Out on Route 21 in Washington state, the long golden prairies of wheat stretch out on either side of the road, lapping against distant purplish mountain ranges. Abandoned farms dot the landscape: gaunt timber-framed skeletons, their owners given up and gone to California or Seattle. I even spy a lone grey wolf, standing and staring at my passing car. He must have come across from Canada, heading south for winter maybe.
Some of the towns are no longer alive, but Pomeroy, in the south-east of the state, shows signs of hope. There’s a great bookshop where the owner, John, swears things are on the up. “Don’t call us Pomeranians though. That’s a dog.”
I tell him about my quest: a search for the perfect funky small American town, a place with a buzzing homespun coffee shop and a great little deli, a town with some youthful exuberance and a shared passion for the great outdoors – plus, of course, friendly bookshops such as his.
To me, those towns are where America is at its best. It’s the new American dream. It seems particularly appropriate that I’m doing this in the middle of a vicious election battle between two very different visions of America. John swears that Pomeroy is heading for success, but after a look around town I can see the battle is not quite won. I mark Pomeroy as a “maybe”.
Alternative funky towns of America. I’d spent the previous year compiling a list of possible locations. After I discovered a rich seam of internet discussion on the subject, my list had grown inordinately long and covered almost every state in the union. But what stood out was that north-west corner: northern California, Oregon, Idaho and Washington. The area was obviously catnip to people who wanted something more from life than can be bought in Walmart. I drew lines on the road atlas. I discounted the cities – Portland and Seattle – too big and well-known. I caught a plane to San Francisco. I got on Highway 101. I went north.
That first night I made it as far as the Benbow Inn near Garberville, on the cusp of redwood country. Next morning, I had breakfast in the Woodrose Café and decided that all my towns would need somewhere just like this: a busy little diner serving kickstart-the-day food for lumberjacks.
But why, I asked my neighbour at the counter, were there so many grubby guitar-packing youths sitting by the gas station with cardboard signs that read: Garden Work Needed. “That’s a specialised form of garden work they’re wanting,” he told me with a wink, and when I still didn’t twig, he explained that Garberville is the capital of Californian marijuana culture. “Gardening here is paradise for stoners.”
Weed had not been on my list of requirements for the new utopia, but a decent bookshop was: preferably a place in which to sink into a period armchair with a good guide to American ghost towns. I love American ghost towns: after all, they are the shadows behind those rejuvenated places. Garberville has such a bookshop (Tiger Lily Books), but the town’s real attraction lies to the north along what is known as Avenue of the Giants.
The overpowering physical presence of a redwood forest is shocking: imagine picking your way through a million Big Bens standing a few feet apart. North of Garberville, the highway plunges into a deep sombre cathedral of trees that goes on and on. I emerged at Eureka, a coastal town known for its seafood and Victorian architecture. I checked in at Carter House Inn (doubles from $189 B&B), one of the lovelier old buildings.
Funky cafes? I spotted a few. Bookshops? Three. It was looking hopeful. There was a bustling marina where gangs of seals and gulls were awaiting the next tuna boat. There were some good restaurants and bars. In one, the Oberon Grill (516 2nd Street), I found a framed newspaper story from 1911 describing how Jack London had got into a fist fight in that very place.
Eureka has gentrified a lot since then, but still has a colourful edge that harks back to pioneer days. In the Speakeasy Bar that evening I heard tales of Bigfoot sightings and monster trees. I gave Eureka a large tick on my list. It was a contender.
Heading north once again, I took a saloon bar tip and turned off 101 along a narrow coastal road that dipped and curved along the cliffs, giving magnificent views of the coast, until I hit Trinidad, a pretty little seaside town and, no doubt, a good base for exploring this section of the Pacific coast. I pressed on, however, crossing into Oregon on Highway 199, one of the US’s 120 national scenic byways.
My objective that night was a treehouse B&B outside Cave Junction, but arriving in the area after dark my GPS failed and, inexplicably, my phone too. I pulled in to a gas station and found myself taking directions from a customer with a teardrop tattoo under one eye – the mark of a murderer I seemed to remember – and feeling like I had wandered into a Coen brothers film. Four hours later, having explored every backcountry road for miles, I finally rolled up at Treehouse Paradise (rooms for two from $350). By flashlight I was shown the footpath to my treehouse which proved to be a luxurious den high up in a Douglas fir.
At dawn I was woken by skittering noises and peeped out to see three deer chasing each other around the base of the tree. Down in the main house the owner, Phil, was cooking breakfast. “I came up here from southern California 38 years ago,” he told me, “We grew up surfing, climbing and hunting. But then it got very crowded down there. I wouldn’t go back.”
Phil and Jodie, his wife, had constructed an idyllic retreat. After arriving, they decided never to shoot anything on their land and soon transformed it into a haven for wildlife and birds – hence my experience of the deer that morning. Phil’s breakfast was near perfect too: a feast of fresh fruit and home cooking. “We are pretty self-sufficient out here,” he said. “Have you tried my blueberry jam?”
A week in the treehouse would have suited me just fine, but instead I set out again, cutting inland towards Idaho, passing through attractive little towns along the Rogue river. After Crater Lake and Bend I turned east on Highway 20, passing an astonishing dwarf forest of whitebark pines before the road became bleaker and emptier and finally sought sanctuary in a long shallow canyon that burrowed its way into Idaho, emerging on Interstate 84, which took me south to Boise.
This city interested me. In the 1970s, a Hewlett Packard exec, Ray Smelek, was tasked with finding the best company HQ and location in the US. He selected Boise (pronounced boy-see), reasoning that you could ski in the morning and play golf all afternoon. Since then the place has boomed, but retained a small town feel.
I met up with a local climbing guide, Randall, and got his take on it. “I like Boise,” he told me, “but it’s too big and too white to be perfect.” He listed his criteria for a small town. “Mountains nearby, and some young professionals, but a diverse culture, and not too bourgie. Somewhere like Ketchum – mind you, that can get pretty bumpin’ in winter.”
We unpicked this slowly. Ketchum is a ski town in Idaho, much loved by the wealthy (the bourgeois) who have those great (bumpin’) parties.
I, too, liked Boise, despite its size. It boasts the largest Basque community outside Spain, which brings an unexpected dimension to its tidy grid-iron streets. There’s a burgeoning wine industry with tasting rooms, several craft breweries and some great restaurants (try Goldy’s for breakfast).
After a couple of nights, however, I had to admit that Boise was just too big for perfection. I drove on, sweeping on a huge curve through Idaho, stopping frequently to admire the mountain panoramas. I liked Stanley, deep inside the Sawtooth mountains, and especially the Sawtooth Hotel (rooms from $70) with its genuine frontier feel. But Stanley suffers severe winters and even in September the nights were frosty.
I cut north-west, luxuriating in roadside hot springs Sunbeam and Kirkham’s, then passing Hells Canyon and arriving at Joseph – one of Oregon’s strong contenders for the alternative funky town title. Once a typical logging and ranching outpost, Joseph has reinvented itself as an arts town, with a speciality in bronze-casting.
I wandered around, noting a great little pizza oven place, a bookshop and a cafe – Red Horse, a real treat. There were deer tiptoeing across the lawns of clapboard houses and a very friendly visitor centre. “A good hike is up Hurricane Creek,” they told me. “Folks say there’s a cabin of an old-time gold prospector up there still exactly as he left it. Nothing’s been moved.”
I’d have liked a week to enjoy Joseph and hunt down that cabin, but the road was calling me. I headed north to the Snake river, then turning west, spotting my wolf and visiting Pomeroy. It made me wonder: how are those small towns made? The common theme of the successful places I’d seen seemed to be a handful of hardy young entrepreneurs, the sort who can make their own clothes, granola and business plans at the same time as snowboarding the local mountains or debugging a laptop: the cool tycoons.
My next stop was Bellingham, right up near the Canadian border. I was running out of US and I still hadn’t quite found perfection although, for the first time, I was coming across Trump posters – none for Hilary. The Tree Frog Night Inn (doubles from $100) where I stayed, definitely had the right vibe, as did the Aslan Brewery, where all the beers were excellent and the tycoons definitely cool. Bellingham, however, was just too big to take the title. Next day I turned tail and hared back south, popping over the bridge to Anacortes on Fidalgo Island.
Truth is, this wasn’t even on my list. I just liked the name. And when I saw it, I was in love. Any town that has large ships being built on its beach cannot be bad. Plus they had bookshops, cafes and complimentary pianos on street corners. Yes, overstrung, gaudily painted, honky tonk joannas for passersby to hammer out jazz standards on, which – naturally – many appeared to be able to do. Big tick for Anacortes, especially when I saw orcas in large numbers out in the bay.
These islands have some other good contenders, I realised. On Whidbey Island there was Langley, with a fine coffee shop, Useless Bay Coffee Co, and Coupville, with its glorious old high street and wonderful Captain Whidbey Inn.
Time was running out, I had only one more destination. I caught the ferry west to the Olympic peninsula and pulled in at Port Townsend. I got off the boat and walked around and knew I’d found it. There were cafes, bars, bookshops and great architecture. There was the ocean and the mountains. It had it all. And it was mine. Except I had no time. My flight was next day.
Oscar Wilde, who knew all about lost idylls, declared that people, having found paradise, always did the same thing: they “set sail”.
On my last morning, perhaps with those words in mind, I wandered down to Port Townsend’s boatyard, a busy working yard with a great cafe – the Blue Moose. I sat on the wall and watched the vibrant activity: men and women preparing their vessels for the next big journey. And I thought of the immense and wonderful trip I was finishing. Wilde, I decided, was wrong. It’s the journey itself that is paradise and that is why, having finally arrived, we always set sail once again.
Way to go
This trip was provided by VisitTheUSA. For further information on these destinations, see visitcalifornia.co.uk, traveloregon.com, visitidaho.org and seattle-washingtonstate.co.uk. Car rental was provided by affordablecarhire.com
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