Journey Staff Room

When the Four Seasons Hotel Seattle opened in November 2008, a global economic meltdown made it tough for anybody-travelers, industry executives, local observers and others-to get too excited about a new luxury property. Nevertheless, the hotel, located across the street from the Seattle Art Museum and less than a block away from Pike Place Market, has not only survived the toughest of economic times, it has also grown into an admired and respected downtown fixture. So we can understand why its management team is so excited about the future as they gear up to celebrate their fifth anniversary.

“This is such a great time for Seattle.” said GM Ilse Harley, when I asked her to describe the significance of the property’s upcoming milestone. She was referring to hot happenings in the neighborhood, which include last year’s the opening of the Seattle Great Wheel and plans to reshape the city’s waterfront. “There is so much happening right now,” she added.

The conversation took place during a May 21 media reception at the hotel’s ART Restaurant & Lounge, where she and her team unveiled plans to begin their 5-year anniversary celebration this summer. Based on what I saw and heard, here are my top-five reasons to visit:

1. Just say fromage: The restaurant’s cheese table (pictured above, available year-round) brings in about a dozen changing selections from boutique producers near and far. During my visit, I sampled everything from Beecher’s Flagship cheddar to a Spanish manchego with black truffle shavings. Unlimited samplings are available nightly, beginning at 4:30 p.m., but I suggest waiting until the nightly cheese happy hour, 9-11 p.m. each night. The price drops from $14 to $7 per person, and the bar offers select wines at happy hour prices.

2. I scream, you scream: The restaurant’s dessert menu includes homemade ice creams crafted by Tara Sedor, the hotel’s pastry chef. The selections include such year-round staples as chocolate, vanilla and strawberry, as well as seasonal surprises, including two of Sedor’s latest concoctions: s’mores and blueberry pancake. The former combines honey-and-cinnamon-flavored cream with homemade marshmallow, while the latter features a to-die-for mix of buttermilk, maple and blueberry.

3. Poolside fun: I’m not normally a spa guy, and I already live in Seattle, but I’d consider a spa package or an overnight stay at the hotel just to access the pool deck. The outdoor infinity pool and hot tub are surrounded by chaise longues and cabanas, and the hotel serves a wide range of foods and beverages The latter include everything from mineral waters and smoothies to cocktails and beers served in ice mugs (literally, beer mugs made from ice), and the space overlooks the waterfront.

4. Seven bites for seven nights: The 7 Days of ART promotion brings a food tasting designed for each day of the week to the restaurant and hotel lobby. On ART Steak House Saturdays, for example, the restaurant offers a beef “tasting menu,” featuring a sampling of cuts from across the country, accompanied by a variety of sauces and rubs, while guests can sample free mini burgers in the lobby (for hotel guests, restaurant patrons, etc). Thursday’s theme is Northwest Best Catch. The restaurant’s seafood special is paired with a seafood-inspired beverage, while salmon canapé samples await in the lobby, along with a mock fish-throwing demonstration featuring a doll resembling a salmon. These demonstrations are designed to prep children staying at the hotel for visits to Pike Place Market, explains Mike Hirschler, the hotel’s human resources director. Hirschler, who doubles as a monger—waders and all—for the hotel’s demonstrations, says he’s willing to help grownups practice catching fish, too. “If you want a fish thrown at you, we will toss the fish to you,” he says, with a smile.

5. Sip local: Jorge Castillo, the restaurant’s general manager, is embracing the craft distillery movement. This spring, he brought 55 regionally produced spirits to the restaurant’s bar. The selections include Seattle-made Glass Vodka; Crater Lake Sweet Ginger Vodka, produced by Oregon’s Bendistillery; and Alaska Distillery’s smoked salmon-infused vodka. The producers describe the latter as, “Specifically crafted to be enjoyed in a Bloody Mary,” and, after tasting it myself, I can truly say that this is something that you have to try at least once. Guest distillers lead tastings and discussions about their respective spirits at the bar on Friday evenings.

Visit the Four Seasons Hotel Seattle website to learn more.

One of the best things about being the editor of Journey magazine is the opportunity that the job provides to interact with AAA members. Shortly after our latest issue began arriving in homes, we received a slew of suggestions on additional fun things to see and do, and I’d like to share the hottest reader tips in this space.

Karen Peck gave us the scoop on the Edaleen Dairy store near the Sumas border crossing along Highway 9, one of the byways that we showcase in our article on “Alternatives to the Interstate.”

Mrs. Peck told me that not even chilly winter temperatures stop her from visiting the store’s ice cream counter, which serves the Lynden-based dairy’s handmade ice creams for as little as 75 cents (for a kid-sized single scoop on a cake cone; a regular single-scoop costs $1.85). What’s Mrs. Peck’s favorite flavor? Fudgy Wudgy, of course.

In addition to its Sumas location, which opened in 2011, Edaleen operates two stores in Lynden, and its products are widely distributed in the Bellingham area as well as in 7-Eleven stores across western Washington and western Oregon.

I didn’t get the name of the reader who called our attention to the Grays River Covered Bridge in the Willapa Loop section of the “Alternatives” story. Shame on us for forgetting to mention that the covered, single-lane bridge at Ahlberg Park in Grays River is still open for traffic. The Ahlberg family, prosperous dairy farmers with land on both sides of Grays River, built the covered bridge in 1905, according to historical information provided by Grays River United Methodist Church. The then-new bridge replaced a swinging footbridge that wasn’t very efficient—or safe—for farmers carrying containers of fresh milk, particularly during gale-force winds. The “new” 155-foot-long bridge was built for $2,615 in 1905, though this price tag does not include the additional costs incurred a few years later, when the bridge was covered with shingles and reinforced with steel cables. An Eastern Washington University engineering study completed in 1991 estimated that the covered bridge would have cost more than $295,000 to build in the 1980s. Added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1971, the covered bridge and the park are the site of an annual Grays River Grange fundraising dinner and the Grays River Bridge Festival.

In response to our feature stories on cruising, Jean Bolton provided additional tips for cruise passengers. “When my husband and I were planning our cruise (Barcelona to Venice, by way of Rome, Athens, Istanbul, etc.), I happened to come across the Cruise Critic website on the Internet,” Mrs. Bolton told us, via email. “This is a website made up of past, current and future cruisers. I found an immense amount of information on here about which rooms were noisy, which rooms were well situated, what different amenities each cruise line offers, what the quality of food is, etc., etc. If you’re a first-time cruiser and you have ANY questions, you can post them and someone will help you with a response.

“Also, if you book a cruise, you can get onto the ‘Roll Call’ and find others who are booked on the same cruise,” she added. “We lucked into a couple of private tours in this manner. It was particularly nice when we saw a huge cruise line bus parked at the top of the road, because it was unable to navigate the Positano. We were in a Mercedes Benz that held eight of us. We had a private chauffeur, who sang to us. He was an excellent tour guide, and the car was small enough to go everywhere. The best part: It was cheaper than the cruise line bus.”

On a side note, I’d like to point out that AAA’s travel agents are available to guide travelers through the cruise-planning process. You can also learn more about the ins and outs of cruising at AAA’s upcoming cruise shows.

Speaking of reader tips, I would be remiss to not mention a message I received last fall in response to an article on great pie bakeries across the Northwest. Toni Tobin told us about the Old Post Office Sweets and Gifts deli in Sequim (751 Carlsborg Road). “I’m not related to these people and discovered their pies one day at the open-air market,” she wrote, also in an email. “I was hooked! First I bought one slice and shared it, then had to go back for another.”

Thanks to Karen, Jean and Toni, and I encourage anyone and everyone who reads Journey to share your tips, too. In the meantime, I’ll see you in the lines for ice cream and pies.

Whether you are talking about the astronauts of the Apollo 11 mission or that first creature from eons ago to crawl out of the ocean onto land, there is something that drives us all to make giant leaps. Whether we realize it or not, we each possess a craving to be the first to go where no man or woman has gone before. And for those who succeed, the endorphin rushes that follow are hard to beat.

This much became clear to me on my early December visits to Big White Ski Resort and Red Mountain Resort, two wildly different British Columbia ski and snowboard destinations. Time and time again, I found myself in the company of those committed to skiing or snowboarding down steep, rock-lined chutes and through seemingly impassable tree stands just to be the first to set tracks in soft, virgin snow. And as their influences rubbed off on me, the more I became reacquainted with what it means to be alive.

Of the two resorts, Big White has the less extreme terrain, which made it perfect for my first runs of the season. I started off by exploring the resort with a snow host (a complimentary service). Big White plays up its family friendly qualities, which include having 72 percent of its 2,765 patrolled acres rated as either beginner- or intermediate-level terrain. As my ski legs showed signs of returning to life, the snow host, a semi-retired gentleman named Keith from nearby Kelowna, B.C., led me through ever steepening sections of the mountain. Even on the marked runs, there were several times when I felt as though my skis were cutting through butter-cream cake frosting, and this sensation became more pronounced in those untracked areas between the trees-during my session with Keith and, later, when I explored on my own.

The family-friendly amenities at Big White extend beyond the slopes. In addition to 17 dining options, including a steakhouse and a tapas-and-wine bar, the resort’s base villages (there are two, connected by a free gondola service) are also home to an ice rink and a 60-foot tall ice-climbing tower. Jim Ognena, the expert climber who brought the tower to the resort two winters ago, describes the experience as a great way to introduce beginners to the sport. For $20, visitors can rent basic gear, including boots, crampons, ice axes and a harness, and attempt to scale the tower, with the aid of Ognena or one of his staffers on the belay line. So far, climbers as young as 7 years old and as old as 75 have made it to the top, though, I have to confess, I flailed badly (I barely made it a quarter of the way up).

As if skiing, skating and attempting to scale ice towers aren’t enough, the resort also introduced tea service this year in its Kettle Valley Steakhouse (just a stone’s throw from the skating rink and ice tower). The steakhouse partnered with Moteas, a Kelowna-based importer/retailer of organic teas, to create an experience rarely found in ski resorts. For about $20, visitors can choose from a variety of teas—options include lemongrass green teas, masala chai, hibiscus berry breeze and Earl Grey with rose—and enjoy them with a selection of savory and sweet snacks (tea-inspired cocktails are also available for an additional cost). The resort’s restaurants and pubs also serve several artisan wines produced in the neighboring Okanagan Valley, and these include several great selections that you won’t find in the U.S.

There were no tea services to be found at Red Mountain, located about 130 miles north of Spokane (and just 10 minutes north of the Canadian border), because this resort is all about its terrain. Red Mountain boasts some of the longest steeps you’ll find in North America, with 45 percent of its terrain, ranging from groomed runs to isolated glades, carrying an advanced rating, and seeing is believing. Just riding the Motherlode Chair to the top of the resort’s Granite Mountain left me in awe, and even in soft, turnable snow, I found myself picking up speed at a rapid—and invigorating—pace. You can expect to hear more about Red Mountain in the months ahead as it gears up to introduce snow-cat service to its Grey Mountain peak this season, in advance of a new lift to the 6,719-foot-elevation peak next year. Of Red Mountain’s 4,200 acres, about 1,625 acres are currently served by lifts. This only encourages its most avid visitors to hike up to the top of adjacent peaks, including Grey Mountain, in order to ski or board back down through untracked snow. When the new lift to Grey’s peak is completed next year, it will add nearly another 1,000 acres to the area of lift-serviced terrain available at the resort.

In some parts of the world, a 60-year-old man wearing powder-blue running shorts over bright-yellow long johns and a white hardhat with a miniature rocket on top might stand out as an oddball.

In Seattle’s Fremont district, he’s just another colorful character. Because, even as slick new offices and condominiums add polish to the once gritty neighborhood, Fremont is still filled with people who embrace its official motto, Libertus Quirkus, or “the freedom to be peculiar.” And you’d be hard pressed to find anyone who embraces this freedom more completely than Mark Ukelson, the man beneath the hardhat.

Ukelson’s passion for both Fremont and its public art installations inspired him to create The Fremont Tour last summer. The walking tour provides interesting and, at times, surprising insight into how such landmarks as the Fremont Troll, Waiting for the Interurban and others came to the neighborhood.

Even Seattle residents might be surprised to learn that the Slovakian artist who crafted the 7-ton bronze Lenin sculpture along North 36th Street incorporated a slight dig at the founder of Russia’s communist party into the work. The abstract columns trailing the revolutionary can be interpreted as criticism of Lenin’s legacy by suggesting that guns, tanks and war inevitably accompanied the spread of communism. The fact that the artist, Emil Venkov, completed the sculpture in 1988, while his homeland was still under the grip of the former Soviet Union, explains why he kept his commentary so subtle. Equally surprising is the story of how the late Lewis Carpenter, an American veteran teaching in Slovakia in the late ’80s, mortgaged his house to pay to ship the provocative statue back to his home in Issaquah following the Soviet Union’s collapse.

On a sunny afternoon in July, I tag along as Ukelson, aka The Rocket Man, leads a group of about a dozen people on a tour. Our group includes a few 30-something workers from a nearby tech office and a group of 50-something Bellingham-area residents who learned of the tour through LivingSocial. Ukelson created his superhero persona to bring a touch of street theater to the experience, and other guides on his staff include “The Fremont Fairy Godmother” and “J-efe, the Turkish Rap Singer.”

The tour begins in Solstice Plaza, along North 34th Street, where Ukelson explains that a “Fre-monster” is a person who appreciates public art and likes to play. As we proceed onto nearby streets to visit close to 10 public sculptures and other installations—including the J.P. Patches statue, the Center of the Universe sign, and the Fremont Rocket—Ukelson provides a brief history of each one.

Ukelson, who owns a souvenir business and works as a substitute teacher, moved to Seattle from Cincinnati, Ohio, about 30 years ago and fell in love with Fremont when he leased a factory in the neighborhood in the ’90s. Though he lives in North Seattle, he seems to agree that the neighborhood in which he leads his tours is the “center of the universe,” the mantra that appears on the “Welcome to Fremont” signs.

The outlandishness of his costume seems tempered by a sort of ironic self-deprecation. Though he looks about a decade younger than his 60 years, his receding hairline is still more salt than pepper, and he lacks the chiseled features that you’d expect from a real superhero. Nevertheless, he walks tall as he leads our group along the neighborhood’s busiest sidewalks, inviting unsuspecting bystanders along the way to join in on playful repartee. Most simply smile as we pass, but the friendly interactions of our guide, with us and with total strangers, reflect the sense of playfulness that Ukelson is committed to creating.

“The ability to play is a skill you develop as a child,” Ukelson tells me, shortly after our tour ends. “But most people lose this ability as they become adults. When you get to be my age, you realize how important it is to be able to play. Our mission is to help people find their playfulness through art.”

Reservations are required for The Fremont Tour, which covers about a half-mile over 80 minutes.

Visitors to this site may have noticed the absence of one familiar face and the addition of a new staff member. That’s because Nicole Meoli, Journey’s former editor-in-chief, recently left to pursue an exciting new venture abroad. I was named her successor, and we subsequently brought Michele Whitehead aboard as associate editor.

We’re very excited to have Michele on our team for a number of reasons. For starters, she is a rock-star editor. She’s also a well-rounded Northwest native who understands the ins-and-outs of our region and our readers, and she brings several other positive attributes to the table.

In the weeks and months ahead, you can expect to see more frequent updates to the pages of this website as our writers, editors and art director work to enhance the print version of Journey magazine with additional coverage. Look for exclusive online content showcasing the latest and greatest in travel across the Northwest and beyond, as well as tips on everything from autos to insurance from the experts on staff here at AAA Washington. We also invite you to write in to share your experiences. It’s as easy as contacting me via email (robbhatt@aaawin.com) or connecting with anyone else on our staff through the “Contact Us” link, which appears near the upper-right corner of our homepage. As a member-centric organization, we are extremely interested in maintaining an ongoing dialogue with our readers, so please, give us a shout.

In the meantime, I encourage you to read the exciting features currently appearing on this website, and stay tuned for a fun summer with AAA Washington’s Journey magazine.