Olympic Peninsula & Washington Coast - Washington, Oregon and the Pacific Northwest - page 249

The Capital Aeroporter ( www.capair.com ) has frequent service to Seattle-Tacoma Interna-
tional Airport, leaving from Phoenix Inn Suites at 415 Capitol Way N ($31, two hours).
Reservations are suggested.
Olympia's free public-bus system is Intercity Transit ( www.intercitytransit.com ) . The
downtown transit center is at State Ave and Washington St.
OLYMPIA'S MUSIC SCENE
While Olympia's alternative-music scene has quietened down since the days of
grunge and riot grrrl in the early 1990s, innovative local artists are in evidence in
many of the city's bars, brewpubs and theaters. Dip intoVolcano,the weekly South
Puget Sound music paper distributed in local bars, restaurants and purple and
green boxes on the street and found inside theRangerandNorthwest Airlifter
newspapers (or online at www.northwestmilitary.com ) .
OLYMPIC PENINSULA
Cut off from the rest of the state by water on three sides, the remote Olympic Peninsula
exhibits all the insular characteristics of a separate island. Dominated by the Olympic
National Park, the region's main population centers are in the northeast and include Port
Angeles, Port Townsend and the drier, balmier settlement of Sequim, now a budding re-
tirement community. As the region's protected climatically by the Olympic Mountains,
outdoor activities abound here.
Washington's coast north of Gray's Harbor is one of the most undisturbed slices of
coastal wilderness in the US. Here tiny Native American towns list populations in the
hundreds rather than the thousands and, bar a 15-mile stretch of US 101, there are few
roads. Outside of small Native American reservations around Oil City, La Push and Oz-
ette, 53 miles of this wild coast is protected as part of the Olympic National Park (added
in 1953). Parts of it haven't changed since precolonial times.
Exempt from strict wilderness regulations, the area outside of the Olympic National
Park is largely given over to the lumber industry.
History
Some of the peninsula's Native American history is well documented in the Ozette ex-
cavations that unearthed a 500-year-old Makah village in 1970. Other native groups in-
cluded the Quileute and the Quinault.