Thurston County
New to Thurston?
Here is the shape of the place: what is within reach of Olympia, who to check before you drive, and what changes with the season. We track all of it daily so you do not have to learn it the hard way.
What is within reach
We currently list 216 places in Thurston — 161 parks, 17 campgrounds, 16 viewpoints, 9 boat launches, 9 trailheads and 4 nature reserves.
- parks 161
- campgrounds 17
- viewpoints 16
- boat launches 9
- trailheads 9
- nature reserves 4
The public land
- Mount Rainier National Park — 8 current notices
- Olympic National Park — 8 current notices
- 13 Washington DNR recreation sites
Before you drive
- Road closures and cameras come from WSDOT .
- Mountain passes on your routes: White Pass. WSDOT reports pass conditions from 1 November to 1 April and stops the rest of the year, so an empty pass report in July means the season ended, not that the road is clear.
- Wildfire smoke and heat advisories arrive as National Weather Service alerts, and in this region they are a summer fact rather than an emergency. We show them at the top of the Thurston page whenever any are live.
The water
- Tides are read from Olympia, Budd Inlet. Heights are above MLLW, and a minus tide is the difference between a beach and a mudflat worth walking.
What we check for you, daily
The forecast and the hour-by-hour wind, active advisories and closures, road conditions, tide tables, and what is actually happening this week. It is rebuilt every morning, and if the data goes stale we stop showing it rather than let you plan around last week's weather.
Never miss a new destination