Traveling Washington state’s interstate highways provide a convenient way to connect big city centers such as Seattle, Tacoma, and—in this case—Olympia. But it’s the country roads and byways radiating out from Olympia that can often provide some very surprising and memorable discoveries.
From Olympia you can easily spend an entire day (or days) connecting the small-town dots along the Thurston Bountiful Byway, named for Thurston County. As soon as you leave the bustle and urban sprawl of the capital behind, it feels like you’ve gone back in time to a landscape of rolling hillsides planted with orchards, waving fields of grain, rushing rivers, and main streets that evoke the spirit of Will Rogers.
