A trip south to Tokeland
One out of the way (REALLY out of the way!) location in Washington State is Tokeland, situated on a peninsula by the north shore of Willapa Bay near its mouth at the Pacific Ocean.
Named after Chief Toke, of the Shoalwater Bay tribe, and probably NOT after the slang term for smoking marijuana, the community has about 150 resident souls brave enough to weather the… well, actually the weather. The average annual rainfall is over 60 inches, so it’s a good bet that the sky will be gray, the ocean will be churning, and the ground will be wet.
None of this dampened the spirits of those people we met when we stopped here for lunch recently. The Tokeland Hotel and Restaurant was a huge surprise and a delightful experience on an otherwise dreary afternoon. The original hotel was built in the late 19th century, and has been lovingly restored to rustic elegance and charm by its current owners. A massive dining room with various sized tables, preset with lace tablecloths, cloth placemats, and formal place settings welcomes you as you enter the front of the hotel. Various displays of antique collections, pianos and even a pipe organ provide interest and call you to stroll around the inside of the hotel even before you find a place to sit.
The staff was very attentive, the prices quite reasonable, and the food was outstanding. The hit of the lunch was the clam chowder, which we thought would compete with anything we have tasted in Cape Cod, the Oregon coast or even our beloved Ocean Shores Razor Clam Festival. The bread pudding dessert was the best we have had in years!
Ahh, but back to the weather! We had planned to stop at Tokeland’s “Nelson’s Seafood” to buy up some fresh crab. But the weather was so bad that I didn’t want to venture out of the SUV again. And… we were pulling a trailer… and it was getting late in the afternoon… and we had another hour of driving…Yada, yada, yada.
We should have stopped anyway. Now we just have leftovers for dinner, but a memory of a great experience in Tokeland, Washington.