Hot tubs: expensive, complicated to maintain, ruin bathing suits. Hot springs: better in every way. Most Washington sites require a serious trek, but the Sol Duc Hot Springs Resort delivers easy access in Olympic National Park, with waters pumped into swimming pools.

One could consider the SkyRide Spokane’s version of the Space Needle, since it was also built for a world’s fair—Expo ’74, in this case. Gondola cars pass over Spokane Falls and under the Monroe Street Bridge, an effortless way to appreciate how Washington’s eastern city manages its own twentieth-century swagger.

South of Mount Adams and on the north side of the Columbia Gorge, the White Salmon River hides roller coaster–level rapids in a quiet canyon. The Zoller family has run guided tours there for three generations, through basalt canyons and down the extreme Husum Falls drop.

In a state where our Pacific coastline is also a highway—with a speed limit and a few no-drive zones—the sands also serve as campfire backdrop. The heat of a Long Beach bonfire makes up for the lack of hot days by the seaside; the town averages almost 80 inches of rain per year. 

To live among fjords and straits, bays and deltas, and never take to the water? Inconceivable. Between Washington State Ferries and sightseeing boats, charter sailboat rides and rentable SUPs, there are a million ways to bobble across Puget Sound, but the growing fast-ferry network—to Bremerton, Kingston, and Vashon—is an under-the-radar cheap ride.

The word “trail” has a loose definition on the Pacific Coast, where routes to Olympic National Park beaches can include cable ladders and ropes to haul yourself up like a sailor. The steep sections are thanks to craggy headlands that must be navigated between beaches strewn with driftwood, and ever-shifting tides mean these hikes are always operating on hard mode.

Don’t close your eyes and don’t look down. On the most dramatic mile of Harts Pass Road—more officially known as US Forest Service Road 5400—the driver must focus on the dirt and gravel surface as it contours the side of a mountain like a wiggly ramen noodle. There are no guardrails between this one-at-a-time car lane and a long tumble into a North Cascades valley. 

Welcome to the highest drive in the state, an unpaved byway that begins north of Mazama in the Methow Valley. From the end of the Lost River Road blacktop near town, Harts Pass itself appears after about nine miles of driving, and it’s the last road that passes the Pacific Crest Trail before that hiking route hits Canada. At the turnaround point, Slate Peak lookout still stands near where a gold rush once brought miners to the remote North Cascades, at an elevation of more than 7,000 feet above sea level.  

While the Harts Pass Road creates white knuckles every day it’s open (spring through fall), regular pullouts do mitigate the stress of meeting another car going the other direction. Recent upgrades mean the drive can be done carefully by a standard sedan, but its airiest section still gives the road a well-earned reputation as Washington’s scariest.

Don’t tell the ski bums at the resorts, but the state’s best skiing might be of the flat variety in this 120-mile trail network that extends across farmland on the Methow Valley floor, the largest such system in North America. Well-groomed snow directs cross-country athletes on daylong skis under crisp, sunny skies.

Railways that once ferried timber across the state have been reborn as recreation routes, most notably the 250-mile Palouse to Cascades State Park Trail. The tunnel blasted two miles through Snoqualmie Pass rock makes for the state’s spookiest bike ride.

Views aren’t a rare commodity at Mount Rainier, and multiple trails in the Paradise Meadows visitor area promise a “vista” or “panorama.” The mostly paved and relatively easy Alta Vista loop reveals a look at the mountain, of course, but the return to the parking lot opens up a view of the jagged Tatoosh Range worthy of its own long hard look.