxes because if I had to have a separate field for each of those, it would become impossibly logged. And then I also link in, so I connect every single record in my database is tied to the original source. So I can say, I got I mapped this location based on information from w w DFW’s phishing data layer so that I have that validity. Was this mapped by me off of Google? So not only can I credit back the data sources, which I think is really important Mhmm? But I also can evaluate it. So if I have a trail and somebody says, well, is this trail legitimate? I can tell you why I mapped it.

Scott Cowan [00:22:32]:

Okay.

Jennifer Hackett [00:22:34]:

So that’s it’s not incredibly complex. I just have never had the budget to go. And at this point, you know, I’m in I just turned 59 so I’m kind of looking at I enjoy this, this is a passion project but if I could find someone that was interested in taking it, I think it could be amazing. But I have decided that I I am not I do not want to spend my time trying to take it to the next level. So instead, I’m gonna focus on what I love and, hope that I can interest somebody in taking it over. But in the absence of that, it this will work for the remainder of the time that I wanna do it.

Scott Cowan [00:23:13]:

Okay. So you you your data then is overlaid on a Mapbox map.

Jennifer Hackett [00:23:20]:

Right. And what Mapbox does is Mapbox allows me to control app is over and under-layed. Mapbox allows me to control every single piece of this. So unlike, like, for example, if you put something over a Google map, you’re still gonna have the lands, the roads, everything on that in Google. So on Mapbox, I could turn off the things that I’m mapping. So I don’t want Mapbox to be using the open street make public lands data because my data is better. But I can use Mapbox for things like roads and rivers that are correct. And I actually had to play a game.

Jennifer Hackett [00:23:52]:

I actually have to overlay highway data because OpenStreetMap has a really weird way of classifying highways. So they basically classify highways as lanes. So there are roads that go through Seattle that they classify as major roads that appear way zoomed out.

Scott Cowan [00:24:07]:

Mhmm.

Jennifer Hackett [00:24:07]:

And there are mountain passes that are only one lane in each direction, like Chinook Pass, that that that you can’t actually show in Mapbox until you zoom in so you can’t show both ends because the Mapbox editor say that that’s not a major road. Yeah. It’s one of the only one of the only four passes across the Cascades in Washington state. So, anyway, so so kind kind of plain and tricky, but I can I can make this control? And then for each layer so for each of my maps, I can control what it is. So, like, those different that I talked about the the, trails being mapped differently. So on the off roading map, it’s the same trails data set, but I say, only show trails that have one of that have a motorized sport, and then these are the colors we’re gonna assign. And then on the outdoors map, I say only show trails that have summer activity, not the winter only trails, and these are the colors I wanna assign. So it gives me this amazing level of control.

Jennifer Hackett [00:25:03]:

I can have a single huge pool of data, and then I can direct it to each of these different pieces. And I can do maps. I’m working with WDFW or not WDFW, with Mid Columbia Fisheries on a watchable wildlife map under a WDFW grant. And so that’s an entirely another story that we’re customizing the information. It will have a Spanish language, but it’s all pulling off of the same common data.

Scott Cowan [00:25:27]:

Wow. We’re lucky this is a an audio only thing because I just got way down way distracted on your map. I’m I’m looking at the outdoors map. Right? Okay. And I’m I’m zoomed out. You know, I’m zoomed out a little bit. I mean, I got most of the state of Washington here in front of me. Mhmm.

Scott Cowan [00:25:48]:

Well, actually, all of it. And a little bit of BC, little Idaho, little Oregon. And up near the top East of Bellingham, there’s a road that goes out there. And when I click on it and doesn’t tell me I’m not clicking the right. So, oh, it’s the Mount Baker Scenic Byway.

Jennifer Hackett [00:26:03]:

Okay.

Scott Cowan [00:26:04]:

But there’s this little red it looks like the outline of a pepper. That’s what caught my eye. Okay. It’s just this little loop up near the Canadian border. And when I click on it, it’s the, you gotta zoom in. I started zooming in.

Jennifer Hackett [00:26:19]:

At the Copper Ridge Trail?

Scott Cowan [00:26:21]:

No. It was the, the Chilliwack Trail is what I was clicking on.

Jennifer Hackett [00:26:27]:

Okay.

Scott Cowan [00:26:27]:

And it you know, and so I’m gonna this is really interesting to me. So this trail remains closed between Chilliwack River cable car to the northern terminus due to hazards from following dead trees and other ground hazards resulting from wildfires. And then it says it’s in the North Cascades National Park in Whatcom County. The owner is NPS. It’s an official trail. No dogs. Trail length, 4.91 miles. Trail surface is natural.

Scott Cowan [00:26:53]:

Sports, hiking, hiker trail. And then you got location contributed by the North Cascades National Park. That’s a ton of data right there. And it’s I only reason I found it was because it looked like a it looked like a pepper outline to me. So I was curious, and I zoomed in. And but then as I zoom in, I start seeing I mean, the map just keeps going. I see all these trailheads and these camping sites. And then this, I zoom in on Boulder Creek Campground is closed.

Scott Cowan [00:27:25]:

It does not say why it is closed. Seasons for summer. So it’s out of season, and it’s out of season. But I guess what I’m trying to say is is at first glance, it’s a nice looking map of the state of Washington with a lot of data. But as I scroll in, I’m I don’t I’m I don’t wanna say overwhelmed, but I’m, like, very appreciative of the of the depth that you’re going to. This is this is fascinating.

Jennifer Hackett [00:27:53]:

Right. And you actually if you click on that little pink polygon to the side, you’ll see so so North Cascades National Park has, all of these zones for these cross country zones and several of them are closed are still closed because of the fires. K. And that’s what the that’s what those and that’s one of the biggest challenges. You talk about kind of overwhelming. One of the biggest challenges with these maps, and I’ve played around with the design, is how to present the information without completely worthless. So on that map, you see the regional trails and the public lands and when you first start And then as you zoom in, we show you the state parks because that’s kind of major, kind of some of the and some of the major forest or or national park stuff. And then as you zoom in farther, you start getting more like I show paid boat launches before I show primitive boat launches.

Jennifer Hackett [00:28:50]:

But it’s how do you layer stuff so that it’s not so overwhelming that you lose the story? And I make sure so now I have it set up so that places that are closed show up later than places that are open so that if Oh, yeah. If it’s off season, you’re not seeing these, you know, the closed things up top. But it’s a kind of a it’s a design thing to try to figure out how to be meaningful without being, you know, what how wide should the lines be. I’ve tried to pick the colors so that they are that they are not overwhelming and they look nice, but they’re comprehensible if you’re color blind. So Mhmm. I’m not perfect at that, but I try to work with different intensities and stuff. So really important pieces of information will look different, will will will be distinguishable even if you have color blindness. But I like greens and reds, so how do you balance that out?

Scott Cowan [00:29:46]:

Well, so this is this is what did I just see here? I’m I’m having a squirrel moment. Oh, okay. So I I saw this thing in at the the graphic was for a a wine a a vineyard. And I was like but I looked at it, and when I first zoomed in, I was like, what is that? And it’s oh, it’s grapes. This is really so let me ask you this. I’m zoomed in on kind of Waterville area. Alright?

Jennifer Hackett [00:30:14]:

Okay.

Scott Cowan [00:30:16]:

And the plateau up there is lots of lots of straight lines. Lot of, you know where are you getting, like, Road 8 Northwest and Road 6 Northwest and Road 3 Northwest?

Jennifer Hackett [00:30:29]:

So so this area is in, give me just a second. So this area is in, Douglas County. Douglas County allows WATVs on street legal roads or WATVs on county roads with a speed limit of 35 miles an hour or less.

Scott Cowan [00:30:47]:

So I

Jennifer Hackett [00:30:47]:

use the Douglas County roads layer, and identified those roads that met the criteria. I don’t map all county roads, but I’ve got forever and we have over 10,000 miles of WATV roads map. So across the entire state of Washington, there’s 10,000 miles of county roads the WATVs are allowed on. And WATVs are a special class, so those are the big ATVs. They have a green license plate. This is a state law that says counties can allow them if they choose on roads less than 35 miles an hour. And so this means that you can take your WATV and you can ride around. And some counties have a lot of them.

Jennifer Hackett [00:31:25]:

Douglas and Spokane have a ton of places you can ride. Kittitas is a little tricky because we have w a not WATV ordinance, but the the road so, basically, you have 50 mile an hour roads, and then you might have a 35 mile an hour county road. But the annoying thing is that before you get to the state roads where you lands where you can ride your WATVs, you have to cross forest service land, and the forest service does not consider WATVs to be street legal. So you can’t ride it on that forest service piece. And so the connections get worse. And so in some places, these roads can be major riding opportunities, and in some places, they’re they’re not significant. But every county so I work with a UTV Adventures is a is a is a page for UTVers and they came up with a list of all the cities and counties that had WATV ordinances and then I work with their list and then I go I read the the rules in their list, which can be named roads. It can be roads.

Jennifer Hackett [00:32:23]:

You know, different counties have different definitions. And then I map based on that, and then we integrate that data into the maps. And as I said, we’ve come up with over 10,000 miles of those roads. And then I work with the, people from the WATV Association are working to identify some loops that you can make, kinda highlight writing opportunities. And so we’ve worked with them to map out some of these loops that are just, you know, informally designated, but they’re legal because they’re all on approved rows.

Scott Cowan [00:32:53]:

I’m I zoomed in on my house, which isn’t on your map.

Jennifer Hackett [00:32:56]:

And, you know, if you toggle to air photo, you can see the air photo and you can actually see your house. So we have the we have a toggle we allow you to toggle between the standard. And on the air photo view, if you’re if you click on an area that’s recreation lands, it’ll actually still pop up and tell you the rec underlying recreation land, but it doesn’t show it. The only polygons areas we show on the air air photo view is we do have the closure areas in a semi transparent so that you can see those.

Scott Cowan [00:33:24]:

Yeah. I’m looking because we live, by the Sage Hills Trail.

Jennifer Hackett [00:33:28]:

Mhmm.

Scott Cowan [00:33:28]:

And,

Jennifer Hackett [00:33:29]:

And I don’t have you’ll notice there is a new trail system, mountain bike trail system in Wenatchee in the Wenatchee area, and I don’t have those yet because I have not been able to get the data. Uh-huh. I can fit maps, but when I last tried to map at the air it wasn’t visible on the air photos yet, and I wasn’t I haven’t been able to get anybody to give me the actual GIS data. And so I I didn’t have a way to map that, but I’m hoping to get those integrated. But the Sage Hill Trails are a great and they’re a great example of the value of what we’re doing because people coming out to that area, they go to the forest service and they see the trails, but the best trail systems outside of Wenatchee are the Sage Hill, Conservancy Trails. And you would have to know to go to the Sage Hill site. But on our map, if you’re just looking for where I can hike, you can see those opportunities. And we’ve worked with the Sage Hill Conservancy to make sure we’re mapping the information correctly, that we have the right uses, and that we have the latest data.

Scott Cowan [00:34:28]:

This is fascinating. This is okay. K. That’s standpoint. Okay. So you said you used to have apps, but you’ve decided just because of the,

Jennifer Hackett [00:34:45]:

Yeah. The cost.

Scott Cowan [00:34:46]:

The cost. So how how how should people access your content? I mean, you know, visit the website in in which we’re gonna leave a link to, obviously. But but what’s the walk me through, how you think the content is best, served.

Jennifer Hackett [00:35:08]:

So you can access it through the website. We would like to work more, you know, find more partners because you can actually link to or embed our maps. And so let’s say, for example, that you did a podcast about a location or an area. Mhmm. You could actually zoom into that area and even use our search features to do it by name. So if you sir you can search by name, you can zoom in, and then you could copy that URL and you could share that URL and then people going to the, going to your page can see where it is. And we’d like we’ve got a little bit of this. We’ve got a lines on wines does this.

Jennifer Hackett [00:35:47]:

We we collaborate with them, so we add a link to all of the wineries that they talk about on their show.

Scott Cowan [00:35:52]:

So when

Jennifer Hackett [00:35:53]:

you click on the winery, you get it. And then they load the map with all of the places that they have shows that they’ve done podcasts for on that. We do I I’ve been a little bit slow. I’ve been you know, last fall, I really said I need I’m putting too much effort into doing things I don’t like, and I need to refocus and redefine what I’m doing. And so I’ve been working on that. That’s when I made the difficult decision to drop the apps. We’ve started to do some geo PDF maps. We did some for the winter, and we’re working on summer ones.

Jennifer Hackett [00:36:25]:

But I was doing blog posts, and I wanna get back to that. So when I do a blog post, the blog post will have the text and it’ll actually have an embedded map with the places in the blog post and then you can open the map full frame and navigate. You know, the apps were fun, but like I said, they just I was spending all of the time I did sales, which I don’t enjoy, just making enough money to cover the app hosting fees. And I was like, this doesn’t make any sense.

Scott Cowan [00:36:50]:

So I am on Joy Rides.

Jennifer Hackett [00:36:55]:

Mhmm.

Scott Cowan [00:36:56]:

And I’m on the Lopez Island.

Jennifer Hackett [00:36:58]:

Mhmm.

Scott Cowan [00:36:59]:

Or Slowpez as it as it’s kinda called. Can you give a little brief a very brief history of it? Because, I mean, it would be the the history of the San Juans and Lopez would be, you know, a book by itself. And then you you have this map that offers a ton of information.

Jennifer Hackett [00:37:22]:

Mhmm.

Scott Cowan [00:37:24]:

And are you saying from a technical standpoint? Alright. Let’s we’re talking technical. Mhmm. So could I link to this map on Explore Washington State?

Jennifer Hackett [00:37:34]:

You could, and you could create any map that you wanted and link to it on Explore Washington State. So you could highlight any area that you wanted. Mhmm. And, like, let’s say you you’re doing an article about, you know, a particular trail or a particular or a particular city because every city is in there. Search for that term and then copy the URL Mhmm. And you can embed it and we’ve got instructions on our website, I need to clean that up a bit, but how to embed or and because we’ve got different ways to embed to like a set a version that has the legend on the side and a version that doesn’t so it’s cleaner in a smaller space. Mhmm. But you can embed it.

Jennifer Hackett [00:38:13]:

You can link to it. Anything that we have on our maps. And there’s a we have a lot of filters built in, and we can add little filter cues to allow you. So the thing that allows me to highlight every single because every single one of those locations with the with the looking glass is actually mentioned in the blog post.

Scott Cowan [00:38:32]:

Right.

Jennifer Hackett [00:38:32]:

And so we have a we can embed that information if we’re collaborating with you on on on the map. So we can we can add in tags that allow us to embed, and we can actually add links back to the podcast, which may enrich your experiences. We’ve always seen the reason we talked about this as a portal is we see this as basically as a collaboration. So like when I was talking about the WATVs, it’s the you know, I found out about it and worked on it through what with the UTV adventures. The WATV association has helped me map it. The counties provide the data. So it’s all these different layers of information and that fascinates me. How you can have how you can tell a single story with all of these different pieces.

Jennifer Hackett [00:39:18]:

And so we really like to do more collaborations where we’re adding that. You know, when I work with lines on wines, their links make our our winery data richer. So when you click on a winery, you get a link to the podcast. That’s a richer story.

Scott Cowan [00:39:33]:

Right.

Jennifer Hackett [00:39:34]:

Right. Our map makes their page richer because you can see, I wanna go I wanna do a wine tour. Well, I can go I can listen to interviews with all these winemakers, and I’m gonna go down and I’m gonna do this driving level. Here’s all of the podcasts along my driving.

Scott Cowan [00:39:51]:

Right. And that’s kind of yeah. This is this is very yeah. I yeah. There’s a lot I mean, this is kind of overwhelming. But for the sake of the podcast, I won’t I won’t I won’t completely hijack the conversation.

Jennifer Hackett [00:40:07]:

And we do. We like to highlight out stuff that’s unusual and different. So in a a lot of our blogs, I’m hoping to start doing a, a head in Washington, starting to do a series of short blog posts. I’m gonna start with Union, Washington.

Scott Cowan [00:40:21]:

I don’t know

Jennifer Hackett [00:40:21]:

if you’re familiar with Union, but it’s on the hook of the Hood Canal. Mhmm. So it’s less than an hour from Olympia, just an hour from Tacoma. And it’s this absolutely charming little, tiny little area, two beautiful state parks, but just a place where you can get out and recharge. There’s a bar called Hood Canale that has live music and, you know, wood fired pizzas. But this idea that these are places that people don’t know of or think of.

Scott Cowan [00:40:49]:

Right. Which is right up our our alley.

Jennifer Hackett [00:40:52]:

Right. Or I I did a blog post a while ago. I did, utility, campgrounds. So, places where you have campgrounds run by utilities. And this is something we were talking about in a pre interview. I asked people, you know, do you know what the north who manages the northeastern most campground in Washington state? So right on the Canadian border on the Northern tip of Pend Oreille County. And, you know, you you didn’t know it. I’ve only had one person I’ve ever asked that question to who knew the answer because the answer is Seattle City Lights.

Jennifer Hackett [00:41:26]:

And you say, why in the world does Seattle City Lights have a campground at the Northern tip of Pend Oreille County? And it’s the Boundary Campground and, and it’s a Boundary Recreation Area. The reason is that Seattle City Lights has dams on the Pend Oreille River. And any organization that has dams on a river, the dam is taking value from the from from people. You’re using a public resource. And so in exchange as part of their licensing, every utility that has dams is required to offer mitigation and a lot of that mitigation is recreation. And so you have all of these really amazing recreation resources around the state that are actually paid for by, by utility companies. And so this particular beautiful campground, bay, great big boat launch, wonderful day use area, spectacular picnic shelters, is Seattle City Light’s part of their mitigation for the fact that they have dams on, on that river. But it’s something that people just don’t, you know, don’t think about your area, Chelan, the Chelan PUD and the Douglas County PUD both have, both have or Grant County PUD both have significant recreation resources in Central Washington.

Scott Cowan [00:42:53]:

Oh, we do. And you’re right.

Jennifer Hackett [00:42:57]:

And so those sorts of things that people don’t don’t really think about.

Scott Cowan [00:43:04]:

One thing I’m noticing, and I would encourage anyone that’s listening to go and go to the website and take a look. These maps are really quite fast. They they are not I’m always worried about adding things like this to to those to my sites because it’s I’m concerned about page load. Mhmm. These are loading quickly.

Jennifer Hackett [00:43:29]:

Yep. So the way that Mapbox work, it’s called tiling. And so it when I load up the data, it creates tiles for each Zoom level. So it’s not like a Google mashup where you have all of these individual points that are loading. It’s actually loading. The the data can be pre-done. Plus, if you, if you go back and forth to the page, it’s caching the data.

Scott Cowan [00:43:53]:

Mhmm. But it’s it’s even well, actually, I’m gonna do this in real time. I’m gonna be fair. I’m not gonna I’m gonna go to let’s do this. Let’s go here to web maps. I have not looked at the water sports one, so I’m gonna click on that. K. And it’s loaded, and it’s staggeringly overwhelming with how much just popped up on my screen.

Scott Cowan [00:44:23]:

Yeah. I’m zooming out now. I it’s I was zoomed in probably. I got about two thirds of the state. Now now I’ve got the whole state here. It’s there’s no lag. There’s no no jittery. This is just smooth.

Scott Cowan [00:44:37]:

Even even

Jennifer Hackett [00:44:38]:

And occasionally with a bad connection, it’ll take a minute to load the tiles.

Scott Cowan [00:44:42]:

I mean,

Jennifer Hackett [00:44:42]:

I mean, that’s inevitable. It also doesn’t work. The reason we have the apps was because the apps allowed off line download. Mhmm. And that was the one big thing that you got, you know, you got from using the using the app. So, like, I I we so that’s why we’re switching and we’re starting to do more geo PDFs that you could use with events if you want. But more and more of the state has cell access, and I just couldn’t I couldn’t justify what I was spending for that.

Scott Cowan [00:45:08]:

Right. Right. But I’m I’m impressed from a comparing it to my to, like, a Google map. This loads much quicker. No no no shade on Google here, but, you know, it it’s it’s

Jennifer Hackett [00:45:19]:

I’m happy to shade on Google.

Scott Cowan [00:45:20]:

Alright. Alright. Well, I’m afraid they’re listening and, you know, my my, you know, my my Chrome browser will fight fail me or something. I don’t know.

Jennifer Hackett [00:45:28]:

Exactly. They but they probably are listening. But

Scott Cowan [00:45:31]:

Yeah. Well, yeah. So you’ve you’ve kind of, you know, you’ve kinda said this is a passion project. You’re you’re you’re not a big fan of sales. You’re you’re you’re more of a a a I’m gonna call you a data nerd. Where would you like, like, two if I called you up two years from now and I said, so, Jennifer, how’s things going? Did you did you meet your goal? What do you think would would you like to see this do in two years?

Jennifer Hackett [00:46:03]:

So my dream would be to find the right people to work with. Mhmm. And in two years, have the maps themselves actually be a project that businesses are being on, where commute or communities are using.

Scott Cowan [00:46:17]:

Mhmm.

Jennifer Hackett [00:46:17]:

We’d like to work with more communities where we can create these custom interactive maps of their community and their businesses, so that more people are using it. And I’ve my vision had always been that businesses and communities could pay a small amount to be on the map or for custom maps that would help cover the cost of doing the project, but it also helps connect it would also help connect recreation and businesses. So a lot of times when I talk to people, they say, well, we just go, you know, you just go to Google. But when people come over so I live in Kittitas County and the Teanaway Community Forest is a large block of what had been private forestry land that was sold to the state as part of the mitigation for salmon. And it’s this amazing recreation area, but it’s also land that’s been taken out of the county’s tax base. And although we get some mitigation money, we also have a ton of WDFW land and WDFW does not pay the full amount that they’re legally required to pay us for all of this land that’s been taken out of our tax base, which is fine. I live in Kittitas County. I love it.

Jennifer Hackett [00:47:18]:

But I used to be on the school board and not getting taxes actually matters for keeping up our facilities. So the theory is that these are great recreation drivers. But if somebody from Seattle drives over to the Teanaway Community Forest, spends a wonderful day in Teanaway, and then drives back and has lunch in Issaquah or dinner in Issaquah. We as a county have borne the cost but not gotten the benefit. So if you can connect recreation and businesses, and people always say recreation is a driver of businesses, but if you’re relying on people to go to Google, you’re not getting that full connection. You’re not drive telling people why they should come, drawing them in. There’s a into your their your community and then getting them to connect with the business. And so that was the vision that I had.

Jennifer Hackett [00:48:03]:

This would be a powerful platform. I can’t do it myself. And so, you know, in two years, I’m hoping it’s still up and running. We still have decent quality data. More people are using it. They’re more aware of it. But my dream would be to find the right partner and be able to take this from something that’s a passion project of mine to something that’s really making a difference. K.

Jennifer Hackett [00:48:28]:

How

Scott Cowan [00:48:29]:

many hours a week are you working on this?

Jennifer Hackett [00:48:31]:

So my main you know, what what brings in the money is actually consulting work I do. I’m currently working on a big tourism, project for a study for Grant County working with a a consultant back with consulting. Mhmm. And it draws on my data and it makes the data richer. So for example, under this contract, I went up to Grant County and spent about two hours talking to WDFW up there, really going through the data, refining it, figuring out what was missing. There’s some I mean, it was all of its data came from WDFW originally, but some of the places really aren’t valid, changing it all up, making it better. This will now go help to the Grant County project. And so that’s what’s paying my bills right now.

Scott Cowan [00:49:13]:

Mhmm.

Jennifer Hackett [00:49:16]:

And, and I spend you know, it’s not a you know, it’s hard to say what you spend because you probably know with yours. Like, when I bill for a client, if I screwed something up and I have to go back and redo it, I don’t bill for that redo, and I screw things up a lot. Or there’s the I just need to think something through, so I go for a walk. So, you know, what would have been an eight hour day if I was working in an office and I got in and I left, you know, it was maybe four billable hours. You know, I probably put in, you know, maybe twenty to forty hours a month on the Northwest Portal sides and working on blog posts, working on updates and corrections that aren’t directly related.

Scott Cowan [00:49:59]:

Mhmm.

Jennifer Hackett [00:50:00]:

You know, obviously, if I had funding, if we had people, we could do more. I’ve had my my son has worked for me periodically helping do updates. It’d be you know, we’d love I’d love to be able to be employing people to help keep the data updated. But again, just I decided to cut back just because I, you know, I was chasing I was spending too much time trying to chase money and too little time doing what I love. So it’s not, you know, it’s it’s doable. The big project I started working on this dataset in in 2010. So we’re talking about fifteen years to build it. Once you build it, then you’re incrementally updating and improving it as opposed to coming in from from scratch.

Scott Cowan [00:50:41]:

So when you’re not doing consulting work, when you’re not putting hours in on the Northwest portal, what do you like to do? Where do you like to go? So you’ve got the maps. You’ve got all the data. Where where do you like to go?

Jennifer Hackett [00:50:55]:

So I like to explore. Whenever I go driving, I’ll always like, I’ll pull up my map and find interesting places to go. For example, you’ll in the Wenatchee area, there’s this absolutely amazing, wildlife area as you’re coming into Chelan. And let me find the name for it because I always forget it. So it is the Beebe Springs Natural Area.

Scott Cowan [00:51:19]:

So

Jennifer Hackett [00:51:19]:

if you’re coming up 97 and coming in the back. And so I was driving to Chelan, and I was like, but, you know, where where can I stop? And I stopped up there. Well, Beebe Springs has these absolutely amazing, metal sculptures like the the, and and and a great big, you know, large pieces that tell the story of the native tribes that were there. Mhmm. And I didn’t know that beautiful, beautiful trails, great picnic area, little fishing access spot, but I I love to discover those things. When you drive out I 90 to Spokane, there’s the Chidi Wetlands, and so you wouldn’t even know it was there. So it’s a it’s a a parking lot for a state for the State Park Regional Trail, and you actually go through a fence that doesn’t look like it’s legitimate. And there’s this wonderful trail system around this wetlands that, that I’ve stopped off at when I’m going.

Jennifer Hackett [00:52:11]:

The wildlife area just north of Olympia is another one. Let me just see if I can remember what that

Scott Cowan [00:52:19]:

was. Oh, there was Nisqually.

Jennifer Hackett [00:52:20]:

Yeah. That that I discovered off of that. So I have fun discovering those.

Scott Cowan [00:52:24]:

Mhmm.

Jennifer Hackett [00:52:25]:

I passionately love the ocean. I don’t get out there as often as I’d like, just because it’s too far.

Scott Cowan [00:52:31]:

But you just said earlier that you can get anywhere from Ellensburg.

Jennifer Hackett [00:52:35]:

Well, we we can get anywhere from Ellensburg, but to get to the ocean is about five hours. So I can get there better than if I’m in Spokane, but I don’t go. My husband doesn’t really like to travel as much anymore, so it’s mostly on my own. So I I love getting out. I went out, last summer, I made it all the way out to Neah Bay, which is the northernmost tip. Unfortunately, the day before the night I spent in Neah Bay was beautiful. The day I was there, it was pouring rain and so I did get out and do a little bit of exploring. It was funny because I was on my own and it was midweek, you know, late season.

Jennifer Hackett [00:53:09]:

I called my son and I was like, okay or messaged my son and I was like, okay. I am leaving from this location at this time. If I don’t call you back in two hours, have dad call the sheriff because I wasn’t gonna miss the opportunity to explore. And there’s this this trail that you could take that takes you out to the very tip of Neah Bay. But

Scott Cowan [00:53:31]:

Right.

Jennifer Hackett [00:53:31]:

But our the place that we spend the most time, we have a cabin right off Lake Kachess, so that’s actually a neat opportunity for people coming up from from Seattle. So in summer so people drive down I I 90. Kachess is the big lake that you drive along right after you go over Snoqualmie Pass, and people drive down it all all the time. But the lake level drops in the summer, and you can actually walk down on the lake shore, and we’ve added some informal lake access points. So places that you can get because the only official trailhead for the lake is at the north end of the lake. There’s a boat launch, but a for a forest service boat launch but it actually closes in the summer because ATVers would use that to get onto the lake bed and they were damaging the salmon, salmon hap or, not salmon bull trout. It’s a big bull trout spawning area and there’s some state park parking, areas up at that north end, but they’re a long hike in. But there’s a couple of spots.

Jennifer Hackett [00:54:25]:

There’s a forest service trail. There’s a couple of spots where you can easily get to the lake, and there’s actually two campgrounds along the lake, but it’s so much fun to walk down onto the lake shore and then it’s like this giant private beach. Uh-huh. Also going up to Lost Lake and there’s a couple of trails that we really like to hike up there. So kind of lower key. You know, I used to go camping more with my family, but these days, my ideal is to go up to the cabin where I can sleep in the bed and the end of bed, and then I can get out and enjoy things with you know, I’m getting a little too old for a tent. Although, I do sometimes pack pack up a tent to go explore different areas.

Scott Cowan [00:54:59]:

My my joke is, you know, my idea of camping is bad room service, but, that’s I’m trying to broaden my horizons a little bit.

Jennifer Hackett [00:55:07]:

And there’s a ton of places on our maps. Actually, we have a filter for camping cabins. So if you wanna find campgrounds that have camping cabins, you can click on that filter. It’ll highlight every campground every public campground in the state that offers a campground. Your waiting list. What?

Scott Cowan [00:55:23]:

The two year waiting list to get to reserve them there.

Jennifer Hackett [00:55:26]:

Yeah. Unfortunately. Yeah.

Scott Cowan [00:55:27]:

There’s there’s craziness there. Well, as we wrap this up, always love to ask my guests some questions, but I’d like to ask you a couple different questions that I’m I typically ask. They’re gonna be easy. I promise you. But, Ellensburg. Well, I always I one question I always ask. I I, you know, I’ve warned you about this, coffee. So where’s a where’s a great place where do you think is a great place in Ellensburg for coffee?

Jennifer Hackett [00:55:53]:

So there’s there’s three places that a lot the places that people know the most are D and M and Winegar. So Winegar’s is interesting. It was an old dairy that started doing ice cream as a way to sell their milk.

Scott Cowan [00:56:04]:

Mhmm.

Jennifer Hackett [00:56:04]:

And now they don’t they’re not a dairy anymore. They’re just an ice cream place. But my personal favorite is a place called Heyday Bacon Brew. It’s across from the EV charging station on Third. And the reason I like it is that the, you know, Winegar’s and D and M, they get really busy. They’re kinda loud noisy and loud. Heyday’s a little bit less known, and they have they have a nice downstairs area. They have a beautiful patio out back that has a little wall.

Jennifer Hackett [00:56:29]:

You could actually have your dogs. The dogs have to stay in the fenced area behind it.

Scott Cowan [00:56:33]:

Okay.

Jennifer Hackett [00:56:34]:

And then they have an upstairs sitting area. So they’re more of kind of a quiet place that you have kind of this really great coffee shop vibe. They also make amazing cherry pie.

Scott Cowan [00:56:43]:

Okay. Alright.

Jennifer Hackett [00:56:44]:

And so that’s probably that’s that’s my go to

Scott Cowan [00:56:47]:

That’s your go to?

Jennifer Hackett [00:56:47]:

Alright. Coffee place. I don’t know if the coffee’s any better, but, you know, when I go for the coffee, but I usually wanna go and sit with friends and talk. And so that’s my go to place for that.

Scott Cowan [00:56:56]:

Alright. Yeah. Because D and M is, you know, great little great little coffee shop in in, you know, right there in diagonal from the Davidson Building. But it’s to me, it’s noisy. It’s you’re right. It’s it’s hard to have a conversation in there.

Jennifer Hackett [00:57:07]:

Yes. So so Mayday is the place to go you know, if you think of a place where I just go sit and sip a coffee, they’ve got good food Okay. But I go there for the atmosphere. And for me, the atmosphere is not crowded. It’s it’s a big part of it.

Scott Cowan [00:57:22]:

So the follow-up question here is it’s about lunchtime. Where’s a great place to grab lunch in Ellensburg these days?

Jennifer Hackett [00:57:26]:

So one of my favorite places is Red Pickle. This is a it started out as a food and I just because I love the guy who runs it. It started out as a food stand that was located near one of the breweries, and, I used to get stuff there. I’m I’m vegetarian and as is my daughter, and in high school my son was. And I just loved the guy who ran it. He says he’s this Guatemalan immigrant. He’s the greatest character. He’s so nice.

Jennifer Hackett [00:57:52]:

He’s super accommodating. My son was vegan for a while and he actually made some adjustments so that my son could my son is not just back to being a carnivore, but, my daughter and I are still vegetarians. But I just loved him. It’s unusual food. It’s really charming. And they actually took over the old D and M location on Pine Street in the downtown area. And so they’re a really popular gathering place. They have a big bar.

Jennifer Hackett [00:58:17]:

They still cook out of the food truck, which they have out back. But I like that both for the food and for the character. I also like Bruce’s Place, which is a bar restaurant attached to the pasta place. But that’s another one like, like Hay Day. They have a I go there for the location. Don’t like their inside at all. It’s dark and noisy bar which is fine. It’s just not me.

Jennifer Hackett [00:58:39]:

But they have a beautiful, very sheltered outdoor patio. And so if I’m getting together with friends in the summer and I want a place to sit and talk, that would be my lunch one of those two would be my lunch place.

Scott Cowan [00:58:51]:

I think Red Pickle may be the single most recommended place, period, on this show. It’s so funny to me. Almost every guest that’s been on from Ellensburg has said the red pepper.

Jennifer Hackett [00:59:05]:

And they have good food

Scott Cowan [00:59:07]:

They do.

Jennifer Hackett [00:59:07]:

I’ve been there. Character. It is the character. More than the food, it’s the character.

Scott Cowan [00:59:12]:

Yeah. No. No. It’s it it’s it is as advertised. Let’s just put it that way. The reason that so many of you are saying it is because it is it is as advertised. Alright. Alright.

Scott Cowan [00:59:26]:

Alright. This is the question I warned you about, and you agreed to play along. So k. And I already think I know your answer. Alright. You ready? Cake or pie? And why?

Jennifer Hackett [00:59:39]:

That is a tricky one because you’ve got, like, you’ve got that Costco ultimate chocolate cake, but I love pies. You know, I just love I love fruit pies, but, so I

Scott Cowan [00:59:51]:

think I would go If you had to if you had to only have one type, what would it be?

Jennifer Hackett [00:59:56]:

I think it would be

Scott Cowan [00:59:57]:

pie. Okay. But what type of pie?

Jennifer Hackett [00:59:59]:

Cherry pie. Absolutely. With tart cherries. The best cherry pies in the world are made with tart cherries.

Scott Cowan [01:00:04]:

Okay. Yeah. You said you said pie when you’re talking about the coffee shop. So I was like, oh, you know, I was thinking that. Alright. Well, what didn’t we talk about that we should have? I feel like, you know, there’s so much to go over here. And just like when I scroll in the maps, they keep they keep, you know, layers of onion here. There’s more and more.

Scott Cowan [01:00:23]:

So I feel like we missed something. But what, you know, what do you think we should have talked about that we might have overlooked?

Jennifer Hackett [01:00:30]:

So a big underlying in this story is resources for recreation. So the state mostly funds, all of the state recreation, that’s DNR, parks, and WDFW out of the Discover Pass. Doesn’t really and and was I said it, I was on a Facebook argument with somebody and I said all of the funding comes from it. It’s not all of it, but it’s like 75%. I wish this I know the state has a budget crisis, but I wish we had more of a commitment because I don’t you know, all of the recreation agencies are under resourced. The federal recreation agencies are gonna really be hurting this year. We even did a project, and you can link from our web page, where we actually show you what is federal because I think a lot of people don’t understand just how much of their recreation is federal.

Scott Cowan [01:01:16]:

Mhmm.

Jennifer Hackett [01:01:17]:

And, no, these things aren’t gonna be closed, but you can’t slash staff and not hurt, not have a not have an impact. Right. I know a lot of the agencies, so many of the resources are having to go to firefighting now that’s taking away from maintenance. You know, just that, you you know, you get what you pay for and I think that we have to be aware that if we want nice things, we have to be willing to support them. The Fairfax Bridge and WSDOT has known that the bridge was was in trouble, But it’s a very expensive bridge that only serves a very small number of houses plus it’s the back entrance to trail heads to Mount Rainier and Evans Creek. And so it’s this resource it’s a resource issue. WSDOT is also you know, they’re trying to fix bridges that people are using to commute and to get into towns. There was a, a bridge that’s out in Olympic National Park that was that closed off access to the Quinault Rain Forest.

Jennifer Hackett [01:02:13]:

Normally, that’s something that you would have gotten that would have been fixed with federal grants. Obviously, those don’t happen right now. And the state was actually able to work with partners and do stuff to get that fixed. But we really need to be aware that, you have to be able to to keep and maintain these places. And we’re loving them to death. The number of the number of people out of using our recreation has exploded, since COVID, which is wonderful. But the not only had did the resources not increase, they’ve now been cut.

Scott Cowan [01:02:46]:

So I’m gonna encourage everybody, and I’m gonna put a link in the show notes. But go go check out northwestportal.com and look at the maps, learn some new places to go, and get outdoors in Washington state. I will tell you that I stumbled across the, the wine podcast off of your site and have been listening to a few episodes of it. So, kudos to an another Ellensburg person who’s who’s doing more.

Jennifer Hackett [01:03:12]:

And at that passion project Yeah.

Scott Cowan [01:03:14]:

A former professor. So I do think it’s very interesting how you’ve, partnered up there with the with the episodes that have, you know, conversations about vineyard, and then you put them on the map and vice versa. I think that’s really cool. And, I’m gonna be spending some more time on your side. So I, I I really appreciate you sitting down with me today.

Jennifer Hackett [01:03:36]:

Thank you for this opportunity.