Travel log: Washington has hidden treasures

In the 1980s, when I first moved to Spokane, I didn’t have a lot of money. So the kind of international travel that I’d done previously, when I’d worked for an airlines, was out of the questions. Instead, I focused on regional travel.

I took my family on a lot of road trips, from the Olympic Peninsula to Kalispell, Montana, from Crater Lake, Ore., to British Columbia and Alberta, Canada.

But I missed a lot of places. And one was Soap Lake.

The place has intrigued me since I first heard of it when I began working for the print edition of The Spokesman-Review in 1981. The thought of a regional lake that had reputed healing powers was enticing. So a month ago my wife and I traveled there.

First, though, we spent a night near George, WA, at the SageCliff Resort and Spa , which used to be owned by the folks who own the nearby Cave B Estate Winer y. We stayed in one of the luxury cabins that overlooks the Columbia Gorge, ate lunch and dinner at the resort’s dining room, and sat on the porch to enjoy the sun set over the western hills.

The next day, we drove north toward Ephrata and then on another five miles to our destination. We stayed at the Soap Lake Nature Spa & Resort – and, to be truthful, I wish we’d done our trip in reverse. While perfectly fine, the resort accommodations were a couple of steps down from SageCliff.

It was interesting to see the lake, though, and watch people walk out hundreds of yards into it and still be only waist deep. Even though the temperature was near 100 degrees, and the sky was full of smoke from wildfires raging farther north, people were slathering mud on their bodies and basking in the hot sun.

We had a decent meal at Soap Lake’s Mi Cocinita Mexican Grill & Cantina , though our special treat was to make the short drive back to Ephrata so that I could have a good cup of coffee at that city’s coffee shop, The Bookery .

On our way out of town, having cut our visit short by a day (the air was so bad), we stopped by the majestic Dry Falls both just to see what was once one of the, if not the, largest waterfall in the world.

Then we drove home, having put a check mark on yet another Northwest tourist site.