Driving through Mount Rainier National Forest
We spent significant vacation time driving. We drove to, up and around Mount Rainier. We continued on to Leavenworth. We drove from there to Snohomish and then on to the far western side of the Olympic Peninsula. We drove nearly 900 miles last week, and most of our driving was done in rural Washington State.
Each small town we drove through en route to Mount Rainier, Leavenworth, and the Olympic Peninsula was dotted with small metal buildings with signs reading “Drive-Thru Espresso” or “Espresso to Go”.
The trusty Subaru.
I wrote a post last year about an espresso shack in Farmington, Missouri. I thought the shack was a novelty until I traveled to Washington State. There were coffee shacks in every town along our drives.
Most towns had more coffee shacks than St. Louis neighborhoods have coffee shops. Many of the towns we drove through were no-stoplight towns filled with dilapidated homes and dimly lit mobile home parks. Money seemed like a scant resource in these communities, and yet many of the same towns had two espresso shacks.
An espresso shack sat in the parking lot of nearly every strip mall, convenience store and gas station we drove past. We made a game out of who could spot the espresso shack first, and we laughed at the ridiculous names assigned to some of the shacks.
If you’re wondering what an espresso shack looks like, your imagination is probably serving you well. Espresso shacks are small metal buildings similar to storage sheds – storage sheds with drive-thru windows.
I decided that it would be un-Washingtonian of me not to buy at least one latte from a Washington State drive-through espresso shack, so I set my standard high. I waited until I found the classiest, most upscale looking espresso shack I could find, and I pulled our little blue Subaru into its drive-thru for my very first Washington State Espresso to Go.
The coffee itself was nowhere near as interesting as the espresso shacks along our drives were. It was a good, albeit weak latte in a plain paper cup with a lid, and it helped give me the kick I needed to drive into Port Angeles for dinner that night. It’s not the coffee that I’ll remember from Seattle – it’s the drive-thru espresso shacks themselves.
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Wow, thank you for taking us along on your journey. Espresso shack…sounds interesting! And yummy.
I LOVE stories like this, because I am so amazed at our coffee stands myself. Many of the people who live here in the Northwest don’t even realize how unique our coffee stands are… the sheer quantity of them, for starters, or that many parts of the country don’t even have any. Of course, we also have a plethora of very unique-looking ones, as well. By the way, I never heard of them called a shack. Must be a Missouri thing. I’ve heard stand, box, hut, and drive-through, but not shack. Anyway, I studied and photographed them for 5 years, and published a book about them, and I don’t think anyone, including myself, knows just how many there are. Probably 1000 in Washington and Oregon combined is my estimate.
Anyway, nice blog!
Ray,
That’s amazing! What’s the name of your book?
I really enjoyed seeing the variety of coffee stands across the state. Because we drove from Seattle to Mt. Rainier to Leavenworth to Snohomish to Port Angeles to Rialto Beach back to Seattle, we saw a plethora of them.
Thanks for visiting my site – I hope you’ll come back soon!
Best,
Melissa