Lake Quinault Lodge, a Pacific Northwest classic, turns 100 - how is it now?
ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO, the south shore of Lake Quinault suddenly saw far more activity than ever before. In a mad summer rush, a hotel was constructed - two stories with a high-ceilinged lobby, two capacious wings and a huge attic completed in a matter of just 53 days. In the middle of the lush rainforest, the crew hurried to beat the nearly year-round precipitation.
Today, the mad summer rush involves visitors from around the world, here to experience something specifically Pacific Northwest: Lake Quinault Lodge.
About a three-hour drive from Seattle, here is the majesty of the remote Olympic Peninsula in a scenario that's equal parts "Monsieur Hulot's Holiday" and "Twin Peaks" - fun, sometimes funny, offering natural beauty and oddities in turn, evocative of a more stylish era. (If you haven't seen Jacques Tati's vacation comedy classic or David Lynch's touchstone Northwest neo-noir, those are two armchair trips to definitely take.)
In the "Holiday" category, the gorgeous lobby with its big brick fireplace hosts parent-versus-child games of chess on a comically oversized board, while spare family members flop down on comfy leather sofas. Stenciled animals decorate the ceiling's golden timbers; a glass case holds materials of various vintages relating to documenting the existence of Sasquatch.
On a sunny morning, groups stride about in sensible hiking attire, businesslike about their impending recreation. The afternoon's not too early for friends to get a bottle of chilled wine from the lobby bar to drink under an umbrella on the deck or in Adirondack chairs, all with a view of magnificent evergreens framing the lovely lake. The broad lawn rolling down to the water is home to soccer with small-sized goals, cornhole, horseshoes, a gazebo, a cutout wooden Sasquatch with a place for you to put your face through for a photo. There are trails to stroll, canoes to rent, swimming and picnics, and possibly a couple getting engaged nearby to tell you about it afterward, aglow.
The lodge watches over it all with its weathered cedar shingles, forest-green shutters and carved gauge showing how much rain has fallen so far this year. While "Twin Peaks" was filmed at Snoqualmie Falls' Salish Lodge and Kiana Lodge in Poulsbo, fans will hear the soundtrack in their heads here, wondering at the trees. So much moss, Diane!
Wander to the ranger station adjacent to the lodge, and you'll find maps of hiking trails, historical photos and stuffed-animal banana slugs for sale. Pick up a plaster cast of an oversized footprint to look at it and, if you're lucky, a friendly volunteer appears to relate stories of nearby Bigfoot sightings - very true, you are assured, and only one degree removed from personal experience. Can the Log Lady be far away?
Across the road and down just a bit, the Lake Quinault Museum and Historical Society occupies the quaint former post office, built in 1918. Displays here include Quinault Native baskets, a dugout canoe with documentation of the process of making one, logging equipment of yore, a lot of creepy antique dolls with staring eyes and, truly, so much more. If you're lucky, the volunteer docent is the friendly Jigger ("Jigger, like a shot of whiskey! she'll say), who'll entertainingly answer any and all questions, then insist that you try one of her sour-cream banana bars. If you say how totally delicious they are, truly, Jigger will give you a photocopy of her index-card recipe.
Drive a few minutes down South Shore Road, park in the lot just past the Rain Forest Resort Village General Store, and you're at the trailhead for a short walk through the quiet forest to see the world's largest Sitka spruce. This is a tree that is hard to fit into one photograph, about 1,000 years old and soaring 200 feet into the sky; it doesn't mind if you clamber around on the giant lumps of its lower trunk, nor if you hug as much of it as you can, your tiny human wingspan encompassing approximately 4% of its circumference. How many owls have visited its branches?
Before you move along, visit the endangered species found between the new post office and the general store: a phone booth, with a push-button phone still inside. No dial tone, but still, neat to see in the wild, and a photo op almost as good as being Bigfoot or dwarfed by an enormous tree.
Keep driving until you find Merriman Falls, right by the side of South Shore Road. There has never been fresher air than the forested breeze the falling water creates; a vertical wall of ferns waves their fronds because of it. To behold such serene, rushing beauty makes the world momentarily interdimensional, mysterious, miraculous. Also, you can scramble around on big mossy rocks.
MY FAMILY VISITED LAKE QUINAULT when I was a child, and I love this place. I hadn't been here since then, and to find the lodge largely un-updated made for some marvelous time travel - elements a little out of scale, sounds and smells lodged deep.
Some things have changed. The creaky stairs at one end of the lobby now showcase black-and-white historical portraits from the local Native community, elegantly arranged for a slow walk up or down; elsewhere, photographs honor Quinault basket weavers. At the foot of the other set of the lobby's stairs is a wood carving by a former lodge facility manager who worked with the Quinault Indian Nation to incorporate its presence, long before the lodge, here.
Lake Quinault Lodge's walk-up bar is where the front desk used to be; a separate bar used to be down one quiet, carpeted hallway. From there, you could not see into the grownups-only zone, but you could smell the buttery output of a popcorn machine while jealously listening to laughter and clinking - and, I'm not making this up, sometimes the music of a one-man band, a guy with instruments attached all over him who would disappear into this obviously magical place. He'd favor the kids in the lobby with a song or two, but all I wanted was to go in the bar (and thus a lifelong fascination was born).
Alas, that space is now reception and a gift shop, but the large indoor pool that my brother and I loved (added post-1926, obviously) is still here. Outbuildings have been constructed over the past century for more guest capacity, but the rustic charm of a second-story room in the main lodge - no TVs, just a splendid view of the lake and the lawn's goings-on - is hard to beat.
Lake Quinault Lodge's Roosevelt Dining Room was recently closed for repairs, none of them cosmetic, thankfully. The dim main room is as remembered, the adjoining section preferable for its all-windowed lake-and-lawn vista, especially nice over a decent breakfast with your own carafe of coffee. The property is operated by Aramark, with menu prices high - including dinner entrees from $30-$56 - and food quality less so. The best value is certainly the passable pizza served out of the lobby bar. The service, however, is great - entirely welcoming at every turn, with a fun, endearing summer-camp-counselors feel.
More alterations over time: The lobby had a sweets shop lodged under the stairs for a time in the mid-20th-century, removed for unknown reasons, as my inner child was a little crushed to learn. And imagine the scene inside the dance pavilion installed on a pier here during Prohibition, where liquor could legally be served because of the Quinault tribal sovereignty over the waters of the lake. The level of enjoyment must've been high, indeed.
And on that note, depending on your enjoyment of vacationing frenzy, you might choose to visit Lake Quinault Lodge in the offseason - fewer people, lower rates, less "Holiday," more Lynchian damp and moss and quiet. Bring your rain gear to go see the big tree, your swimsuit for the pool and a book to read by the fire.
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