Thurston County in Washington state is best known for its jewel, Olympia, a stately, historic and scenic city filled with soaring examples of Greco-Roman architecture and irresistibly browsable book shops, galleries and boutiques.
Washington’s version of Victoria, its beautiful state buildings are on a bluff overlooking the ocean and its 278-foot high capitol dome is visible from most everywhere.
A five-hour drive from Vancouver, it’s a great destination for a weekend away.
There are daily tours of the capitol dome and we gladly joined one led by Ed Smith, a 30-year history teacher whose father had once served in the legislature. He primed our small group on the European marble, carved masonry and more than 300 Tiffany lights and chandeliers that decorate the interior. It’s an impressive, palatial building and one that certainly lends gravity to Washington’s history and the business of lawmaking.
It was less-than-fascinating for a six-year-old, though, which is why our next stop was the very antidote: the Hands On Children’s Museum of Olympia. These days almost every city has a children’s museum — but not like this one.
“Our goal was to only feature exhibits from the Pacific Northwest, things children might see in their own back yards,” said Jillian Henze, communications manager for the 28,000-square-foot museum.
Best suited for the three- to eight-year-old crowd, this innovative space delves into the farm to fork eating experience, the Puget Sound waterway, the forest and the life cycle of water. Touching is mandatory here and by interacting with the exhibits, children learn how currents flow, how large a bald eagle’s nest really is, how water and wind pressure work, how to build a house and where food comes from.
We left Olympia the next day for Grand Mound, 20 minutes away and home to Great Wolf Lodge. The massive indoor water park is a hedonistic kids’ paradise, with water slides that sweep riders on a variety of fast, circuitous watery journeys, a large wave pool and two well-designed water play structures — one for toddlers and the other for kids seven and younger.
There’s easily enough to do in the water park alone for a half-day’s entertainment, but once you towel off there’s much more.
Around us kids were running around with plastic wands, engrossed in MagiQuest, a game wherein they explore an enchanted kingdom, gain magic powers, learn from the Book of Wisdom and battle a dragon.
We took the long road back to Olympia on Old Highway 99 to get a glimpse of Tenino, a sleepy city with a fascinating history.
I was anxious to learn about its sandstone legacy, which dates back to 1888 with the discovery of a large sandstone deposit, a popular building material in the pre-concrete era.
When the quarries closed in the late 1920s, one of them, the Tenino Stone Company Quarry, was deliberately flooded with water from natural springs by the City of Tenino. It was transformed into a 95-foot deep swimming pool with beautiful, terraced walls that bear evidence of its history.
There’s one final stop you should make before leaving Tenino, and that’s the Sandstone Distillery, located on the family farm of John Bourdon. For the past year he’s been at the helm of the first legal distillery in the county since prohibition, making small batches of gin, vodka and whiskey from Washington-grown grains.
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