Thirty-odd miles north of downtown Seattle via the I-5 freeway or the older, funkier Hwy-99, at the west end of transcontinental US-2, busy Everett (pop. 91,488) is a thoroughly blue-collar place that feels a lot farther from Seattle’s high-tech flash than the mere half hour it is. A heavy industry center economically dependent upon two of the largest livelihoods in the Pacific Northwest—wood products and aircraft manufacturing—Everett has a few large turn-of-the-century mansions overlooking the all-business waterfront, where a Kimberly-Clark paper mill shares space with a big U.S. Navy base that’s home port to the carrier USS Abraham Lincoln. The old-fashioned downtown, a half mile west of I-5 around Hewitt and Colby Avenues, has some neat antique and junk shops, a dozen or so roughneck bars and taverns, and a very nice brewpub, the Flying Pig (425/339-1393), next to the historic Everett Theatre at 2929 Colby Avenue. For milk shakes or great fish-and-chips, stop by Ray’s Drive-In (425/252-3411) at 1401 Broadway.
Everett’s one big tourist draw is the huge Boeing assembly plant on the southwest edge of town, well-marked from I-5 exit 189, at the west end of Hwy-526. The factory, where they make the world’s biggest planes—747s through 7E7 “Dreamliners”—is worth a look if only for the 11-story-high, quarter-mile-long building, which is the largest in the world by volume. Tours (Mon.–Fri. 9 am–3 pm; $5; 800/464-1476) leave on the hour and last 90 minutes, but they fill up quickly, so get tickets as early as you can.
US-2 leaves Everett on Hewitt Avenue, which crosses I-5 then takes a historic old drawbridge over the Snohomish River before winding for a half-dozen miles across low-lying fields toward the town of Snohomish.
