Each year, hundreds of memories frozen in film are submitted to the Seabrook Photo Challenge. This year, the competition was tougher than ever before! We had over 300 pictures submitted for this year’s Photo Challenge and, of those, 13 images were handpicked for the Seabrook 2012 Calendar!

Each photographer of the winning pictures will receive a $100 gift card to the Mill 109 Pub-Restaurant. Additionally, the cover picture winner will get a free beach cruiser bike – a well-known trademark of Seabrook’s lifestyle.

Ladies and gentlemen…drum roll please…we present to you the 2011 Seabrook Photo Challenge Winners!

The Cover Page

(Photo by Mandy P.)

(more…)

Before we dive into this week’s post on Olympic National Park day trips, we would like to congratulate and thank Cassie Lentz for sharing her Lake Quinault story. Send us an email and we’ll get your $25 Mill 109 gift certificate in the mail!

OK, now to the adventure!

As the second of five of our favorite Olympic National Park daytrips, this week we are featuring Kalaloch and Ruby Beach.

We start our trip at the Kalaloch (pronounced clay-lock) Lodge which is located on the southwest coast of the Olympic Peninsula and approximately a 60-mile drive from Pacific Beach, WA.  The drive does not follow the coast line as there is no road through the Quinault Tribal reservation, but it will take you through beautiful areas on the peninsula and past Lake Quinault which we featured in our last Olympic National Park daytrip blog.

(more…)

SuperButton!

If you follow Seabrook on Twitter or Facebook, you may have heard about Button, a now-famous little wiener dog.

This cute 1-year-old, red and black long-haired dachshund went missing on Saturday, October 22 while enjoying a nighttime walk through the streets of Seabrook.  After darting into the darkness for an after-hours romp, Button quickly disappeared into the night.  Soon, with no sign of the little doxie, people began pouring out onto the streets and trails of Seabrook to search for Button late into the evening.

By the next morning, Button was still nowhere to be seen and droves of homeowners, guests, and Seabrook employees joined in the search for him.  The Button search party took every measure possible. Acres of terrain were traversed, posters went up all through the area, fliers were handed out to everyone in sight, Button’s story was shared on a variety of social media websites, and phone calls were made to local animal rescue organizations. Sadly though, at day’s end on Sunday there was still no sign of the little dog.

(more…)

Soaring mountains, towering rain forests, glacier-carved lakes, lush river valleys, and rugged beaches. Where else other than Olympic National Park can claim these diverse and breath-taking characteristics?

In 1909, President Theodore Roosevelt issued a proclamation creating Mount Olympus National Monument to protect the summer range and breeding grounds of Olympic Elk.  In fact, when re-designating it as a National Park in 1938, President Franklin Roosevelt nearly named it “Elk National Park” due to it being home to the largest unmanaged herd of Roosevelt Elk in the world.

The largest herd of Elk in the world; how big is Olympic National Park?

This incredible park encompasses nearly one million acres of land, with 95 percent specifically designated as wilderness. Olympic National Park also protects 73 miles of wild Pacific coastline (added to the park in 1956) and is also home to the third largest glacial system in the contiguous U.S.  The park boasts the second largest ecosystem restoration project in the history of the National Park Service (next to the Everglades) which encompasses the tallest dam removal project ever in US history with the removal of the Glines Canyon Dam.  In 1976, the Olympic National Park became an International Biosphere Reserve, and in 1981 it was designated a World Heritage Site.

In other words, it is really really big! And, really really cool!

(more…)