Travel & Outdoors | Seattle Times Newspaper

Monday, August 4, 2008 - Page updated at 06:16 AM

SUMMER GUIDE

Welcome to your Puget Sound summer. We've got things to do, places to see and great ideas for getaways.

Entertainment

Summer concerts

Outdoor movies

Dining al fresco

Open-air theater

More things to do

Monthly calendars of your favorite festivals and events, lists worth saving all summer long.

September
Wooden Boat Festival, Port Townsend, Sept. 5-7
Mukilteo Lighthouse Festival, Mukilteo, Sept. 5-7
Puyallup Fair, Puyallup, Sept. 5-21

August
Seafair hydro races, Seattle, Aug. 1-3
International Kite Festival, Long Beach, Aug. 18-24
Bumbershoot, Seattle, Aug. 30-Sept. 1

Places to see

View larger map

A comprehensive guide to where to go and what to do all over Puget Sound.

Seattle attractions

New this year in Seattle are the Northwest African American Museum and Lake Union Park (which you can get to on the new Seattle Streetcar).

Eastside attractions

West attractions

North attractions

South attractions

Summer getaways

Road trip! 10 close-to-home summer vacations

Hit the road, Jack ... The only thing left to decide is your driving music.

Mount Rainier

Hike, take a nature walk, climb, go bird-watching or just take a scenic drive and appreciate the regional icon up close.

Olympic National Park

A nature's paradise of world-class trails, glacier-capped peaks, mossy rainforests, wild ocean beaches, waterfalls, lakes and rivers and a variety of flora and fauna.

Bellingham

Nearby Mount Baker, and the busy college town on the bay beneath it. Many hiking trails, short or as strenuous as your lungs can take. You can camp, bike, fish, bird-watch, canoe, raft or swim around here.

Yakima Valley

Wine. More than 60 wineries. Outdoor recreation, especially fly-fishing, is popular here, too. The valley gets more than 300 days of sunshine a year.

Long Beach Peninsula

The ocean! And a 28-mile stretch of beach that makes (debatable) claims at being the world's longest. An eclectic mix of funky old beach cottages, modern condos and vintage hotels.

San Juan Islands

Wildlife, hikes, whale-watching, gourmet restaurants, B&Bs, all reachable via a scenic cruise aboard a Washington State ferry.

Leavenworth

These hills are alive with Bavarian-flavored charm, chalets and festivals, but it's the ambience of the Cascade Mountain trails, lakes and streams that attracts most summertime tourists.

Lake Chelan

Scenery, water sports and wine. Canoe, parasail, scuba dive, water ski or wakeboard. Fishing is big, for chinook and lake trout. More than a dozen wineries surround the 55-mile-long lake

Methow Valley

A 200-kilometer trail system set amid breathtaking scenery. The rural towns of Winthrop, Twisp and Mazama offer charming accommodations and access to extensive trails that bring out cross-country skiers in winter and hikers and cyclists in summer.

Port Townsend

The historic Victorian seaport on the Quimper Peninsula may be best known for its annual film festival (Sept. 26-28), but there's a nonstop schedule of art and music events throughout the summer.

Seattle sights

DEAN RUTZ / THE SEATTLE TIMES

A great deal of Maureen Elenga's time is spent looking up. She is the author of "Seattle Architecture: A Walking Guide to Downtown."

A walking tour of city architecture

We walk past them every day -- but do we really look at them?

I'm talking about Seattle's architectural gems, quirks and occasional monstrosities. Not the superstars of our skyline -- the Space Needle, the Smith Tower -- but the quieter buildings in brick and stone and terra cotta. They have a history of their own, and shed light on our city's history.

But where can you go for help in discovering that history?

Maureen R. Elenga's book "Seattle Architecture: A Walking Guide to Downtown" (Seattle Architecture Foundation, 298 pp., $20) is a splendid resource. Published earlier this year, it's a compact guide to Seattle's downtown corridor. ... More

Selected sights