Our cover girl, overlooking the Columbia River at Vancouver, Washington, near Fort Vancouver National Monument, is Ilchee, or Moon Woman, a Chinook shaman who paddled her own canoe, the sign of a chief. Her story as a femme fatale in Washington Irving’s narrative of Astoria, published in 1836, tells of two unheard of bride prices paid by Duncan McDougal, chief factor of John Jacob Astor's Pacific Fur Company, and then a Chinook chief Casanov who was successor to Ilchee’s father Chief Comcomly, befriender of Lewis and Clark. When her second marriage failed she went for the protection of McLaughlin, at Fort Vancouver, run by Hudson's Bay Company, who took he in until it was safe for Ilchee to return to her family at the mouth of the Columbia.

Ilchee, as was Tsagaglalal, or “she who watches,” was noted for visions of the future, especially the consequences of the coming of the white men. Consequentially, I like honoring her introducing the premier edition of WashingtonTravelMagazine as E-TravelMagazines.com makes it way southeasterly across America from www.AlaskaTravelMagazines.com. Our new HD 16:9 format is in with keeping with what we are calling the coming fusion between HD television screens, and the world wide web.

Our lead video-article on the historical consequences of Fort Vancouver reflects a travel magazine lesson learned from the Internet logs of AlaskaTravelMagazine in that over half of our readers live overseas where local supermarkets do not sell print magazines on Alaska, Washington State, Oregon, etc. We also are very aware that travel marketing has been so overdone to a saturated public — that our articles have to be just a bit controversial, and perhaps they do not please local chamber of commerce. Sorry. From fifty years experience in the magazine format, I know that the readers are the ones who “own” a publication. So “welcome,” “willkomm,” “bienvenu,” “bienvenido,” “Kloshe Konaway”.