Seattle in June

You posted this under transportations tips. You might ask the webmaster to move this post to this section: https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/beyond-europe.

You don't say where you are arriving from or the ages of your family members, so it's hard to tell you whether staying by the airport after you arrive at midnight would make more sense for you and your family than getting a taxi or uber into Seattle. Also be aware that 4 people plus luggage might not fit well into some taxis and ubers. If you're going to be exhausted and just want to crash, spend the first night in a hotel by the airport regardless of what you plan for the rest of your trip.

You also don't say how long you are staying or give us any information about what your family enjoys doing. Olympic National Park is a worthwhile place to visit. So are Vancouver, Victoria, and Seattle. So are numerous other places in the Pacific Northwest. I'm at a loss to give you advice on which plan is best for you.

Here is info on Washington state ferries: http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/Ferries/.

You have posed a multitude of options/questions.

So what do you want to do? Spend a few days in Seattle or head directly out to the Olympic Peninsula the day after arrival.

If you rent the car downtown you avoid the airport taxes.. Hotels by the airport will cost much less than in downtown.

The car ferry to Victoria leaves from Anacortes Washington State Ferry ( http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/ferries/) or from Port Angeles ( https://www.cohoferry.com/reservations/ferry )

If you take a ferry, you end up on Vancouver Island, in the city of Victoria. If you drive north from Seattle you end up in Vancouver BC, the city. ( If you drive south from Seattle, you will find Vancouver, WA just across the river from Portland, OR)

If you do decide to spend a few days IN Seattle, get your car when you leave.

You don't mention how long you will be in the Seattle area, how old your kids are, or what your interests are, so I will just give you my opinion based on my preferences. If you are interested in the Olympic National Park, stay at the airport and rent a car. It is easier to drive from the airport south to the park. I love the historic Lake Quinault Lodge and the Hoh Rain Forest. If you want to go to Victoria, you might consider the Black Ball ferry from Port Angeles, which is on the Olympic Penisula (I am not familiar with a ferry from Olympia, and Olympia is not usually the first choice for tourism for most people). Returning from Victoria, you can return to Port Angeles or to Anacortes (about 1.5 hours north of Seattle). The one to Anacortes is more scenic and goes through the San Juan Islands, which are worth a stop if you have time. I would spend some time in the city of Seattle (2 days? depending on your total time) which has Pike Place market, the space needle, a very good science museum for the kids, waterfront, locks (where you often see salmon migrating up the fish ladders), museum of pop, Mariners games, etc. You could give up your car in Seattle, depending on your parking options; driving in downtown can involve expensive parking, one-way streets and bus-only streets, so you may or may not be comfortable with that. There is a light rail that goes to/from the airport/downtown that is easy, depending on where you are staying. Give a few more details and you will probably get more ideas. Have a fun trip.

Having a car in Seattle itself is not something most visitors would enjoy. The city is working hard to force people out of cars by making it as painful as possible to drive one. If it were me, I'd head straight for the Olympics and enjoy watching Seattle recede in the rear view mirror.

Thanks for the advice! Kids are teenagers and we will be in the area for a week. It seems like the best idea is to head out to Olympic and then circle back to Seattle for the end of our stay. Perhaps we could ditch the car when we got to Seattle. Any lodging suggestions? I will look into Lodge at Olympic. Thanks!

Spend the first night at an airport hotel, then drive south on I-5 and west on 101 (you can stop at Olympia, which is, ahem, worth a few hours for tourism), to Aberdeen and on north to Lake Quinault, where there's a very good lodge, or Kalaloch, another good lodge on the ocean. You could spend a couple of days exploring around there, Forks would be a good base (watch out for vampires). Lots of rain forest hikes and beautiful beaches. If time allows, go out to Neah Bay for Cape Flattery (NW tip of the lowre 48) and the excellent tribal museum. A second base could be around Port Angeles, for a drive up to Hurricane Ridge (likely to still have snow) if the weather's clear. You could take the Black Ball ferry across to Victoria for a day or overnight, you don't need a car there unless you want to visit the Butchart Gardens. Then continue east on 101, maybe a side visit to Port Townsend, and make your way across the Hood Canal Bridge to either Kingston or Bainbridge Island where you can get a ferry to either Edmonds or Seattle. Seattle is worth at least a couple of days, maybe more depending on your interests, and youre better off without a car there.

All the above is worth more than a week but you have many choices. Do some guidebook research to figure our your priorities. If your plans put you on a ferry to or from Seattle on a weekend (i.e. from Seattle on Friday PM or Saturday AM, to Seattle on Sunday PM), make a reservation on the Washington State Ferries website, or expect to spend perhaps hours in line.

Hi Beth,

Do you know when in June you'll be arriving? If you time it right, you can catch the Fremont Solstice Parade in Seattle. It's really a lot of fun.

Also, be aware that the drive out to the west coast of Washington is a long one. From SeaTac to Fork is about four hours. If you're arriving at midnight, you probably won't be getting to bed before 2:00am, and you'll want to have breakfast in the morning. Figure that you might not get on the road until close to noon. Luckily, June days are the longest of the year, so you'll have plenty of daylight.

Driving to Vancouver from SeaTac would be an all-day affair. I do like Vancouver, and go often, but I don't know that I'd take a whole day to travel up there if you only have a week.

If you enjoy nature, you're not too far from Mt. Rainier, which is very much worth the trip, especially if Sunrise Road is open. There's a lot of great hikes in that area.

Should you choose Oly Nat'l Park, make sure to pay the Hoh Rainforest a visit, as well as the beaches -- totally glorious.

Finally, if you really have a yen to see the more unexplored areas of the Cascades, drive up to North Cascades Nat'l Park -- the least-visited Nat'l park in America. It's an all-day trip, but a drive through the park to Winthrop is a lifetime memory.

Enjoy your trip!

With a midnight arrival, I suggest you spend the night at an airport hotel, one you can just walk to. The Crown Plaza is the closest: simply follow the signs to the Light Rail but do not take the escalator up to the platform. go around to the left and cross the sky bridge to the other side of the street. You will see the Crown Plaza right there. Take the elevator down to street level and cross the parking lot.

Depending what you plan next, you can either continue into Seattle on the light rail the next morning, or pick up your rental car at the airport.

I’ve done a similar trip.

I would suggest renting a car and finding a hotel nearby.

I went out to Snoqualmie falls for a quick hike and then toured the Museum of Flight (Boeing). You can also do factory tours.

I then headed up north to catch the ferry. I spent a day at Butchart Gardens. There is also a nice museum in Victoria (Royal Museum). On returning stateside I hiked the Olympics at Olympic NP.

I drove back to Seattle, returned the rental car, and purchased an Orca transit card. I scheduled a 1/2 day tour of Seattle. They will drop you off at several destinations. I went to the Chihuly museum and the Seattle Art museum. I spent quite a bit of time at the Museum of History and Industry. It has a great interactive exhibit on the history of Seattle.

I also went on a Savor Seattle walking tour (Gourmet Tour). It wasn’t cheap but had several courses. They also had coupons for further dining.

You MUST go to the Crumpet Shop. It’s just around the corner from Pikes Place. The maple butter crumpet with walnuts is to die for.

Following up. . . June is early for Mt. Rainier; Paradise is often still under snow and the Sunrise road may not open until July. I have been up skiing at Paradise with the Seattle Mountaineers in June and once in mid-July.

The Olympics and Olympic Peninsula are a better bet in June and offer beaches as well as the mountains at Hurricane Ridge ( there may be snow there too). Dick in Olympia has given you some excellent suggestions.

Lake Quinaukt Lodge and Lake Crescent Lodge are favored places to stay. The Hoh rain forest is magical. There are motels in Port Angeles that are functional as well. And Port Townsend is worth an overnight on its own; Fort Worden with its bunkers and viewpoints is great for walking or cycling. You can rent sea kayaks and go on a guided trip there.

The Coho ferry from Port Angeles to Victoria is my favorite way to visit Vancouver Island. You do not need a car in Victoria and it is expensive to take it on the ferry, so consider leaving it parked in Port Angeles for the night. There are dedicated lots for this purpose. If you do decide to take the car over, make a reservation!

In Seattle, my top recommendation is the Boeing Museum of Flight just south of the city at Boeing Field. It covers the history of aviation from the Wright Brothers through space exploration. Lots of interactive exhibits and many authentic airplanes inside in the main gallery, including a Blackbird SR-71 spy plane ( and a great story about it if you take a free docent-led tour). Outside in the Pavilion are many planes you can board and tour, including the first 747 that flew for tests, 747-001, with lots of information about the testing process. They also have a 787, an old Air Force One (707 used by Reagan and others up to President H. W. Bush), and a Concorde. The adjacent building has a space shuttle you can board,, along with lots of interactive exhibits on space travel.

The Museum of Flight can easily take half a day. The Boeing factory tours are elsewhere, in Everett at the 787 factory. I would recommend the Museum over the factory tours with a short visit to Seattle.

One more suggestion: if your time in Seattle includes a weekend, make a reservation in advance to visit the Amazon Spheres:

https://www.seattlespheres.com/explore-the-building

(We all called them Amazon Balls as we watched hem being built, but the official name is the Spheres). If you cannot get a reservation, or are in Seattle on weekdays, at least walk by and enjoy the building from the outside, and the scene of the Amazon employees and their dogs playing in the little dog park adjacent. There are lots of casual places to eat within a few blocks of the Spheres, representing Seattle's trendiest. Food trucks too.

Seattle in June is beautiful. If you're baseball fans, go to a Mariners game. They now have a retractable roof so you won't have to worry about rainouts. It's a fabulous ballpark.

We've taken the ferry to Nanaimo and loved walking around.

I am so thankful for all of the great suggestions and tips! THANKS! What a wonderful community of travelers! One last question... If we took the ferry to Victoria (even though it does look pricey) would it be too time consuming to then take another ferry into Vancouver and then drive back to Seattle? Just wondering if we would need more than a week to do all of that or if it would work?

If you would like to go to Vancouver, BC plan to spend one night there. It’s a beautiful city with lots to do, i.e. Stanley Park, etc. etc. If you’re okay with heights, there’s the Capilano Bridge nearby, too, to walk across.

If you don’t go to Vancouver (city), be sure to take the ferry through the San Juan Islands.

In Seattle, we sometimes say that summer doesn’t begin until July 4th, meaning that you could still have some rainy days. Just pack good rain coats and enjoy the beautiful Pacific NW!

Including Vancouver would require more than a week but would be well worth it.

If you want to take the ferry from Victoria/Vancouver Island to Vancouver, you have two choices:

Drive up to Schwartz Bay, just a bit North of Victoria, and ride a BC Ferry to the big terminal at Tsawassen, south of Vancouver, or drive further up the coast of Vancouver Island to Nanaimo and take the ferry to Horseshoe Bay, north of Vancouver. This is a spectacular trip. You can see the routes and schedules here:

https://www.bcferries.com/schedules/mainland/

Reservations are highly recommended.

You can also take a Washington Ferry from Victoria through the San Juan Islands, ending at Anacortes in Washington. Reservations are a must for this ferry. From Anacortes, drive down Whidbey Island to the Mukilteo Ferry to Everett, or catch the smaller ferry from Fort Casey to Port Townsend. This ferry does not run during extreme low tides. But if you have not already been to Port Townsend, this would be a nice route. Then you return tonSeattle via the Hood Canal Bridge and either the Kingston or Bainbridge ferry. Note that these ferries do not take reservations and the waits can be two hours long in summer, especially on weekends.

There is so much to do here for an active family. You have some tough choices to make to keep it from being too rushed. If you really have only a week, then I suggest just Olympic Peninsula and Seattle. And get a good night's sleep the night you arrive by crashing at the airport hotel I suggested, or another close by ( one you can walk to as the hotel shuttles may not be very frequent at that hour).

If only going to Victoria I would suggest leaving the car stateside at your hotel. There are buses that go to Butchart Gardens that leave from the front of the Farmont Empress Hotel. It’s only a couple of blocks from the ferry and the Royal museum. It’s all pretty much at the waterfront.

Hurricane Ridge is a fun hike.

Lola's advice above is good, except that the ferry from Vancouver Island through the San Juans to Anacortes departs from Sidney (near Swartz Bay which another post mentioned), not from Victoria itself.

With just a week (right?) I'd suggest Seattle and a choice between the OIympic Peninsula and Vancouver. Trying to "cover" all three will mean a lot of driving (some of it on some of America's most crowded freeways) and not much time actually visiting places.