Retirees, Sun Shine On Sequim
Grey scarves of mist twine through the Olympic Mountains and a light rain falls, streaking the windows at a waterside restaurant. A local puts down her fork and exclaims with delight, “Oh, rain! How lovely.”
Not a typical reaction on the West Side, with its annual sentence of at least six months of winter clouds, mist, fog and rain. More of the same in summer is usually about as welcome as a house guest who has stayed way too long.
But this is Sequim, home of the state’s longest-running irrigation festival. Home to its own species of cactus, the Opuntia fragilif. And land of the rain shadow, a potent meteorological force that has defined Sequim as the banana belt of the Northwest.
With just 16 inches of rain a year on average, Sequim is drier than San Antonio, Texas, and nearly as parched as Salt Lake City. Just to the west is the Hoh Rain Forest, where a relentless 140 inches of rain a year is typical.
Sequim lies in the eastern shadow of the Olympic Mountains, which snag clouds cruising in from the Pacific. The clouds cool as they rise over the range. That condenses their moisture to rain, which falls mainly on the western slope of the mountains.
Sequim has more sunny days and less rain than anywhere else in Western Washington. Pilots know Sequim as the blue hole in a thick blanket of clouds that stretches for miles around. Retirees know Sequim as a mecca.
About 60 percent of the approximately 24,200 people living in the Sequim valley are 55 or older. The town is also listed in places-rated almanacs as one of the best places to retire in America, in part because of its delicious climate.
Cool nights, warm dry summer days and winters moderated by the nearby Strait of Juan de Fuca have drawn droves of retirees, especially from California and Alaska. Population within the city limits has grown 21 percent since 1990.
Nearby Olympic National Park and the Dungeness Spit, graced with a lighthouse at its tip, also draw out-of-town tourists, frequently overheard calling the town See-Kwim.
The Clallum Indian name is actually pronounced “Skwim” and means “quiet waters.”
Continued development in the valley has pressed out into dry grassy flatlands and the foothills of the Olympics, where pop-up housing competes with herds of elk, snacking on costly new shrubbery.
The Sequim senior center now has more than 1,200 members. And any day of the week, booths at the highway diner play host to the liar’s club, as the old-timers call their spirited bull sessions.
Other retirees, like Allen Banick, meant to spend their days on favorite hobbies. Leaving Pacific Bell in Southern California was supposed to leave Banick lots of time for deep-sea fishing.
He intended his small business, Here Kitty Kitty, to be a sideline. But Banick’s fishing tackle hasn’t been wet in four years. Running a store that sells more than 7,500 cat novelties will do that to a guy.
Then there’s his self-described role as “local weather enforcer and storm stoolie.” Banick calls up TV stations when they broadcast weather maps that show storms over Western Washington but don’t note the sun in Sequim.
It was Banick’s idea to press for a local ordinance, number 95-009, section 2.1 adopted in 1995, to specifically prohibit “weather conditions that are detrimental to enjoyment of activities within the city.”
The local chamber of commerce passes out Sun Checks to tourists, entitling them to two sunny days in Sequim for every day of bad whether they experience.
“Of course we have lots of fine print. We have an answer for everything. For instance, bad weather could be a matter of interpretation,” Banick said. “Besides, no matter how bad it is here, it’s worse everywhere else.”
His store is just off the main route through town, Highway 101, a tedious parade of lumbering RVs and tourist traffic. The streetscape is neither quaint nor cute, with its Anywhere, USA collection of auto parts stores, real estate agencies, ministorage units, and fast food joints.
But the town is making an effort: giant baskets of flowers bloom on the lampposts, and murals brighten what would have been blank walls. Some residents are actively crusading to spruce up downtown.
Helga McGhee and her husband spent $20,000 to move a 103-year-old church slated for demolition and turn it into the Taste of Heaven deli.
Landscaped with drifts of summer flowers, and restored with stained glass windows depicting elk and the famous local lighthouse, it’s hardly the average sandwich shop.
McGhee’s motivation was simple. “Too many of the old buildings are being demolished and replaced by things with no architecture. We are trying to change downtown, to get the tourists and the locals to shop here.”
She and others feel a sense of urgency: A highway bypass will be completed by the year 2000, designed to zoom traffic - and dollars - right past Sequim.
“We have to make it attractive enough for people to want to spend time here, to do more than turn off and get gas and take off again,” McGhee said.
Some old-timers like the place just the way it is. They aren’t interested in “cute and darling shops,” as McGhee put it. To them, all the new people in town are somewhat befuddling.
On a recent weekday afternoon, a meeting of the liar’s club was under way at the 101 Diner, with about a dozen longtime Sequim residents rolling the dice to see who buys the coffee.
Some have been friends for 70 years. They have lived in Sequim so long they remember when the diner was a pizza parlor, and before that, a service station with a cowbell on the door to wake up the attendant for a latenight tank of gas.
“I remember when it was all trees out there,” says Conrad Kirner, 91, gesturing at two lanes thick with traffic outside the window.
“I used to know everybody in this town. Today, I hardly know any of them.”
But there’s still the liar’s club at the diner or Gwennie’s restaurant up the road to look forward to, and lots to talk about. Like how the tractor is running, and whether the hay will be spoiled by today’s big surprise: rain.
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 color photos Map of area