Heide Brandes
Heide Brandes is an award-winning journalist who focuses on travel, adventure, outdoor experiences, culture and more. She has bylines in such magazines as National Geographic, BBC, The Smithsonian, Cowboys & Indians, Southern Living, AAA Journeys and more. Her work can be seen at www.heidebrandes.com. When not traveling and writing, Heide is an avid hiker, caver, professional belly dancer, medieval reenactor and kind of a quirky chick living in Oklahoma.
Articles by Heide Brandes
Aaron Kellum gestured toward the Colorado River sliding past the banks of Camp Eddy, a collection of vintage Airstreams and custom tiny homes perched on the water's edge in Grand Junction, Colorado. The general manager and former raft guide could have been describing the whole Western Slope when he said, "To be in a place where we get to share that with other people is something I'm never going to take for granted."
This is not your average hotel lobby. This is where presidents have plotted, where the Beatles hid from screaming teenagers, and where Dwight D. Eisenhower maintained his Western White House. And on this particular trip, it's where I found myself standing in the same suite where Ike once practiced his golf swing.
While millions of passengers race through Sea-Tac each year, eyes fixed on departure screens and connection times, an entire destination hides in plain sight just beyond the terminal walls. Seattle Southside encompasses the communities of SeaTac, Des Moines, Tukwila, and Burien. Together, they offer a place where immigrant communities have built one of the most authentic international food scenes on the West Coast. Here, protected wetlands and botanical gardens thrive in the shadow of runways. And luxury lodges feel like wilderness retreats despite their proximity to baggage claim. It's a destination that rewards the curious traveler willing to resist the pull of downtown Seattle, at least for a day or two.
The mural stopped me cold. Painted on the side of a shipping container in Des Moines, Washington, six doughnut-shaped discs hurled what looked like molten fire down upon a small boat in Puget Sound. A dog cowered. A man shielded his son. The sky burned with something that didn't belong there.
Fresh lynx tracks weave through deep powder near Quesnel Lake in British Columbia's Cariboo Mountains. At minus 18 degrees Celsius, the morning air crystallizes our breath as Ryan, our EcoTours BC guide, motions us to pause. Though the elusive lynx remains hidden, its story is written in the snow. Here, it stalked a snowshoe hare. There, it rested beneath a sheltering spruce. Its tracks trace a single line across the surface of a frozen river. The vast wilderness stretches before us, an untamed landscape where mountain peaks disappear into low clouds and ancient forests harbor secrets beneath 27 feet of annual snowfall.
