Road Trips 2012

Fri, 27 Jul 2012 05:00:00 -0700

The Northwest has the best stretches of blacktop in the world: We can cross mountain passes and trace deserted shoreline, even motor up to the world’s best farm-to-table feast. All it takes is a full tank.

British Columbia Road Trip

Fri, 23 Mar 2012 05:00:00 -0700

Photo: Courtesy Grouse Mountain

Grouse Mountain’s Eye of the Wind

5 Days | 570 Miles Round Trip *

I had just one goal in British Columbia: vertigo. The province has a strange affinity for dangling, suspending, and swinging people from absurd heights, so that seemed achievable. I have no fear of heights, but I wanted to be truly wowed by their sky-high trams and trolleys. Just try to freak me out, Canada.

First up on the BC loop is North Vancouver, where the Capilano River gorge sits 10 minutes from downtown. A century ago, an enterprising Vancouverite built a swinging suspension bridge from one side of the plunging crevasse to the other; now the compound includes a Swiss Family Robinson–style network of tree platforms and the new Cliffwalk. Open since June 2011 and hovering at an improbable angle over the gorge, the cantilevered walkway is only as thick as a few two-by-fours—but it’s stable. So solid, really, that it’s hard to access the terror the 1903 visitors felt when they inched across the chasm’s first cable bridge.

You barely have to move the car to get to Vancouver’s next stomach-churning site, Grouse Mountain. An aerial tram only gets you to a ski base, also home to zip lines and a grizzly bear habitat; it takes a chairlift to reach the lone 215-foot windmill, shiny and white enough to have been made by Apple.

Grouse’s Eye of the Wind exists to generate a quarter of the ski area’s power, but it also promotes clean energy and offers a view from 20 stories up. The glass bubble provides sight lines in every direction while 12,200-pound blades slowly rotate outside. The one-of-a-kind platform does wobble a bit in the wind, but scary? Not really, at least not until a supervillain turns the bizarre lookout into his lair.

From North Vancouver, Highway 99 winds up Horseshoe Bay to Whistler, but the twisty two hours don’t terrify drivers as much as they used to. The aptly named Sea-to-Sky Highway was widened for the 2010 Olympics, resulting in an astounding 66 percent fewer car crashes.

Whistler’s high-end ski village has only grown since the Games. Dining is trending to local ingredients, with local chef Owen Foster introducing a buzzy charcuterie program to restaurants like Alta Bistro and Aura. Dig in to salty bresaola and coppa while decoding the Whistler-Blackcomb map; gondolas, high-speed quads, T-bars, and ski runs crisscross the two mountains like Chutes and Ladders. The year-round Peak 2 Peak Gondola traverses them all and the valley that bisects Whistler and Blackcomb, with 1.88 miles of unsupported cable between towers—the longest in the world. On a bluebird day, distant mountain ranges line the horizon like waves.

Hold out for one of two glass-bottomed cars, or, better yet, imagine what happens should the gondola’s main and backup engines improbably break. Repairmen would ride a rescue car out to stranded passengers using bicycle power—yes, a bicycle on the world’s longest high wire. But without a total mechanical shutdown, most riders aren’t rattled; the gondola ride is as smooth as first tracks in powder.

After traveling up and across, there’s not much left except going down. To the east at the Hell’s Gate Airtram, visitors scoot down into Fraser Canyon. The Swiss-built tram cars motor down to the river-bottomed valley, where a small complex is home to a fudge factory, fisheries exhibit, and a whole host of gold-panning, railway-building ghosts. Vertigo? Nah. The 1,100-foot descent is more scenic than terrifying.

The real gut wrench is the intervening drive, the four-hour arc from Whistler to Hell’s Gate. Traffic on the skinny Highway 99 thins out in Pemberton, a farming town north of the ski resort. In traversing the Coast Mountains, it’s nothing but one-way bridges, steep drop-offs, and inclines that’ll make a small car feel out of shape.

Stop too long in one spot and you’ll risk being pummeled by rocks the size of grapefruit. The only real way station is bump-in-the-road Lillooet, where the Greek Dina’s Place Restaurant does a passable job with poutine. Before you brave the second half of the drive’s mountain-high roads, it settles a still-panicked stomach. You win, Canada.

EAT

Alta Bistro
104-4319 Main St, Whistler, British Columbia,
604-932-2582; altabistro.com

Aura
2131 Lake Placid Rd, Whistler, British Columbia,
888-755-6482; nitalakelodge.com

Dina’s Place Restaurant
690 Main St, Lillooet, British Columbia,
250-256-4264

Capilano Suspension Bridge
3735 Capilano Rd, North Vancouver, British Columbia,
604-985-7474; capbridge.com

Eye of the Wind
6400 Nancy Greene Way, North Vancouver, British Columbia,
604-980-9311, grousemountain.com

Hell’s Gate Airtram
43111 Trans Canada Hwy, Boston Bar, British Columbia,
604-867-9277; hellsgateairtram.com

Peak 2 Peak Gondola
4545 Blackcomb Way, Whistler, British Columbia,
604-967-8950; whistler-blackcomb.com

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

British Columbia Side Trips

Britannia Mine Museum The prettiest sights may be aboveground, but the copper dug from the bowels of British Columbia had as much to do with its growth. The stair-step mining building looks familiar because it was featured in McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Scooby-Doo 2, and The X-Files, among others. 1 Forbes Way, Britannia Beach, British Columbia, 604-896-2233; bcmm.ca

Tuckkwiowhum Village Fraser Canyon’s native culture is evoked in a collection of lodges, earth ovens, and a sweat lodge. Tours feature a meal and Nlaka’pamux storytelling about the area’s long history. 46292 Tuckkwiowhum Rd, Boston Bar, British Columbia, 604-867-8844; tuckkwiowhum.com

*All distances measured from Seattle.

Central Washington Road Trip

Fri, 23 Mar 2012 05:00:00 -0700

Image: Scott Butner

Lake Lenore Caves

2 Days | 455 Miles Round Trip *

Let's get one thing out of the way: “The Scablands” is a terrible name. Central Washington’s most dramatic geology got the short end of the nomenclature stick when it was dubbed the Channeled Scablands by some unpoetic scientist. The nasty name labels an area of flood discharge routes carved by a post–ice age flood some 14,000 years ago. “They are channeled, and they look like scabs,” shrugs University of Washington earth scientist Mike Harrell. “It’s not the most attractive name, but it’s descriptive.”

Good thing these scabs are gorgeous.

Just after I-90 crosses the Columbia River and before it hits the plains for Moses Lake, take an unassuming exit at George and head northeast on a quintessential country highway—you can hit 80 miles per hour, but keep an eye out for anything John Deere green on the shoulder. When you’ve hit the town of Soap Lake, you’re at the beginning of the state’s best-kept geologic secret.

In the early 1900s, ailing pilgrims came to Soap Lake’s mineral waters for their healing properties. Frothy white suds gather on the lake’s shoreline like snowdrifts—the water itself has sodium, bicarbonate, sulfate, and ichthyol—but it was the goopy black mud that worked wonders on circulatory diseases. Mineral waters are pumped directly to in-room bathtubs at the hundred-year-old Inn at Soap Lake. To bring tourists back to Soap Lake, the town has undergone a decade-long campaign to erect a 50-foot lava lamp—no progress as yet.

From here the land speaks louder than anything groovy that humans could build. Crumbly cliffs line a valley heading northeast, with lakes or brushy land in between. There are few trees and fewer buildings to block the rocky shelf walls, which glow ochre in the sun. A partially paved trail climbs up one side to the Lake Lenore caves, a series of shallow indentations that dent the cliffs like thumbprints. People occupied them 5,000 years ago; envy their Scabland view.

Image: Andre Mora

Grand Coulee Dam

Between geologic wonders are small collections of retiree homes, farms, and small towns like Coulee City that sell farm threshers but no Big Macs. Weather-beaten roadside motels would be at home in an Eagles song or have been abandoned altogether. Eventually the land gives way to acre-wide rocks the shape of Southwestern mesas: Squint at the ravines at Dry Falls State Park and you’ll see a miniature Grand Canyon. This used to be a massive waterfall that put Niagara to shame; it wore down the basalt beneath itself, eroding a 20-mile indentation called a coulee.

A few miles north is the biggest coulee of them all, Grand Coulee, close to the state’s hydroelectric power-house. Webs of electric cable spread from the aptly named Electric City, but the Sunbanks Lake Resort is smartly positioned to get an unobstructed vista of flat-topped Steamboat Rock. Its tiny resort homes are the rare local accommodation above the level of RV park.

Finally you’re at the Grand Coulee Dam itself, a wide concrete wall squatting on the Columbia River. It’s a different kind of cliff, smoother than the dimpled surfaces of the Scablands. It’s wetter, too, with orderly lines of river water trickling down its face. The country’s largest single power generator is a mile wide and 550 feet high, and is one of the biggest things we humans have ever made out of concrete. Funny, then, that even this monumental achievement is dwarfed by geology. And it’s geology hardly anyone has even heard of, with a cruddy-sounding name like the Scablands.

Image: Andre Mora

Sun Lakes–Dry Falls State Park

SLEEP

Inn at Soap Lake
226 Main Ave E, Soap Lake, Washington,
509-246-1132; innsoaplake.com

Sunbanks Lake Resort
57662 Hwy 155 N, Electric City, Washington,
509-633-3786; sunbanksresort.com

Grand Coulee Dam
1 Stevens Ave, Coulee Dam, Washington,
509-633-9265; www.usbr.gov/pn/grandcoulee

Steamboat Rock State Park
51052 Hwy 155, Electric City, Washington,
888-226-7688; parks.wa.gov

Sun Lakes–Dry Falls State Park
34875 Park Lake Rd NE, Coulee City, Washington,
888-226-7688; parks.wa.gov

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Central Washington Side Trips

Gingko Petrified Forest State Park Besides the basalt walls of the Columbia Gorge, the view includes petrified wood and petroglyphs that are hundreds of years old. The peace sign is probably relatively new, though. 4511 Huntzinger Rd, Vantage, 888-226-7688; parks.wa.gov

Gorge Amphitheatre The hills are alive with the sound of Dave Matthews and other rock acts. The outdoor concert venue and its spectacular river views host the annual Sasquatch! festival, among others. 754 Silica Rd, Quincy, 509-785-6262; livenation.com

*All distances measured from Seattle.

Oregon Road Trip

Fri, 23 Mar 2012 05:00:00 -0700

Photo: Dennis Hallinan/Alamy

North Head Lighthouse

3 Days | 578 Miles Round Trip *

I PULLED UP to the edge of the world around seven o’clock. It was as dark as the inside of a trash bag, but thankfully, someone had left a light on—a big one. Cape Disappointment’s North Head Lighthouse twirled its beam just a quarter mile from my accommodations: a 110-year-old, three-bedroom home that once sheltered the lighthouse keeper and his family, but has since been renovated to outfit up to six guests.

But tonight it’s just me—and the ghost.

My Kia Sportage had been shaking like a popcorn maker all the way from Seattle, over uneven roads and up and down the hilly Pacific Coast Highway to the southwesternmost corner of the state. I didn’t panic until the car battery died right outside the lighthouse residence, with no cell reception and miles between me and another human being.

Sturdier souls would call this the perfect place for escape, quiet contemplation, and recuperation. I feel like I’ve checked into Tech Addict Rehab. The house is stately with its hardwood floors, crown molding, and tricked-out kitchen with an oversize Kenmore fridge that could hold a wild boar. Families arrive at the historic space with full grocery bags and their hiking boots, or with wedding planners and bouquets of flowers. I have half a turkey sub and a 24-ounce bottle of Corona from the gas station.

“Experienced a few bumps in the night,” reported one visitor in the journal on the coffee table. Another entry told of seeing a white flash fall from the lighthouse at midnight—allegedly the spirit of a woman who leapt to her death when she learned her love was lost at sea. Yet another more elaborate tale came from a man who recalled seeing the shade of a woman cradling a baby gliding down the stairs.

I slept with the lights on.

In daylight, Cape Disappointment is anything but. A gravel path cuts through a swath of ferns and Sitka spruces cling to the cliffside, where the North Head Lighthouse stands sentry. Grassy bluffs slope down to long, flat beaches, and, beyond that, miles of open water. A second, even older lighthouse is just south on the Columbia River.

Photo: Darrell Gulin/Getty

Cape Meares

The car eerily restarts without a jump, and I head for Highway 101 into Oregon, looking for a crowd. The so-called Graveyard of the Pacific—because of its countless shipwrecks—is always to my right, along with views that rival California’s Highway 1. Towering Haystack Rock (aka Goonies Rock) appears suddenly on a turn near Cannon Beach, and a 300-year-old “octopus tree,” with eight limbs rising from its base, lures drivers off the beaten path to Cape Meares. But a rock and a tree don’t make good company.

I find the perfect spot: a surfer’s cove at Cape Kiwanda in Pacific City, 100 miles south of empty Cape Disappointment. Solace comes in a pint of Tsunami Stout from the beachside Pelican Pub and Brewery. With my feet in the sand—yes, you can haul your beer to the beach—I finally relax. There’s nary a ghost around.

SLEEP

Cape Disappointment Lighthouse Keepers’ Residence
North Head Lighthouse, Cape Disappointment State Park, Ilwaco, Washington,
360-642-3078; parks.wa.gov/vacationhouses

Inn at Cape Kiwanda
33105 Cape Kiwanda Dr, Pacific City, Oregon,
503-965-7001; innatcapekiwanda.com

Photo: Courtesy Pelican Pub and Brewery

Pelican Pub and Brewery

EAT

Pelican Pub and Brewery
33180 Cape Kiwanda Dr, Pacific City, Oregon,
503-965-7007; pelicanbrewery.com

Haystack Rock at Tolovana Beach
One mile south of Cannon Beach, Oregon, off Highway 101,
oregonstateparks.org

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Oregon Side Trips

Heceta Head Lighthouse Breakfasts are seven courses at this B&B, housed in buildings that date back to 1894. 92072 Hwy 101, South Yachats, Oregon, 541-547-3696; hecetalighthouse.com

Oregon Coast Scenic Railroad The steam engine does a scenic tour of the Tillamook Bay area, with some rides offering a four-course meal along the way. Garibaldi Depot, 402 S American Way, Garibaldi, Oregon, 503-842-7972; ocsr.net

Three Capes Loop Forty miles, three capes, two lighthouses, and one octopus tree: It’s a winding half-day break from Highway 101. Start at Cape Meares, 10 miles west of Tillamook, Oregon, off Highway 101, 800-551-6949; oregonstateparks.org

*All distances measured from Seattle.

Alaska Road Trip

Fri, 23 Mar 2012 05:00:00 -0700

Photo: Henry Georgi/All Canada Photos/Corbis

Alaska Highway in Yukon Territory

9 Days | 2,360 Miles Round Trip *

There's no water. We’re parked at an empty campground in Alaska, the Arctic sun refuses to set over the Sitka spruce, and our water bottles are empty. The last civilization we passed was hours back in Canada’s Yukon Territory province, where we purchased fresh pasta (expired, but not by too much). Other than cans of cruddy Canadian beer and the gas in our car, we don’t have a drop of liquid. It’s not quite a Jack London story yet—we won’t starve—but we’re hungry and bummed out by the spartan conditions.

So we boiled the pasta in beer over the campfire.

That’s how it works on the Alaska Highway, a fabled route known as the Alcan. The road meanders from the Lower 48, through Canada’s western flank, and into Alaska, the rare road link to our coldest, weirdest state. At times—most of the time, really—it’s a barren, beautiful road uninterrupted by buildings, people, hotels, gas stations, traffic, speed-limit signs, water sources, and value meals. Up here desperation is the mother of invention: hence the beer and expired linguine.

The trials were a little harsher when the Alcan was just a bumpy dirt road built by armies during World War II. Purists brag about navigating the route before it was fully paved in the early 1980s. Today it’s easier. For the first day north of Vancouver, the land is pastoral, not wild; farms dot the side of the narrow highway, and there are Dennys at dinnertime. That doesn’t last long.

The Alcan is the Northwest, but on steroids. Mountains are wide and widely spaced, and massive lakes are electric blue. We kept the wildlife count—three bears, five moose, endless mountain sheep—on the cover of the Milepost, an annual publication that catalogs every pullout and roadhouse on the route. What civilization you do find is truly civilized: Our only gas emergency was averted by friendly folks at a pipeline-workers camp.

Image: John L. Dengler

33 Mile Roadhouse

At one time, roadhouses were evenly spaced up the route, offering reliable company and unique tourist quirks (hey, the world’s largest glass beehive!); now most are shuttered and rotting. Still, standouts remain, some with bare-bones lodging, and the quirky stops are a welcome break from all that endless jaw-dropping scenery. The Toad River Lodge, with its froggy figurines, is a staple at mile 422, and at mile 1,147 the Pine Valley Lodge dishes up flaky cinnamon buns the size of a toddler’s noggin.

Towns along the route—Fort Nelson, Watson Lake, tiny Tok—have little more than gas stations and RV lots; only Whitehorse in the Yukon Territory deserves a full-day stop. The 26,000-person burg is surprisingly funky for its isolation, boasting a reputable craft brewery (don’t boil the excellent Yukon Brewing beer), a vegan bakery, and a hikeable riverfront park at Miles Canyon. It’s about a day past the Liard River Hot Springs, also a highlight, where the Alcan builders left boardwalks and changing rooms around naturally heated pools.

The haul may be 2,360 miles of postcard fodder, but it’s hardly boring. Drivers can pull into Anchorage within four long days of leaving Vancouver, but it’s best to meander; a five-day ferry run returns the car to the Lower 48.

Take time to enjoy the view, boil some beer, or just read the roadside: Wherever the Alcan blacktop passes a talus slope of gravel and gray rock, passersby gather white pebbles to spell out messages to their fellow travelers. Our carful, all essayists and novelists, climbed one such incline to painstakingly spell out some rock graffiti. We crafted our punny message while on an Alcan-driving high: “Write On!”

Photo: Lucas Payne/Alamy

Liard River Hot Springs

SLEEP

Toad River Lodge
Mile 422 Alaska Hwy, Toad River, British Columbia,
250-232-5401; toadriverlodge.com

EAT

Alpine Bakery
 411 Alexander St, Whitehorse, Yukon,
alpinebakery.ca

Pine Valley Lodge
Mile 1147 Alaska Highway, Beaver Creek, Yukon

Yukon Brewing
102 Copper Rd, Whitehorse, Yukon,
867-668-4183; yukonbeer.com

Liard River Hot Springs
 497 Alaska Hwy, Muncho Lake, British Columbia,
250-776-7000; env.gov.bc.ca/bcparks

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Alaskan Side Trips

Jasper National Park Alberta’s Rocky Mountain wilderness is close to the Seattle-to-Alaska route only if you think in Alcan dimensions. Make the trek if your appetite for peaks, lakes, and waterfalls is a strong one. Jasper, Alberta, 780-852-6176; pc.gc.ca

Knik Glacier The 28-mile-long ice sheet is located near Palmer in the Matanuska-Susitna Valley (you’ve probably heard of the town next door, Wasilla). Tours use ATVs, boats, or planes to tour the glacier. 26326 E Buckshot Dr, Palmer, Alaska, 907-745-1577; knikglacier.com

*All distances measured from Seattle.

Updated April 11, 2012. This version corrects the round-trip travel time from Seattle. Originally, we stated the trip would take six days, including a four-day drive North on the Alcan highway plus a two-day ferry trip back. However, the ferry trip is five days, for a total travel time of nine days.

Lummi Island Road Trip

Fri, 23 Mar 2012 05:00:00 -0700

Photo: Courtesy Willows Inn

3 Days | 216 Miles Round Trip *

When a gastronome travels to Lummi Island through the fertile Skagit Valley, it’s not so much a road trip as it is culinary foreplay. Ditch I-5 north of Burlington to follow State Route 11 through Bow-Edison—a connoisseur’s dream of apple orchards and artisan cheesemakers and aromatic bakeries—to arrive at the ferry dock via the oyster-bedded Chuckanut Drive.

A person could work up a serious appetite driving to the Willows, the renovated inn and dinner house on sleepy Lummi Island. The place sits a bucolic 10 minutes from the ferry dock, along a road fringed with snowberries and rosehips and blissfully underpopulated with cars (whose occupants, perhaps from sheer novelty, wave at everyone who passes). It has housed guests under various ownership for a century, but finally seized a planet’s attention last winter when The New York Times declared it one of the world’s “10 Restaurants Worth a Plane Ride.” The reason was chef—and new co-owner—Blaine Wetzel, the 26-year-old wunderkind who apprenticed at Noma in Copenhagen, which San Pellegrino named the World’s Best Restaurant the last two years running.

We parked bags in our charming farmhouse guestroom and returned to the lobby to warm ourselves by its oversize fireplace. Once settled in the view dining room, out came the great chef himself to personally deliver our first course. It’s startling; he looks more like an apple-cheeked kid from Olympia than a world-class gastronome. As it turns out, he’s both.

Wetzel placed a cedar box before us, shyly describing the sustainable reefnet fishing methods of a local boat that yielded the contents, then swung open the lid to unleash a cloud of savory smoke from buttery slabs of smoked salmon. Mellow and rich, they rounded into sweetness on the palate; a luscious kickoff to the parade of eight or so unbilled Northwest “snacks” Wetzel has become so famous for.

A little plate of salmon roe, cured in house and served on a crispy crepe. Island-foraged shoots and herbs and island-harvested carrots and radishes served in a garden basket whimsically filled with “dirt” of hazelnut crumbles and toasted malt. Spot prawns dredged from the sea out the window, topped with a tart currant granita and a balancer of bitter greens from the beach across the road. Two quivering Shigoku oysters from Samish Bay—the bay you gaped at from Chuckanut—delivered in their smooth, deep cups on a bed of cold rocks beneath tender tears of lemony sorrel, that prolific Northwest weed.

Photo: Courtesy Willows Inn

Chef Blaine Wetzel

If the ancients slurped their oysters while foraging the forest floor, they tasted this very combination. As in a few rare places and moments in time—the seaside Sooke Harbour House on Vancouver Island, the Herbfarm’s original garden shed in Woodinville—dining at the Willows imbues diners with the heady illusion that they are not simply eating Northwest bounty; they are merging with its essence.

And we hadn’t even started in on dinner yet.

Two hours, five courses. Oh, the rods of roasted celery root with hazelnuts and horseradish mousse, the steaky braised radicchio with winter stems and bread salad, the slow-roasted Skagit River Ranch beef cheek with grilled onions and green onion sauce. Two unbilled pauses for bread and cheese and five expertly matched wines later, we understood the hype. This blushing chef not only landscapes each plate with the edible soul of Cascadia—by way of the smoked fish and pickled vegetables of Scandinavia—he does so with the instinct for balance and composition that marks the great ones. The remodel that closed the inn for most of this spring has brought a renovated kitchen and a new outdoor stone hearth and grill.

As we licked the last drops of rose hip ice cream from our spoons, a diner across the room leapt to his feet and burst into applause. Never in nearly 30 years of reviewing restaurants have I seen that. After, I pulled Wetzel aside to ask him about it; he replied with vague humility that it almost never happens.

Photo: Courtesy Willows Inn

“Oh, Blaine gets a standing ovation at least once a week,” the wine steward confided later. I’d call that worth a plane ride. I’d even call it worth a road trip.

SLEEP/EAT

The Willows Inn
2579 W Shore Dr, Lummi Island,
888-294-2620; willows-inn.com

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Lummi Island Side Trips

Nettles Farm A short uphill trek from the restaurant is one of the farms operated by the inn that feeds the Willows table. Kales and cabbages, leeks and herbs, squawking chickens and dormant beehives—it’s all there, along with “forage with the sous chef” outings for inn guests, at no extra charge. 4300 Matia View Dr, Lummi Island, 360-758-7616; nettlesfarm.com

*All distances measured from Seattle.

Golf Getaways

Fri, 23 Mar 2012 05:00:00 -0700

Photo: Courtesy Pronghorn Club and Resort

Pronghorn Club and Resort

BEND, OREGON

A Week at Pronghorn

Pronghorn Club and Resort  
65600 Pronghorn Club Dr, Bend, Oregon.  
866-372-1003; pronghornclub.com

656 Miles

THE AROMA THAT permeates Pronghorn isn’t gin, it’s juniper. The resort sits in the middle of 20,000 acres of the high desert trees, so the woody, tangy smell of it hangs in the air. On a clear day you can see past the outdoorsy mecca of Bend to Mount Bachelor, where ski lifts run to its peak.

Builders peppered the golf course with ghost juniper trees, dried and dead but beautifully twisted wood. Superstar designer Jack Nicklaus created lines so clean that groundskeepers trim the bunkers with scissors. The fairways on the par 72 are narrow and take no prisoners, but they’re entirely made of bent grass—every inch as lush as a putting green. A more rustic Tom Fazio–crafted course is open only to Pronghorn homeowners, but it’s worth a stroll to the exposed lava cave on its signature eighth hole.

Between the rocks and the juniper trees, you’ll never forget you’re in Central Oregon, a dry landscape that gets consistent sun (if not warmth). Pronghorn’s stone clubhouse, built in the booming -early 2000s, is a maze of dining rooms, fire-places, and locker rooms with subterranean hot tub chambers. Resort accommodations run as big as four bedrooms, complete with kitchens and dining rooms.

The six-hour drive from Seattle is a treat—once you get halfway, that is. Off of I-5 and crossing Mount Hood’s flank, drivers can watch the trees turn from western Douglas fir to eastern Ponderosa pine. Even after reaching Pronghorn property, there are still a few miles of twisty drive; this last stretch of road darts and weaves as though the path had been traced by a drunk cowboy. Never mind the disorientation. Just continue into the juniper, and you’ll hit a tee box eventually.

SHELTON

A Weekend  at Salish Cliffs

Little Creek Casino Resort  91 W State Route 108, Shelton, Washington,  
360-427-7711; little-creek.com

150 Miles

Do golfers and gamblers share a neurosis? Both pursuits require thought, patience, luck, and—admit it—a measure of masochism. So it’s perfectly reasonable that one of the state’s booming casinos would add a high-quality course to its offerings. The Little Creek Casino Resort complex is a 90-minute drive to the wooded lands of the Squaxin Island Tribe, just northwest of Olympia.

Already host to the usual Tony Orlando concerts and boxing tournaments, in September Little Creek opened its Salish Cliffs Golf Course to fanfare that included an appearance by Seattle golf legend Fred Couples. The links sprawl over 320 acres in the Kamilche Valley, so the shared double green at the ninth and eighteenth holes is to add a fun dash of deja vu, not to save space. Like most gambling halls, the casino itself is full of smoke and flashing lights, with postgolf dining available in a handful of casino restaurants. And you can always go hit the blackjack tables and keep an eye out for Tony Orlando.

TACOMA

A Day at Chambers Bay

Chambers Bay 
6320 Grandview Dr W, University Place, Washington,
877-295-4657; chambersbaygolf.com

82 miles

It's 39 months until Father’s Day 2015, when the U.S. Open will be played in our own backyard. Since it will mark the tournament’s first visit to Chambers Bay Golf Course, or even to the Pacific Northwest, the Pierce County–owned links were immediately catapulted into notoriety. Meaning it got a lot harder to score a tee time in University Place, though it’s far from impossible.

Chambers Bay sits less than an hour south of Seattle, built in 2007 atop a former quarry. You risk Tacoma Mall traffic just to reach the clubhouse, but the waterfront location offers views of Puget Sound and McNeil Island. Even before Open renovations, the public links are ideal for anyone who loses Titleists in the woods or bonks drives off tree trunks—the course has but a single tree.

Road Trips 2012

Road Trips 2012

British Columbia Road Trip

Central Washington Road Trip

Oregon Road Trip

Alaska Road Trip

Lummi Island Road Trip

Golf Getaways

A Week at Pronghorn

A Weekend at Salish Cliffs

A Day at Chambers Bay

A Weekend  at Salish Cliffs