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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

A RUSTIC GETAWAY


The immeasurable beauty of the Olympic Peninsula makes La Push, Wash., a must-see for any nature lover. Top left, the view of the Pacific Ocean as seen from the deck of one of the rooms at the Quileute Oceanside Resort.
 (Photos by D.J. Bradley / The Spokesman-Review)
Alexander Lane Special to Travel

LA PUSH, Wash. – As she warmed herself by a beach fire on the edge of the continent, Trena McNabb, a retiree from North Carolina, marveled at some of Washington’s signature offerings.

In the eastern sky were the snow-capped peaks of the Olympics. Just to the west roiled the Pacific, sea stacks as big as office buildings looming in its mist. A pair of bald eagles cruised overhead.

McNabb’s friends toasted marshmallows on a bright orange blaze of driftwood on the shoreline a stone’s throw from their rented cabin.

“What an amazing place,” she said.

The place was La Push, the Quileute Tribe village on the Olympic Peninsula. As McNabb found, La Push is set amid stunning, distinctly Northwestern natural beauty, exploited but unmarred by the Quileute’s modest, much-improved tourism industry.

The tribe has upgraded its Quileute Oceanside Resort gradually over the past six years, adding four new cabins and a new 12-room motel just last year. Prices range from $50 a night at a somewhat run-down older motel during the off-season to $240 for a new two-bedroom cabin at the height of summer.

There are no telephones, televisions or visits from housekeeping. These are rustic accommodations befitting a rugged coast.

An eight-and-a-half-hour drive from Spokane, La Push is hardly the most convenient getaway. But it’s a well-located base for exploring the beaches and forests of Olympic National Park, and an alluring destination in its own right.

Moreover, the drive there – over the desert, through the Cascades and around the northern edge of the peninsula – can feel more like a privilege than a chore, particularly if one opts for Highway 2 instead of Interstate 90.

As the Quileute upgraded their resort they also converted an old Coast Guard boathouse into the village’s only real restaurant, the River’s Edge. It’s airy and welcoming, with decent breakfasts and fresh local fish for dinner.

But its best offering is the view out its generous windows onto the busy intersection of the Quillayute River and the Pacific. Sea lions poke out of the wakes of local fishing boats. A fickle sun plays on the fir-topped cliffs of James Island, just offshore.

And, most impressively one recent day, dozens of bald eagles roosted and fished, dazzling even the locals. Restaurant workers stopped what they were doing now and then to have staring contests with an eagle perched on a piling a few feet from the window.

“This is the time of the eagles,” said DeAnna Hobson, a Quileute Tribal Council member. “The other day I counted 40 of them on the riverbank when the tide was out.

“I consider them my guide,” added Hobson, 53.

This got her talking about the Quileutes’ connection to the ecology of the area – which is far too deep, she said, for them to have considered compromising it with a casino.

She gestured to James Island, a towering hulk to which visitors can walk during low tide.

“My grandfather received the songs in a cave on the other side,” she said.

The Quileute were originally a migratory people, and roamed 900 square miles of the peninsula, Hobson said. Their reservation is now one-and-a-half square miles.

The tribe reacquired the resort from the federal government in 1979, she said, and now sees “at least a couple million a year” in revenue from it. It is their primary source of income, Hobson said.

Since 1989 the Quileute have tried to revive their canoe culture, primarily by participating in an annual paddle to a distant locale.

The first was the “Paddle to Seattle.” Hobson, the tribe’s traditional fish cooker, followed the paddlers on land and prepared meals for them.

“The ancestors were with them all the way on their journey,” she said. “They saw their faces in the water. When they first told me that my hair stood up on the back of my neck.”

This year the destination is Lummi, and the paddle is scheduled for late July. That follows the annual Quileute Days festival on July 21 and 22, with a parade, canoe races, bone games and traditional crafts.

Hobson wanted it known that the Quileute are welcoming folk, but she needn’t have said so.

They greet strangers on the reservation with waves. Visitors at the resort have an open invitation to the tribe’s Wednesday night potluck dinners, which are followed by drumming, dancing, singing and celebrations of sobriety milestones.

David Vaught, a University of Missouri instructor who attended with a dozen students, said tribe members sat with them to translate the songs.

“They appreciated us wanting to know about what they do and how they live,” Vaught said.

La Push’s beaches are only a tad less welcoming than its people. First Beach is right out the back door of the cabins, and visitors are allowed to build fires with the driftwood scattered about.

Its plainly named siblings to the south, Second and Third beaches, are reachable with short hikes, and offer more secluded ocean-side experiences.

One of the chief dangers on these shores is finding oneself stranded on a headland by incoming tides. Tide guides are widely available and advised; still, two of Vaught’s students were forced to swim to shore in frigid water, lucky to escape with nothing more than a chill.

First Beach, with well-formed swells and offshore breezes, is a haven for surfers. Sea kayaking is popular around La Push as well, and rentals are available locally.

Neither activity seems to bother the gray whales that migrate past La Push in the early spring, sometimes within spouting distance of the boards and boats.

Fishing draws plenty of visitors to La Push as well. Charters are available in the town’s modest marina, with the most frequent destination being the Rockpile, a reef 10 miles offshore where baitfish and salmon congregate. Halibut, rockfish and lingcod are also plentiful in these waters.

Visitors also look inland for excursions. La Push is surrounded by Olympic National Park, one of the 100 parks designated a “World Heritage Park” by the United Nations in 1981.

An hour’s drive south reaches the Hoh Rain Forest, a haunting redoubt of ancient, towering conifers. A paved mini-path offers a window into the forest, including its Hall of Mosses. The more ambitious might consider an 18-mile, three- to five-day hike to the Blue Glacier.

Other prime Olympic National Park attractions are more conveniently situated off the route back to Spokane, including the Sol Duc Hot Springs, the more remote and undeveloped Olympic Hot Springs, the deep-blue depths of Lake Crescent and the dizzying heights of Hurricane Ridge.