Laurie and Burt are getting closer to finishing their second McMenamins Passport, so it was time to make the Washington run. We drove to Bothell to start at Anderson School, then did Seattle, Olympia, the Olympic Club in Centralia and then visited the new site, Kalama Harbor Lodge. Here’s a picture of us with our Olympic Club prize.
For comparison, here’s a picture of us from January 2016, when we first made the Washington run.
Kalama Harbor Lodge is the newest McMenamins property and is quite nice. It was stuffed full of people when we arrived and I’m not sure if that was a function of the three-day weekend or if the Kalama area is under-subscribed for lodging and restaurants.
Our visit did solve one mystery for me. When I take the train to Seattle, there’s always a stretch where there is a lovely park and I’d always wondered what park it was. It turns out it’s the Port of Kalama: Marine Park & Rasmussen Day Use Park and is right next door to the McMenamins. We got to walk through it, because one of the stamps needed for this site is at a small pub a half mile away. It was dark and kind of chilly, but was a nice walk.
The website for the hotel has also shed some light on why they would build a hotel in this particular location as it seems to be in the middle of nowhere. Aside from antiquing, the newly opened Ilani Casino is 15 minutes away.
This will probably be our last all-of-Washington-in-one-day journey. Once the Tacoma property opens it will take longer than 12 hours to get to all the properties, and that makes for a too-long day.
Laurie had the good idea to stay in one of the properties and do some on the way up and some on the way back. So it might be that you would hit Anderson School and Seattle and then stay in Tacoma. Then get Olympia, Centraila and Kalama on the way back down.
Because we live in Portland, the Vancouver properties are easy to pick up, so they don’t need to be a part of the journey.