“Your guide to the Loop - msnbc.com” plus 1 more |
| Your guide to the Loop - msnbc.com Posted: 19 Nov 2010 12:16 AM PST LOCAL NEWS — GRANITE FALLS — Edith Farrell knows the trails along the Mountain Loop Highway. For the past 20 years she's hiked the area, becoming familiar with the trails and snapping photos. Now she's sharing what she knows about the Mountain Loop with other people at the new Granite Falls Tourism Information Center at 110 E. Stanley St. "People come in looking for something specific," Farrell said. "You can go to the Forest Service site and get this long verbage but you don't see pictures." An avid photographer, Farrell used the photographs she took around the Mountain Loop to create brochures about the trails. She recently published a brochure about the Granite Falls Waterfall, an attraction located a mile away from the city that was named on maps in the 1880s. Soon she plans to publish other brochures about the Old Robe Trail, the Monte Cristo Trail, Youth-On-Age Nature Trail, Ice Caves Trail, Lime Kiln Trail and Lake 22 Trail. Farrell worked with Fred Cruger at the Granite Falls Historical Museum to include historical information in each brochure. "Not only do we have pictures of what you're going to see, we have a history component that tells you which attractions to look for and if there's a fun fact," she said. The center offers more than brochures about the area's outdoor attractions. Visitors can post information about events on a community information board, learn about the area's history and see local artifacts on display, including a pioneer woman's dress and boots, a glass case from the city's first pharmacy, and a barber's chair from when the space was a barbershop. "People come in here and they sit in this chair and we're taking their picture. They love it," Farrell said. "They start opening up and talking about what they want to see." Farrell and her husband, Randy, facilitate the tourism center through their event planning and marketing company, AboutheWow. The center is open daily from 9 a.m. to noon and from 4 to 7 p.m.. An official opening of the center is planned at 2 p.m. today after the opening of Quarry Road, a 1.9-mile alternate truck route that loops north around downtown Granite Falls and connects with Highway 92. Mayor Haroon Saleem owns the space and is letting the tourism center use it until next spring, Farrell said. After that time she plans to run AboutheWow at the location and move the tourism center into donated space at Mark's Country Store at 108 W. Stanley St. Amy Daybert: 425-339-3491; adaybert@heraldnet.com. When to go The Granite Falls Tourism Information Center officially opens at 2 p.m. Friday at 110 E. Stanley St. The center is open daily from 9 a.m. to noon and from 4 to 7 p.m. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
| 'Hiking Washington's History': a trail guide that traces Washington state history - Seattle Times Posted: 18 Nov 2010 07:43 PM PST The average hiking guidebook tosses readers a history tidbit or two while remaining primarily focused on leading hikers to that stunning waterfall, pristine mountain lake or rainbow meadow of alpine wildflowers that's the destination. But often when you're out on the trail, you find yourself wanting to know more. Hiking Icicle Ridge near Leavenworth, you might wonder who all those women were that so many of the lakes (Edna, Flora, Mary, Margaret, Upper Florence, etc.) are named after. Along the Cape Flattery Trail at the northwestern-most tip of the contiguous U.S., you might wonder how the area's earliest human inhabitants not only managed to eke out a living along the rocky, stormy Pacific coastline, but to actually thrive while doing so. Or on the Yacolt Burn Trail, south of Mount St. Helens, you might find yourself wondering what exactly is it about this area that spurred Skamania County to declare itself the world's first Sasquatch refuge. Enter Judy Bentley's "Hiking Washington's History" (University of Washington Press, 304 pp., $18.95), which provides answers to these and myriad other questions as well as offering boatloads of fascinating history to be found along Washington's hiking trails. A faculty member at South Seattle Community College who's also written 14 books for young adults, Bentley provides trail descriptions that use quotes from historical diaries, letters and journals as well as historical photographs to tell the story of those who tread this way in the past. "We hike out of curiosity," she writes in the book's introduction. "Who went this way before? Where were they going?" Many of the descriptions also contain her own — and often her family's — experiences while hiking the trails today, thus offering an appealing travel-essay feel. The book includes 40 trail descriptions, everything from Cape Flattery on the Pacific Coast to Chief Joseph's Summer Trail east of present-day Walla Walla, where the Nez Perce leader gathered huckleberries and hunted for deer and elk. Intro pages for each of the state's nine regions detail the historical themes unique to that area and then tie each of the included trails together. Trails in the Puget Sound chapter follow stories of early settlers such as Isaac Neff Ebey, as well as the inevitable clashes between Native Americans and those who were eager to develop the region into a major commercial hub. Trails in the Central Washington chapter follow the routes of stagecoaches and cattle ranchers, as well as those blazed by early military and railroad explorers. The South Cascades trails are dominated by giant mountains — Rainier, St. Helens and Adams — volcanoes that according to Native American oral tradition "fought as great mountains do, shedding their beautiful white coats and belching forth steam, lava and ash." This is not a comprehensive hiking book akin to the Mountaineers "Classic Hikes" series, guides which will get you to Washington's most scenic vistas. And its maps and trail details are fairly rudimentary. For the book's longer and more strenuous trails, Bentley herself advises that hikers carry a more detailed map and hiking guide. But if history's your thing, Bentley's book makes an invaluable resource as well as a fun read. As Bentley writes: "Hiking historic trails connects us to the people on the land before us and to a landscape constant across centuries." Mike McQuaide is a Bellingham freelance writer and author of "Day Hike! Central Cascades" (Sasquatch Books). He can be reached at mikemcquaide@comcast.net. His blog is mcqview.blogspot.com. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
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