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To the Americans for whom it was chiefly made, the opening scene of Full Disclosure, showing Donald Sutherland and other commuters stepping off the ferry to work, required no giveaway title-frame announcing ‘Seattle’. Nothing pinpoints the location - or expresses the charm - more unmistakeably than this glimpse of leisurely downtown travel in the big island city where so many have migrated in search of peace and quiet, cleanliness and decency.

Perhaps a stepson of Canada, Seattle shares both character and climate with Vancouver, right down to the myriad Chinese restaurants up and down the quay. You never forget that it is a city built on water, with fine lake views everywhere and boat tours of many scenic islands. Essentially modern (an office block of 1914 is revered as an antiquity), the well-kept city centre is worth at least a long day and evening, most of it around bustling Pioneer Square, while the great glass towers and the avenues between them are swept wonderfully clean by the Pacific winds that play about this city with its salty-breezy name.

The other year, London woke up to some unusual new cafés boasting the strange slogan “In Seattle I found my dreams, myself...” These modest little hangouts with their minimalist decor and studious-looking girls spread out on sofas reading the broadsheets perhaps all morning, actually reminded me much more vividly of Portland - a city often mentioned in the same breath, as are the two states themselves (Washington and Oregon).

This new kind of café society, where browsing and book-buying go on far into the night, has imposed a pleasant air of scholarship on what has qualified more than once as America’s Most Liveable City.

Like Seattle, Portland has a gentle small-town character behind its impressive facades, and like Seattle, it is defined by water. Its own river, the Willamette, runs into the great Columbia Gorge, and it is perhaps spoilsport to reveal that nothing beats your first view of it over the high bridge heading South into the city. But do not let this inhibit you from touring the Gorge, for it is a mighty experience - the upstream journey being the more rewarding. This scenic road takes you past endless enchanting waterfalls, perfect for picnic-stops, till the massive waterway eventually snakes back across the Washington border into farm country and then desert. Roughly at this border, and not far from the Idaho line, there rises something like a ghost-city. Appearing suddenly out of dry scrubland, miles from anywhere, Walla Walla still pretends to civic elegance, with fine streets and office buildings dating from long before Seattle and Portland. It is dreamlike indeed to revert to city habits in such an eerily remote place, and for me these architectural relics carry a weird magic, a nostalgic mirage from the sands.

Yet water remains the clue to this region, and we must head back towards the coast to find the supreme glories of the Pacific Northwest. One of them is Crater Lake, Oregon’s only National Park. If I have seemed to encourage a whistle-stop schedule so far, I must now urge the opposite. Stay over at least one night at Crater Lake, small though it is.

Concentrated here, around this water-filled volcano only four miles across, is a mass of wildlife, dominated by the sheer wonder of this cobalt-blue surface and the steep, jagged crater-edge around it, astonishingly clear, forever looking close enough to touch. The nights too are brilliant with stars, so remote from the distracting blur of town-lighting. Fishing trips to Wizard Island are a big favourite, while any number of nature-trails, campfire lectures and ranger-led hikes will happily occupy your children, who will find it quite hard to get lost in this well-organised park, where all roads lead to the single circuit of the Rim.

Just over the Northern horizon from here is the Umpqua Valley, perhaps better approached from the coast at Reedsport, from where you ascend steeply into an incredible canopy of green - the only forest scenery on earth that seriously challenges the Scottish Highlands. A constant climate, with the certainty of hot summers and wet winters would have a lot to do with it. But something about this limitless dense greenery - tropical in its profusion, yet all-American in its careful husbandry - seems to stem from some elusive spirit of harmony that characterises so much of the Pacific Northwest, in cities and scenic wilds alike.

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