The Olympic Peninsula is being featured as part of a five-part travel segment on “Evening Magazine” on KING-TV this week.
The series on channel 5 began Monday and will continue 7:30 p.m. today through Friday.
In September, reporter Saint Bryan and photographer Mark Morache filmed “Road Trip 101” as they followed U.S. Highway 101 for 330 miles from Shelton to Long Beach — the rural highway’s entire looping route around the Olympic Mountain Range south to the Oregon border.
“It was a great adventure. On the show, I’ve been sent to Bora Bora and India, but this was one of the best adventures I’ve ever been on,” Bryan said.
Most of the locations were suggested by Facebook users on the show’s Facebook page, and even as Bryan and Morache were on the road, the pair would post their lunchtime location, and Facebook users would suggest places to eat.
“We let them guide us,” Bryan said.
Monday’s segment, titled “Humptulips or Bust,” began in Shelton and ended in Sequim.
It includes visits to Fat Smitty’s in Discovery Bay, The Gatekeepers Castle, a fantasy castle hotel in Gardiner and the George Washington Inn, a replica of Mount Vernon, in Sequim.
During their visit to the George Washington Inn, the two-man crew discovered “a pocket full of sunshine and rainbows,” Bryan said.
Monday’s segment can be viewed at the KING 5 website, www.king5.com, and each following segment will be available online after it airs each day.
Today’s segment examines locations from Port Angeles to Lake Crescent and spotlights the Olympic National Park and Joyce, and on Wednesday, the show explores Forks and the beaches of western Clallam and Jefferson counties.
The concept began as an idea to shoot a segment about one location, then grew into a full week exploration of the Highway 101 loop, Bryan said.
He said the region reflects the essence of Washington state in ways that Seattleites rarely see.
Some places that were overlooked in the initial itinerary were corrected by people Bryan and Morache met on the road.
“We were at Lake Crescent when we were told that we needed to visit Hurricane Ridge. We had to backtrack,” Bryan said.
Like many visitors to Joyce, he said they found themselves spending more time than they intended at the Joyce General Store, then took in the coast’s beauty at First Beach in LaPush and at Kalaloch Beach.
“The best thing about shooting this series is that I got to spend a lot of time in some of Western Washington’s most beautiful places, and I got to meet a lot of real characters along the way. There’s a reason people choose to vacation here,” Bryan said.
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Reporter Arwyn Rice can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5070, or at arwyn.rice@peninsuladailynews.com.
