West Yellowstone, Montana

Lauren Braden

Autumn Escape: Harvest Time in Hood River, Oregon

THIS WEEKEND!  Hood River Harvest Fest (October 11-13, 2019) is a classic fall festival that takes place right on the waterfront overlooking the Columbia River. Sample local apples, craft brews, wine, cider and artisan cheeses. Browse booths filled with local art and crafts. Enjoy live music and plenty of games and activities for the whole family. Kids […]

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Northwest Autumn Day Trips: Corn Mazes, Apple Orchards, and Pumpkin Patches

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Psst…. get our premier guide to fall travel – Autumn Escapes in the Pacific Northwest. Get inspired to spend your fall weekends combing rocky beaches, savoring the harvest, and hiking scenic mountain trails of Washington and Oregon. Get it here. It’s October, my favorite month in the kitchen and in the great outdoors. Let’s see… the past few days I’ve […]

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Four Autumn Weekend Getaways in the Pacific Northwest

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Psst…. get our premier guide to fall travel – Autumn Escapes in the Pacific Northwest. Get inspired to spend your fall weekends combing rocky beaches, savoring the harvest, and hiking scenic mountain trails of Washington and Oregon. Get it here.   I’ve saved some vacation days, and I hope you have, too. For fall lovers like me this […]

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Northwest Bookshelf: Exploring Northwest Nature with Kids

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  As a kid born in the 1970’s, my own childhood was free-range and mostly outside. Or rather, those are the vivid memories I have—on a bike, digging in the dirt, or playing with our dog in the park near my house. The reality is more mixed. We had cable TV and a Nintendo, and […]

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Six Oktoberfests in the Pacific Northwest

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Psst…. get our premier guide to local fall travel – Autumn Escapes in the Pacific Northwest. Get inspired to spend your fall weekends combing rocky beaches, savoring the harvest, and hiking scenic mountain trails of Washington and Oregon. Get it here. Backdropped by the snow-capped peaks of the Cascades, Oktoberfest in the Northwest is the next […]

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Five Great County Fairs in Washington State

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It’s almost August, otherwise known throughout the USA as Fair Season! My childhood memories from the fair where I grew up in rural Illinois are coated in sugar. Puffs of blue cotton candy, popsicles colored like the American flag, a plate of funnel cakes dusted with a heavy coat of sweet powder. Go to any […]

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Great County Fairs in Oregon

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  I grew up in a small town in southern Illinois that had been settled by German Catholic farmers a few centuries ago. Instead of a county fair, we had a festival every August called Kirchenfest on the sprawling church parking lot, and my Dad was in charge of making the funnel cakes–platefuls of sweet […]

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Six Summer Day Trips from Seattle

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Summer is nearly half over. Does the approach of August give you a mid-summer crisis, too? Six weeks of summer left until school starts again, and I feel it’s passing way too quickly. It always does here. So I pull out my calendar, and I start scribbling quick trips in. Here are six sunny day […]

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Quick Escape: Sequim on the Olympic Peninsula

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Most people think the Olympic Peninsula town of Sequim (pronounced Skwim) is a retirees’ enclave with year-round sunshine set in a rural landscape dotted with fragrant fields of purple lavender. And indeed, it is. But Sequim is slowly changing, and offers more to its visitors than sunshine and lavender (not that there’s a single thing wrong […]

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Day Trip: U-Pick Berry Farms Near Seattle and Portland

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Summer is berry season in the Pacific Northwest! And we happen to have the perfect climate for growing very tasty raspberries, strawberries, blueberries and blackberries, nurtured to maturity in rich volcanic soils and plumped to juicy ripeness in the warm but not too hot sun. If you don’t have your own berry patch, head to […]

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