And so have Brewster, Twisp, Malott, and Methow, just to name a few of the resilient communities within north-central Washington. As the Carlton Complex of fires continues to ravage the dry, rolling hills along the Columbia and Okanogan Rivers between Wenatchee and Omak, it can be easy to succumb to the notion that all is lost forever in the wasteland that is still only 50-percent contained. However, these communities of
I’m not sure if I’m happy or embarrassed about this designation, but a friend of mine forwarded me the list of the top six vote-getters for the 2014 Darwin Awards. If you don’t know what the Darwin Awards are, please visit their website and prepare to waste several hours reading through the page-turning impossible-but-true stories. In short, “the Darwin Awards commemorate individuals who protect our gene pool by making the
The Washington Trust for Historic Preservation and the Washington Main Street Program invite you to join them for RevitalizeWA, the annual statewide Preservation and Main Street Conference, May 6-8, 2014 in Wenatchee. The conference will feature a variety of sessions & tours relating to the revitalization of our state’s historic communities on May 7 and 8. They will also be offering additional pre-conference workshops on May 6. The conference will
Everybody thought I was joking when I said I was taking a business trip from Olympia to Vancouver to Yakima to Spokane to Wenatchee to Everett to Bellevue to Tacoma and back to Olympia in two days. The itinerary I had laid out with Google Maps said it was a cinch and I’m the guy who enjoys driving around this beautiful state we call home. Well, I proved to everyone
I’m reading (actually, listening to) a book called The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America by Timothy Egan. In it, Gifford Pinchot comments that Washington State’s Lake Chelan bears a striking resemblance to Italy’s Lago di Como (Lake Como). I thought that was interesting so I put together this little side-by-side comparison thanks to the technological marvel that is Google Maps. What do you think? Does
They’ll kick you out. In the nicest, most passive-aggressive way, they’ll politely ask you to leave. Let me go back and explain what happened. As anyone from Washington State knows, the drive from Seattle to Spokane (or vice-versa) can be riddled with boredom unless you’re playing traffic games with other drivers or looking for something in particular (like totaling up the different crops with names posted on the fence lines
My father, Walt Ebel, and I began our second annual trip to the Colville Indian Reservation on a Monday in early June. Dad’s been doing this for decades; he visits his best friend, Lyn, and they spend a week on Twin Lakes at Hartman’s Log Cabin Resort near Inchelium. Last year I decided to finally accept their invitation and had such a good time I wanted to make it an
As I tweeted last week, the Washington State Department of Natural Resources’ Committee on Geographic Names is meeting to consider changing the names of a number of Washington State locations, the most prominent being Soap Lake in Grant County. Someone had the bright idea of renaming it “Lake Smokiam” despite the local community having spent th0usands of dollars marketing the lake’s alleged medicinal properties. Needless to say, Soap Lake residents
Isaac Ingalls Stevens was the first governor of the newly-formed Washington Territory in 1853. I’ve been reading more about the significance of his life since I began diving into library books about Washington state history. In a previous post I wrote about how I visited the cemetery where our first territorial lieutenant governor, Charles Mason, is buried. He served as the acting governor of Washington Territory while Isaac Stevens was
By Denise Whitaker, Published: Feb 7, 2012 at 11:33 PM PST