See & Do Nearby

The original owners retired, but Detro's Western Store in RIVERSIDE (about 9 miles north) has been resurrected. This is the go-to destination for shoppers of western wear and riding gear. You can even get rhinestone cowgirl stuff (but rhinestone cowboys are SOL). Nice selection of hats, boots, shirts, jeans, dresses, handbags, jewelry, saddles, tack, lassos (in synthetic bright colors, I despair). You gotta check this place out, maybe pick up some spurs or a Stetson. Get tricked out for the Omak Stampede or my fave, the Chesaw Rodeo.

Omak Lake and it's lovely beach is one of the best kept secrets in the state, and let's you and I keep it that way. Imagine a pristine 8-mile lake with beaches and rocky cliffs, completely undeveloped except for two (clean) outhouses at the beach. This lake is on the Colville Indian Reservation, and by either careful planning or a miracle, it is still as Nature made it. Wonderful place to swim, boat, kayak. Hills to hike and rocky cliffs that any climber would love to get their pitons into. The lake is mildly alkaline (no outlet) and stocked with Lahontan cutthroat, fishing is excellent. Only 9 miles from Kokanee Cottages in OKANOGAN. (To get to the boat launch in the next bay you have drive in from OMAK.)

Nana's Nook up by the OMAK airport has a great selection of china, glass, and smallish antiques. She also jazzes up old pieces of furniture with neat colors and fancy hardware. (That killer turquoise mirror and washstand in Tamarack Cottage is a Nana special.) The shop adjoins Rockwall Winery (owned by her son). The two antique stores in Okanogan closed (sad -- one was right across the street). Aussie Antiques and The Creamery in TONASKET are still going concerns, and I go there frequently. (Every cottage has something from Aussie's in it.)

Rockwall Winery is a couple miles north of OMAK. Pick up a bottle of their Stampede Red (with a new commissioned art label every year). On Wednesday evenings in the summer you can bring your own food to go with the wine, and sit outside listening to live music. You can pick up a nice selection of regional wines at Smallwoods Fruit Stand & Cafe two miles south of OKANOGAN. Tired of vines? Try the local blueberry hard cider or sour cherry perry by Ole Swede Cider (available at the Coop in TONASKET). 

The perfect hike, all of 15 minutes, tops; 10, more like. If you can tear yourself away from the beach at the north end of Omak Lake, drive about 3 miles south, turn left on the road that goes down the hill to follow the lake, park at the bend where a dirt track leads up open country to Balance Rock, which you will see now, outlined against the sky. The last few feet of the hike are steep, so zig zag as you climb. Great photo op. And be kind to the lichen on the rock, that stuff only grows about 1/8th inch a year, so do the math. Slightly closer to OKANOGAN than OMAK.

Partly an outdoor mini-street of weathered buildings, and partly an indoor space with lots of historical stuff (including examples of cattle brands), a visit to the Okanogan Historical Museum this is a nice way to spend an hour boning up on local lore. Head north on 2nd out of OKANOGAN about a mile. (The tower at the south end of the museum isn't a lookout, it's for hanging and drying the old-style canvas fire hoses.) 

There are some pictographs by long, long dead First Nation artists around the area. One lot I know about, have heard of a few others. It is a quest for me now. But I don't want to post the locations in case idiot teenagers with spray cans decide to show how much better they are at what they might call grafitti. However, I am not above sharing information with discerning -- and discreet -- guests. Better you see them before the vandals do. 

  Play pool at The Club Tavern in OKANOGAN, where Eric and Greg Thomsen (above) enjoy a game and the Friday night prime rib special. OMAK also has a pub with pool tables (The Shorthorn), and a bowling alley (Valley Lanes). And if you want to flirt with fortune, you can go to the 12 Tribes Casino, on US 97 about a mile south of OMAK. Warning: smoking is allowed, so you're putting your wallet AND your lungs at risk. 

  If turning pages is your preferred activity level, stock up on reading material at Daydream Books (649 2nd Ave N) in OKANOGAN. The owner has curated a wonderful selection in his little Craftsman house (look for concrete lions out front), mostly used, but some new, and all quality stuff. It's jam packed, there are only little pathways between the shelves and stacks. I simply cannot go into this place without a wad of bills (CASH ONLY). And a vehicle to carry my haul back to the cottage. Hours are a bit erratic, so if you see it's open, don't miss the opportunity to browse.  

If you want to brush up on your natural history, then look up glacial Lake Missoula and the recurring megafloods during the last ice age. DRY FALLS wasn't dry to start with, it had lots of water and made Niagara look piddling. Grand Coulee and a bunch of other coulees (canyons) and the Scablands were all carved out by these huge floods. Take a gander at Google Maps' satellite view of eastern Washington to see what water can do. Heck, when Salmon Creek right by Kokanee Cottages was flooding you could here the booming of boulders banging each other as the water washed them down to the river, impressive. And that was a creek, not a wall of water miles and miles wide and hundreds of feet high tearing up solid rock. COULEE DAM and GRAND COULEE (the 30-mile-long canyon) are only an hour away. No excuse not to see. (Scroll down to read about Dry Coulee and Summer Falls.)

Molson is far and away the biggest and best preserved of the region's ghost towns (most are just a couple of buildings, or a stone foundation or two). It has several nice old buildings, a couple of which you can still go into. Lots of lovely rusty old mining (it was a gold rush town) and farm equipment and a windmill. The drive up to it is gorgeous (head northeast out of TONASKET to HAVILLAH, and if you make the trip on July 4th you can go to CHESAW for the best little rodeo ever, then up to MOLSON and then west to OROVILLE back down in the Okanogan valley (and back to Tonasket and then Okanogan and Kokanee Cottages). Absolutely spectacular views both ways, but I prefer the loop in this direction. At one point you will be driving right along the Canadian border (don't stop to pee, there are cameras in the trees). 

I hated to post even this picture, because it's a bit of a spoiler. In fact, if you can, don't look at anything on their website. I walked into this place cold, and I always thought the term "jaw-dropping" was just hyperbole. Not so. This was right up there with Bryce Canyon and the Chihuly glass exhibit at Seattle Center. These dioramas are absolutely unbelievable. Sure, there are model trains tootling around, but that's just a bit of moving icing on the cake. There are towns, cities, a zoo, circus, fair, prison, subway, mine, ski slope, zip line and campground, port, train station (duh), even a nude beach in a little valley too high for kids to see ha ha. And the scale is 1:87. We are talking tiny, people. As in tiny people, a half inch high and hand painted. Closed at 5pm and on Sunday. Just across the border in OSOYOOS. (Which is why you need to shell out for a passport or enhanced license.)

On the outskirts of REPUBLIC you can see Eocene epoch fossils a the STONEROSE INTERPRETIVE CENTER AND FOSSIL SITE and dig for long, long dead plants and bugs. (You can rent rock hammers, how convenient is that?) Not open in the winter, of course, and in high summer make sure you have water or something to drink with you because it can get toasty out there by the bluff. (Afterwards you can refresh yourself at Republic Brewery.) You can take home three fossils of your choice, but you have to show your finds to the staff. They will identify what you have, and decide if anything was of sufficient scientific interest that they want to keep it (in which case you just get credit for the find, but that's kinda cool, to have your name in science for posterity). Depending on when you're there, you might be able to catch the Stock Car Races. 

I finally got this boat ride off my bucket list. It should be on yours. Lake Chelan is a big, long lake, the third deepest in the country. The city of CHELAN is at the south end, with beaches, wineries, the whole summer vacation thing going on. But at the north end is little STEHEKIN and no road to get there. There is a trail, though, the Pacific Crest Trail that runs north/south from Washington to California. So if you want to get up to backpacker central and you don't have your own boat, you hop on the Lady of the Lake. Which is actually two boats, the bigger slower one and the smaller express one. You can do the trip in one day if you take the slow boat up and the quick one back. Gives you time to take the Red Bus to Rainbow Falls, get dropped off at the famous Stehekin Pastry Company for lunch or monster cinnamon buns, walk back to the North Cascades Lodge/dock and still have time to shop and have a beer. Awesome day trip. Make a reservation.

Once you cross the mountain passes over the Cascade Range, you go from dense coastal forest to dry land scattered Ponderosa pines. So by the time you get to Wenatchee, you don't expect to see an outcrop of dark green pointy trees. But there it is, OHME (pronounced oh-mee) GARDENS, an oasis of conifers on a rocky bluff in an inland desert. Very pretty in late spring when all the phlox and groundcovers are blooming. And even better in summer when you can mosey along the many pathways in the SHADE, bliss on a scorching sunny day. All started by a couple who ran an orchard by day and built a killer back yard after work. 

If you've made the run south through Grand Coulee and are thinking ending your jaunt at COULEE CITY, hold on. If you want to add an hour (or more) to your excursion, take Pinto Ridge Rd south and just a few feet past the fork to Dry Coulee there is a small road heading east that will take you to Billy Clapp Lake and SUMMER FALLS. There is a little park there with picnic tables, so come prepared with snacks and drinks. Note that the sign for the falls is way off the road and angled wrong, so hard to see. After nibbles and a swim, go back to DRY COOLEE and drive south through it to get a whole different sense of coulee country. Grand is big and majestic, Dry is close and intimate, wide enough for just one ranch. In early summer when the hills and cliffs are covered with mock orange in bloom, it's an outstanding bit of secret scenery. Head back north at Soap Lake and see the southern part of Grand Coulee from the other direction. 

If you are heading over to Kokanee Cottages east out of Seattle over Snoqualmie Pass on Interstate 90, you can turn northwards and take Blewett Pass up to WENATCHEE, or stay on I-90 through ELLENSBURG to VANTAGE where you cross the Columbia River and then head north to Wenatchee (and from there on up to Okanogan and the cottages). Just west of Vantage is GINGKO PETRIFIED FOREST, an interpretive center, lovely viewpoint overlooking the Columbia, and a series of trails over bare hills to some holes in the ground with petrified stumps poking out. But there are grates over the logs, and when I was there, a fair bit of trash in the holes along with the stumps. So if you want to see the rock wood in situ, all good, but if you want to get up close and personal with really big petrified logs you can touch, then go to the nearby GINGKO GEM SHOP where it's right there around the parking lot. Along with some dinosaurs, what can I say. And you can buy petrified wood by the pound (go out behind their shop). 

Say you've headed south from Kokanee Cottages in  Okanogan to see GRAND COULEE DAM via NESPELEM or BREWSTER, and you want to spend a bit more time on the road seeing the sights. Head SW to WILBUR, then north to REPUBLIC, west to TONASKET, and then south back to OKANOGAN. But to do that, you have to cross the Columbia, and there is no bridge. That's right. You have to take a little ferry to make the jump. It's a cute little thing, basically a glorified motorized raft. And it's free. It doesn't have a set schedule -- when they see you drive up, they come and get you. I suggest making the run from south to north because the view as you come off the plateau down into the Columbia River gorge is outstanding. And when you get to the bottom, stop at the River Rue RV Park for some Schwan's ice cream to eat while you cross.