The Best Day Trips From Seattle Under 90 Minutes Away

Snoqualmie Falls

The Snoqualmie Falls attract one and a half million visitors annually. That says a lot about how great the place is and also helps you imagine how busy the weekends are. The falls drop 268 feet into the Snoqualmie River and are taller than Niagara Falls. You can see them from an upper observation platform, a two-minute walk from the parking lot. The Salish Lodge sits right above them on the clifftop, famous for appearing in Twin Peaks in the 1990s, where it played the Great Northern Hotel. It sits about 35 minutes east of Seattle on I-90.

If you want to see it properly and not just make a photo stop, take the lower trail down to the base of the falls. You will see the falls rising from below and be inside the mist looking up. The town of Snoqualmie is a mile east of the site on SR-202, where you can visit its railway museum and grab lunch. It’s best to come on weekdays, as the parking lot regularly fills by mid-morning on sunny weekends.

Bainbridge Island

There is a ferry running between Coleman Dock and Bainbridge, which departs every 50 to 60 minutes and costs nothing for walk-on passengers. It is one of the best ferry rides in the country, since you can enjoy the sights of Puget Sound, the Olympic Mountains on a sunny day, and the cityscape of Seattle as you pull away from the terminal. The ferry trip takes 35 minutes.

Winslow, the main town on the island, is within walking distance from the dock. There, you’ll find independent bookstores, tasting bars, and no shortage of restaurants if you’re planning on having lunch. You can also rent a bike at the terminal or drive north to Bloedel Reserve, a 150-acre botanical garden that stays uncrowded since people usually do not bother exploring anything beyond downtown. The whole island feels like a deliberate escape from the city, visible from the water the entire time.

Vashon Island

Vashon is a smaller and more peaceful island than Bainbridge. It draws a different sort of tourist for that very reason. The trip by ferry from Fauntleroy in West Seattle takes only 20 minutes, making this island one of the closest true island retreats in the Puget Sound area. There are no big attractions here in the conventional sense. No chain restaurants, no resort, no visitor-center bustle, just peace and quiet.

There, you’ll find farm stands lining the road leading into the town of Vashon and some shops and coffee houses clustered in Vashon town. You can also reach most beaches without having to hike for very long. The Point Robinson Lighthouse, located on the east coast of the island, is a 20-minute drive from the ferry landing and has a beach with views over to the Cascade Mountains. Both Ruby Brink and May Kitchen + Bar have strong enough local reputations that people plan trips around them specifically.

Wallace Falls State Park

Wallace Falls cascades in three levels, and most people settle for the lower level, the viewing point near the trailhead. If you’re visiting, it’s worth checking all three levels. The middle falls are the best of the three: wide, powerful, and set amidst the Skykomish River valley that opens up beneath you. The park is 60 to 75 minutes northeast of Seattle on US-2, available year round and especially spectacular in late winter and early spring when the snowmelt is still flowing through.

The parking lot fills up early on sunny weekends, usually between 10 and 11 a.m., so you should either visit on weekdays or arrive there before 9. Discover Pass is required, or you can pay a $10 day-use fee at the gate. On your way back, you can stop at the Sultan Bakery in Sultan, just off US-2, for a quick bite.

Tacoma

The City of Tacoma is frequently underappreciated, especially by people who haven’t been there for about a decade. But a lot has changed since then. Located about 35 to 45 minutes down I-5 south from Seattle, the Museum of Glass on the waterfront is a good place to start. It has a glassblowing hot shop where you can watch pieces being made. The Dale Chihuly Bridge of Glass, which connects it to the rest of the museum district, is free and worth a visit even if you have no particular interest in glass arts.

The waterfront downtown area of Tacoma is also improving, and Point Defiance Park, with its 760 acres of land, provides its visitors with trails, a zoo, a beach, and views across the Narrows that are rarely seen by visitors from Seattle. Tacoma is close enough that you could easily make it a half-day and be back in Seattle for an early dinner.

Olympia

Olympia is the capital of the state of Washington, but it’s also one of the most underrated cities in the state. The Capitol building, modeled on the U.S. Capitol, can be visited for free, and there are tours every day. It has one of the largest self-supporting masonry domes in the world, which is exactly the type of information that sounds boring until you find yourself under it. The drive down I-5 takes roughly 60 to 70 minutes without traffic.

The Billy Frank Jr. Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge is a strong secondary stop, about 20 minutes northeast of downtown, on the way back to Seattle. The walkway through the estuary marsh and wetlands is great for bird watching in almost any season. Olympia’s downtown also has an excellent farmers’ market operating on weekends during spring and autumn, and the bar and brewery scene is better than its size suggests.

One traffic note: I-5 south of Seattle gets considerably slower on Fridays around afternoon time, so this works better as a mid-week trip or a Saturday morning departure.

La Conner

Drive north on I-5 for about 75 minutes and then veer west to the flat lands of Skagit Valley. There, you will find La Conner, a little town right on the water at the mouth of the Swinomish Channel. The place is known for its tulips, and if you’re planning to go in April, you can time your trip to visit the annual Skagit Valley Tulip Festival. The fields between La Conner and Mount Vernon have some of the most impressive displays of tulips in America, especially on a clear morning with the Cascades behind them.

During non-tulip season, the town itself is worth a visit. It’s a single strip of shops by the water full of art galleries, bookstores, antiques stores and a great local food scene. The Museum of Northwest Art in town is not a large one, but it is good and specializes in Northwest regional artists, rather than traveling shows.

The drive north is easy, although once you get off onto the road that leads to La Conner, the character changes and the pace shifts whether you want it to or not. If your trip happens during tulip season, be sure to check out the festival dates in advance, because the weekends in peak bloom turn the roads into something else entirely.