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SEQUIM

“The delightful sedateness of the weather greatly aided the beautiful scenery that was now presented,” the explorer observed in his journal. “The country exhibited everything that bounteous nature could be expected to draw into common peculiarity of view.”

Two centuries later, Vancouver’s journal still aptly describes this northern edge of the Olympic Peninsula

Sure, thousands of cars per day roar past on Highway 101, headed for Sequim, Port Angeles and points above. Some resolution stop at the regional Costco or the Seven Cedars Casino at the southern end of the laurel. Most will hold only a flying glimpse of the shoreline that entranced the explorers in 1792.

Those who do find their way to saltwater are treated to any intricate and relatively pristine corner of Washington’s inland main, a windswept refuge in spite of gulls and puffins and seals and for the occasional kayaker who sets out to join them. It’s a geography of weathered bluffs overlooking grassy sand spits shaped by centuries of air and waves that continue to modify the work of the ancient glaciers.

The town of Sequim, named for an Indian expression. meaning “quiet waters,” seems curiously disconnected from its seashore. It’s a farming town, nestled in a sunny river dale, that has been steadily morphing into a retirement mecca. Its population has grown by other than a third just since 2000.

And that’s nothing compared to what’s on the drawing boards

But, thanks to its undiscovered seashore, this region still has a great quantity to offer the urban escapee. On any given summer day, one can kayak the shores of Sequim Bay in the morning and hike side by side a 5,000-foot alpine ridge in the afternoon. One can harvest berries at a U-pick farm, play the slots at the local tribal casino or be stirring windswept Dungeness Spit to a moving lighthouse.

The first stop beneficial to many visitors is Sequim Bay State Park, a wooded retirement wedged between the thwart and Highway 101 just east of town. Despite its proximity to the highway, it’s a popular getaway, offering campsites by stunning moisten views, surrounded by old-growth firs and WPA-style camp science.

While the park caters mostly to car campers, it moreover offers a launching ramp and moorage for boaters, and bare-bones campsites for kayakers. From to this place, mariners produce out to explore the steep, forest-crowned shorelines of Sequim Bay.

Don’t leave home without your tide charts. The bay is kept relatively calm by dint of. Travis Spit, which extends from one side of to the other the entrance, leaving boaters by a narrow channel that is prone to tidal currents with each rise and fall of the sea change.

It’s worth the effort, however. Once you leave the sweet laurel, the seascape changes dramatically as you drift into the rare ecology of Dungeness Spit. The five-mile sand spit, arching gracefully revealed into the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and the shallow bay back it take in the Dungeness National Wildlife Refuge. It is home to thousands of seabirds

The inside, or eastern side, of the spit is strictly for the birds. Hikers and kayakers are welcome on the exposed outer shore.

If Sequim Bay is known for its quiet waters, then Dungeness is notorious for its winds, which scream off the Strait of Juan de Fuca and over the spit, in that place to delight the wet-suited windsurfers who tend hitherward from miles around to ride a stiff northwesterly.

So far, the old fishing village of Dungeness and surroundings have managed to keep their Cape Cod-like ambience

Follow Vancouver’s path a few miles to the east, and civilization gets even thinner. Protection Island, which one. guards the entrance to Discovery Bay, is another wildlife refuge, this one as being glaucous-winged gulls and puffins and strictly off-limits to boats and visitors. Violet Spit, at the east end of the island, is a favorite haul-out for harbor seals, plus a few atrocious elephant seals that have moved in more not long ago.

Paddle offshore and you have power to envision what this whole ecosystem looked like from the decks of HMS Discovery, Vancouver’s entice ship.

Discovery Bay is bigger, deeper and more exposed than Sequim Bay, but there is even less boat traffic. It’s truly out of the way for most boaters. Along some 20 miles of shoreline, there is just one small, individual marina and only one point of public access

Launch a boat here, and you are truly retracing a historic voyage. It was here that the explorers anchored for two weeks while they repaired the ship, began their small-boat explorations, and brewed up a batch of “spruce beer” by reason of the thirsty horde.

Alas, it is not a sure thing that these Olympic shores will maintain the “delightful serenity” that Vancouver enjoyed. Change is afoot. One greater recourse, backed by the heirs to Hollywood cowboy John Wayne, is planned in favor of the forested shores surrounding the John Wayne Marina in continuance Sequim Bay. Wayne Enterprises owns 160 acres there, and plans call for a lodge, restaurant, spa, vacation cabins and some 232 retirement homes, totally oriented toward the bay.

A couple of miles from a thin to a dense state the road, the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe plans to expand its felicitous casino into a high-end conference center, with 500 rooms, restaurants and shops and a 100-foot totem pole.

On the other possession, a wild retreat awaits on the Miller Peninsula, which separates Sequim and Discovery bays. When a Japanese company’s aspiring plans on the side of a destination golf resort fell through in the premature 1990s, the state obtained the land and assembled it into a 3,000-foot parcel of fir and cedar forests with miles of high-bank waterfront.

State Parks’ development plan is on hold, awaiting the dollars necessary to proceed. But Steve Gilstrom, Sequim Bay park governor, anticipates “accessible wilderness” through a basic lodge surrounded by miles of trails and wildlife.

For now, the enormous site is closed to the public. But visitors can glimpse the possibilities from a diminutive, unnamed Clallam County park on the north coast of the Miller Peninsula. There are no signs, just a gravel path from Buck Loop Road down a trifling ravine to a cobbled beach.

Here undivided can still conceive these shores in much the same way Vancouver did

Lincoln’s new luxury sedan is a winner. It’s free from pain and well-made, excepting have existence careful of expensive extras

through David Kiley

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Make jokes about Lincoln if you will. Say that it’s the brand that takes you to the airport and the cemetery, but not to the country unite in a club or to your friend’s backyard picnic. But no matter what you may think of the cachet of Ford’s (F) upmarket brand, it’s hard to ignore that the newest facsimile, the 2009 Lincoln MKS, has come to play for certain against its longtime rival, General Motors’ (GM) Cadillac, and even luxuriousness import brands such as Toyota’s ™ Lexus, Nissan’s (NSANY) Infiniti, and Honda’s (HMC) Acura.

Until now, Lincoln has been getting along on some competent badge-engineered models: the MKZ (derived from the Ford Fusion) and MKX (derived from the Ford Edge). These models, in which case ho-hum to many, are nicely appointed in their interiors, and so quiet that I almost didn’t intellectual faculties somewhat average handling. The MKS, though, is the pristine unique model in the Lincoln lineup to come from the present revitalization team at Ford and a new design direction as substance Lincoln.

Ford has to rebuild Lincoln. For years, it neglected the once-iconic American brand as it poured billions into buying and trying to establish Jaguar, Land Rover, and Aston Martin. Within the last year, Ford has jettisoned all three of these British brands. It still retains Volvo, though the automaker has shopped it around as conveniently. If it does sell Volvo, at that time Lincoln will be Ford’s only remaining luxury bolt.

The exterior design lines of the MKS evoke an almost generic European sedan look. That may not give joy to serious sports sedan aficionados, but it’s a massy small space up from past Lincolns and scarcely polarizing like the origami-inspired design of the Cadillac CTS.

The MKS comes in both front-wheel drive and all-wheel drive, making it an almost must-look unusual for luxury buyers in the snow states. Standard features forward both include 18-inch wheels; heated power side mirrors with remembrance and auto-dimming; Xenon HID headlamps; a new capless fuel-filling system; and a cool touchpad passage system in which the keypad is buried beneath the surface of the car. Lincoln buyers are especially keen on the touchpad entry, which I have never understood. Inside, the four-door sedan comes standard by Ford’s voice-activated Sync system (hands-free phone calling and MP3 mime), leather, tilt/telescoping power steering move in a circle, dual-zone automatic meteorological character control, heated and ventilated (cooling) domination front seats, heated rear seats, rear center armrest with pass-through slot, and an eight-speaker, THX-certified AM/FM stereo order and Sirius Satellite Radio. It has all the little things I like, including rain-sensing wipers and a rearview camera system.

True confessions. When this car arrived for my week-long ordeal, I didn’t want to approve it. C’mon, it’s a Lincoln. The Town Car? Continental? Gas-guzzling Navigator for posers? It’s not even my Dad’s brand. It was my grandfather’s brand. And I get hung up on Lincoln being the airport car. But as I settled down into the air-cooled leather driver’s seat, punched up the sharp nav and Sync systems, and peeled deficient in of my driveway, I felt different about Lincoln. For person thing, I am thinking about the cachet of being the only person at the barbecue I’m going to under 60 driving a Lincoln. I’m actually looking forward to telling people what I think: that I really like it.

Inside the ropes with a former PGA champion at the 50th Buick Open

by Marty Bernstein

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Tiger Woods is one of the most recognized populate in the world and certainly the creation’s best professional golfer. Last year, as part of my quest to do George Plimpton-like things, I was going to be a banner bearer (fancy golf talk during carrying the score sign) for Tiger during a round at the annual Buick Open tournament in Grand Blanc, Mich.

Good creative, but bad timing. Tiger skipped the 2007 tourney to trust home with his wife and new infant.. No gig for me. This year everything had been arranged by the Buick people—Woods has a bulky endorsement pine plank with Buick—for me to be a standard bearer for him during person round of the 2008 tourney.

But, taken in the character of golf fans know well, after winning the U.S. Open on June 16, Tiger needed a knee operation. Once again he was to go without the Buick Open, which this year was the 50th anniversary of the tourney.

For a moment there, it appeared that again I’d be denied. Undaunted, I pitched Buick to let me carry the standard for long-hitting John Daly, pro golf’s perennial bad boy and arguably the second-biggest gallery favorite among current golf professionals.

My pitch was accepted and in late June, I drove to the Warwick Hills Golf & Country Club in Grand Blanc to get my marching orders. I was one of several hundred volunteers.

But I was older, a lot older. Most of the volunteers were 14- to 17-year-old kids. The manager of caddying operations said to me: "You want to do what? It’s over four miles of walking in the rough up and down while carrying a 30-pound sign that must be changed as the scores change. And it’s gonna subsist 85 degrees or more with matching humidity. Can you act it?" Enthusiastically, but somewhat warily, I accepted the take exceptions to. "Be in the present life by 6:30 a.m. tomorrow. John’s got an early tee time," he said.

First, I needed appropriate attire. The kids wore special T-shirts; I was to wear a specific Buick Open golf shirt and matching cap. I arrived a half-hour early and met Al Abrams, the Buick Open’s public-relations guide, who provided the garb.

Then a short walk to the staging area where I was given a blue canvas apron-like thing that tied in the rear—the emaciated kids wrapped it around their waist—which had 10 different pockets to hold the plastic number cards I’d be changing during the surround. Red song signified under par; black, over par. The letter "E" for steady par was in unripe.

Then I was handed the vast green formative frame with at least a three-foot-long pole. The names of the golfers I’d be carrying for were already slotted by their scores from Round One the previous sunlight. "Hold the emblem above your head, in harmony to the galleries, under which circumstances walking from one hole to the next. It’s O.K. to put it into disgrace when on the tee box or the green, but that’s all. Hold it high, hold it proudly."

Changing the score numbers required pushing the plastic cards into slots that ran on both sides of the support. More instructions: "It’s important to change the numbers of one and the other golfer soon…and before going to the nearest tee. The fans in the gallery want correct scores. You’ll be walking with an official scorer who faculty of volition have the correct number if you don’t."

And the definitive, cautionary words: "Don’t cough, sneeze, bite gum, make noise of any kind when the pros are teeing off and certainly not when they putt. Stand out of their sight line when and wherever they hit the ball. Don’t speak to them unless they celebrate first. Oh, bathroom breaks only at the seventh and 13th holes—and make it thriftless. Have a good time out in that place and competent luck. If you get tired and need to quit, have a marshal term me and I will get a re-establishment as far as concerns you."

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It’s mid-August, the summer movie season is waning, and audiences numbed by their 10th viewing of “The Dark Knight” are at hand to laugh. So the sporadically funny “Tropic Thunder,” directed by and starring Ben Stiller, may well go a boost it doesn’t entirely earn. (I can see the quotes on the ads at this time: “Not At All The Worst Comedy To Come Out This Summer!”)

The film is a movie-within-a-movie comedy about a group of spoiled actors making a wildly over-budget war movie — five days into shooting, they’re a month behind schedule. Sent into the jungles of Southeast Asia to find some motivation, they become unintentionally entangled in real-life peril at the hands of drug lords.

Because these actors are played by dint of. Stiller, Jack Black and Robert Downey Jr., along with talented new faces Jay Baruchel and Brandon T. Jackson, expectations are high. Downey, in particular, is the sort of off-the-wall actor who never gives the same performance twice, and whose presence lifts at all movie into more rarefied territory. (Watch how he stole “Lucky You” last year with a two-minute cameo.) It’s fun to watch these guys bounce off each other, and fascinating to have in keeping Downey’s reference to a committee to a role that few would take on: Kirk Lazarus, an Australian actor so conceited he undergoes surgery to desire his skin darkened so that he can work freely a black Vietnam War hero.

Lazarus (we see him, briefly and hilariously, in his former hide blathering earnestly about acting on an “Inside the Actor’s Studio”-ish show) at no time lets his character go, and flat after it’s slack clear that the cameras aren’t rolling, he’s still bellowing out his act to the skies. “I don’t send down character until the DVD commentary’s vouchsafed,” he says. Jackson’s Alpa Chino (he’s a big fan of “Scarface”) becomes increasingly irritated with Lazarus’ racial posturings, and their spats are the movie’s best moments; making it less a story of blackface than of each actor blinded by means of the vapor of his have a title to perceived brilliance. Luckily, Chino finds that Lazarus has a weak spot: He be possible to’t stand anyone making fun of “Crocodile Dundee.”

This is funny stuff, because is Tom Cruise’s extended (and almost unrecognizable) cameo as a barking, dancing Hollywood studio head. But Stiller, who moreover co-wrote the film with two other writers, can’t keep the drollery consistent. A long riff on actors playing developmentally disabled characters has the humor of a richness form in it — the extent to which actors choose go with a “Rain Man”/”Forrest Gump” Oscar-bait role — but gets dragged out too long and becomes unnecessarily dismal. Likewise, the movie itself wears out long before its final scenes. Cruise’s light booty-shaking over the end credits goes a long way toward mitigating disappointment, but “Tropic Thunder” is over abundant promise and not enough delivery.

Moira Macdonald: 206-464-2725 or mmacdonald@seattletimes.com

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Isaac Hayes, the deep-voiced soul music star who won an Oscar for penmanship the theme song to the movie "Shaft," died over the weekend from a stroke related to high blood pressure, Memphis decisions said on Tuesday.

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A 14-year-old stripling who fatally shot a 54-year-old hiker when he mistook her for a bear will likely subsist charged with first-degree manslaughter, Skagit County prosecutors said this morning.

The male child’s actions “spasm the definition of recklessness,” said prosecuting attorney-at-law Rich Weyrich.

The boy is legally allowed to pursuit in Washington without adult supervision since he took a hunting rank when he was 9 years old. However, Weyrich reported the boy failed to follow basic guidelines in the state’s hunting safety manual.

In particular, Weyrich said, the boy failed to positively confirm his target and what lay beyond it before pulling the trigger upon the body Aug. 2. The boy was hunting through his 16-year-old brother.

The 14-year-old boy from Concrete could face up to nine months in juvenile detention if convicted as charged, prosecutors declared.

The boy’s family and details from the police investigation have not been released, Weyrich said.

Pamela Almli, 54, every experienced hiker from the Snohomish County community of Oso, was shot in the head on a marked hunt as she bent over to put an item into her backpack.

Almli’s family before-mentioned she had been wearing a bright-blue parka when she began her hike, but The Associated Press reported that she was putting the jerkin into her pack when she was shot.

Almli’s family, reached by telephone this morning, had no comment.

Police said the boy fired a .270-caliber rifle from about 120 yards at a distance.

Both the boy and his brother told investigators by the Skagit County Sheriff’s Office after the accident that they had been “convinced” they were looking at a bear, said Chief Deputy Will Reichardt.

The accident devastated Almli’s family and caused an uproar mixed hikers, hunters and other outdoors people who discussed the play in online forums for much of latest week.

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Off-duty police officers last week violently sequestered a Democratic Party cameraman from a news meeting for consultation to what the Seattle Police Officers’ Guild was giving its endorsement to Republican Dino Rossi.

Guild members threatened the young man with arrest and made an emergency appointment to 911, bringing uniformed officers to the scene. Cameraman Kelly Akers was warned about trespassing.

“There’s no brilliant, no penalty, no request for charges,” said Seattle police Sgt. Sean Whitcomb.

Rossi is running for governor against Democratic Gov. Christine Gregoire. The incident Thursday was the roughest implementation even now of Rossi’s long-standing policy not to allow Democratic Party workers to witness his appearances.

“We don’t put up with them in to scrape together attack video,” Rossi spokeswoman Jill Strait declared.

Last week’s clash occurred at the police guild’s headquarters. A corporation worker asked Akers to leave, further he kept taping as Rossi accepted the endorsement.

Akers was confronted by three off-duty police officers, and he says single in kind or more grabbed him and pushed him out of the building. Once outside they continued to dispute as the officers held Akers in what he described as a “submission hold.”

Sgt. Ty Elster, vice president of the guild, said three members “escorted” Akers out the door. Elster was not at the issue but spoke to staff members who were there. He said he didn’t know the names of the off-duty officers involved.

“I’ve heard various sources describe it as being manhandled,” he said. “Our folks communicate to me it wasn’t anything of the sort. They merely placed a possession upon the body his arm and escorted him out the door. There was no force involved. There was no struggle.”

A Democratic spokesman says that’s not true. Kelly Steele, Akers’ supervisor, accused the guild members of “violence” and said Akers was “drug outside from behind.”

As Akers was evicted from the office, his camera recorded him saying, in an increasingly loud and alarmed voice, “Sir, could you please take your hands off me? Sir, could you gratify gripe your hands off of me?”

A guild member told him, “You were advised not to come into the building. This is private exclusive right. If you come back in the edifice you will be arrested for trespassing. Do you understand that? Do you understand?”

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Speaking to The Daily Telegraph, the Prince of Wales added that relying put on "gigantic corporations" against food production, rather than small farmers, would lead to an "absolute disaster".

"What we should be talking respecting is food ease not rations production — that is what matters and that is what rabble will not understand," the heir to the throne was quoted as saying.

"And if they think it's somehow going to work because they are going to wish one form of clever genetic engineering after another then once more judge me out, because that power of determination be the biggest environmental disaster of all time."

His comments come amid sedition concerns worldwide over expeditiously rising food prices — the World Bank estimates that food prices be seized of almost doubled over the past three years, and its president Robert Zoellick has said sum of two units billion people are affected by the food pinch.

The prince insisted he did not want to turn back the clock, telling the newspaper: "It's not going backwards. It is actually recognising that we are by nature, not against it. We have gone working against nature for overmuch long."

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The philosophy of the Iron Pigs Motorcycle Club, Seattle chapter, couldn’t have being more straightforward: to have fun.

“In our professions we are forced to deal with a lot of crap on the job; we don’t need it when we play,” says the Web site of the society, that is made up of Seattle-area police officers and firefighters.

But work and play collided timely Saturday at a bar fight in Sturgis, home to South Dakota’s annual legendary, Mardi Gras-like motorcycle gain ground.

Sturgis and Seattle law enforcement are investigating how some off-duty Seattle police officer allegedly shot a member of the Hells Angels motorcycle club about 1 a.m. Saturday. Four other off-duty Seattle officers were at the bar at the time of the shooting, according to a Seattle Police Department statement.

A crowd of 500-plus was jamming to the beat of rock group Judd Hoos at the aptly named Loud American Roadhouse when a number of Hells Angels members began to congregate in and around the structure, said bar co-owner Dean Kinney. His employees called police just to play it safe.

“We didn’t cry out the police inasmuch as there was a fight; we called police for the reason that we just knew that it was different. We were being heedful,” Kinney said. “We have almost no trouble at Sturgis. The the bulk of mankind are so happy that you just learn to recognize while things seem a little different.”

Kinney said he then heard two shots fired in quick sequence.

“There were probably 30 officers outside when it happened, so the response was quick,” Kinney said Sunday.

A Seattle police officer was detained by Sturgis authorities. All five officers who were at the obstacle take been relieved of what one is bound pending the research by means of South Dakota authorities, according to the Seattle police statement. Their names accept not been released.

The Hells Angels member was being treated at a Sturgis-area hospital Sunday. The hospital would not comment on the victim’s condition.

Sturgis police declined to comment on Sunday but reported the department would make a statement forward the shooting today.

Kinney said he had seen members of the Iron Pigs everywhere the week.