Hidden Byway Stories

From Hoquiam to Taholah and everywhere between. Find us if you can!

Secrets from 1977; Finding Glass Floats on Grays Harbor Beaches

From time to time, we find and buy small hoards of glass floats for the shop. They sell fast and visitors are always amazed when we get into conversations about the abundance of glass floats on Grays Harbor beaches still being found, to this day. If you know when and where to look, you might […]

Talking Crows on the Washington Coast? Who said that!

Coastal Crow

Over the summer, I was chatting with Boaz Backus, the chainsaw carver guy who built Ocean City Marketplace in 1995, and son of woodcarving pioneer (and my friend) Judy McVay.   Boaz doesn’t live along the Washington Coast anymore but his legacy lives on in stories; about saving Dorothy Anderson’s cabin, drunk adventures, travel, carving, […]

Signs are Art: The Silent Impact of Judy McVay

My dad, Jim Mason (1943 – 2014)  was a self-taught cartoonist who practiced drawing Mickey Mouse and other characters in the margins of his homework starting in Kindergarten. Later, he put himself through graduate school as a sign painter and eventually he became one of only a handful of Art Therapists in the State of […]

The Plane, dog, and girl: a Good Shop Story!

i like vintage toys – who doesn’t?! At least once a week Sue comes up with a good shop story and this week it was about a young lady no more than ten years old who came into the shop with her mom. As you might imagine, most kids who come in, mope around half […]

Dead Crabs all Over the Beach at Pacific Beach & Moclips

Hidden Glass Floats Grays Harbor Beaches

All sorts of people wander into the shop on any given day and many of them ask interesting questions and we get into conversations about history, pickin‘ and the North Beach. But recently I was asked an odd question and surprisingly — I knew the answer! A couple came, shopped around and at checkout they […]