BudgetTravel

Day 1: Seattle to Ocean Shores
Since even in the summer one rarely swims outdoors in the Pacific Northwest, spring is a perfect time to visit the Olympic Peninsula. Rates are cheap and, without the summer crowds, the wilderness feels all the more wild.

With daylight at a premium, my wife, Susan, and I motor quickly, resisting the multiple espresso choices offered by every town along the way, including Kurt Cobain's childhood home of Aberdeen (the welcome sign reads COME AS YOU ARE). We reach Ocean Shores on a blustery, fleece-and-base-layer afternoon, and it's not hard to see why the town boasts a champion kite-flying team or why firewood is still for sale.

Sol Duc Hot Springs Resort (Eden Batki) MARCH 2007 ISSUE • Table of Contents • Dream Trips • Lighthouses of Croatia • Family Camps • Eat Like a Local: Chicago • Trips That Can Change Your Life: Adventure Biking • Road Trip: The Olympic Peninsula • 40 Best

Ocean Shores is basically a sleeping/shopping/eating hub for tourists, but today the four-lane beachfront boulevard is largely carless. We drive semi-aimlessly toward the marina at the tip-top of Grays Harbor. We weren't really planning to visit Ocean Shores Interpretive Center, but hey, it's right here--and a lot bigger and more well-rounded than the quaint small-town museum that we expected. There are rooms of shells and bones and fossils, a preserved eagle's nest, all kinds of bird-watching information, and a taxidermic specimen known as the Passaround Bear--because, as a volunteer tells us, it's been displayed in a handful of local establishments since the 1920s. We also learn that Pat Boone and Ray Charles used to hang out and perform in Ocean Shores back in its 1960s heyday.

A short walk from the museum is Damon Point State Park, where the Catala, a former freighter and "botel," has been buried in the sand since 1965. Storm erosion has brought some of it back to the surface, but since last year it's been fenced off so that the oil still remaining in the wreck can be drained. A big portion of Damon Point is also closed off as a snowy plover nesting habitat. One path to the water is available. We trudge along the dark, gravelly sand, fail to spotany of the baby seals we've been instructed not to pet, and then flee the wind for a nap at the Holiday Inn Express.

Emily's Restaurant, inside the Quinault Beach Resort and Casino, provides the answer to the question, Where are all the people? We've come for the salmon, which is either farmed or caught wild by members of the Quinault Nation. The fish is served in the traditional style on a wooden plank the size of a cutting board; it has a decent smoky flavor but is a bit dry for my taste buds. I win back half of what it cost at a fancy electronic slot machine, despite the fact that I don't really understand what constitutes a jackpot.

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