More Than 10 Years After Flood, Local Travel Agency Once Again Has Office Space

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After the flood of 2007 displaced Evergreen Travel more than a decade ago, the agency now has a storefront in Chehalis.

Until February of this year, Diane Baine ran Evergreen Travel out of her home. Baine wants to retire soon, so her daughter, Shari Walker, moved back to Lewis County to take over the business.

“When Shari said she would come back here and run the agency, I wanted her to have a storefront where people could walk in and talk with her,” Baine said. “There is something about that personal touch that people like. They want to be able to ask questions and get answers and have someone to really communicate with and see.”

Walker just moved from Edmonds at the end of February. She previously worked in property management in Seattle.

“She (Baine) is ready to retire and I wanted to do something different,” Walker said. “She has been trying to find someone to buy it and I said ‘well, why don’t I do it?’”

The flood of 2007 wasn’t the first major flood Baine experienced while with Evergreen Travel.

She started at the agency in 1995, and a flood hit the following year in 1996. However, Baine said the 2007 flood was much more severe than she, or anyone, expected.

“We just thought it would be similar to what we had been through before,” she said. “It was pretty devastating to come back and walk into the office and — nothing there. I mean everything was just a disaster. It was really depressing to see everything gone.”

The flood destroyed everything in the office.

“We had put our chairs and things on top of the desks to save them,” Baine said. “It was over the top of our desks, so everything floated off and we had nothing. They just took everything out of the office and threw it out the back door.”



Baine purchased the agency in 1997. She had three employees in 2007, but they all found other work after the flood. From that point, Baine worked from home.

“A lot of businesses were affected exactly the same way and different businesses started meeting in other places,” Baine said. “At that time, I just had all my calls forwarded to my home phone. I was in Toledo and started working from there, which was pretty slow at that time because everybody was recovering from the flood.”

By the time Baine’s former office space was ready for her to move back in, she was already used to working from home. When she moved to Centralia, she met clients at various local businesses to plan their trips.

However, not all potential clients liked the arrangement. Baine said a client once cancelled an appointment because she wanted to go to a “real” travel agency.

“People have different ideas of what they expect,” she said. “I can understand. Meeting someone away from your office, they don’t know if you’re scamming them or a legitimate business. They’re entrusting you with a lot of their money, so it is understandable.”

Evergreen Travel is now located inside an old house in Chehalis that was turned into office spaces. 

“People like the old walk-in agency, I believe, to have someone to talk to,” Baine said. “There are still a lot of people who don’t even do computers.”

Baine isn’t sure yet of her retirement timeline, but said she will stay as long as Walker needs her.

“I hope to grow (the business) a little bit bigger,” Walker said. “I know what I’m doing most of the time, but I still need Mom’s help.”