Whalehead features Olympic, Makah in SF Chronicle travel pieces 13 July 2008 HEALDSBURG, Calif. - The 2008 Summer Olympics are about to kick off in Beijing, but Matt Villano recently featured a different kind of Olympics in a duo of travel features for the San Francisco Chronicle. Villano's Olympics: Olympic National Park and the Olympic Peninsula of Washington State. In two stories that comprised more than half of the Chronicle's Travel section today, Villano painted for readers a picture of the Olympic Peninsula and the people that live there. The first story, titled "The other Olympics," provides readers with four different fun-filled itineraries for a trip to the park: hiking in the Dosewallips, hot-springing in Sol Duc, tidepooling at Shi Shi Beach and wildlife-watching in the Quinault. The second piece, a sidebar titled, "Makah Indians embrace whaling, defend culture," focuses on the Makah Indians, a Native-American group which lives in a town that bills itself as the "northwestern-most" point in the contiguous U.S. Together, the pieces call upon Villano's vast knowledge of the region, gleaned through more than ten years of exploring the area. To read the main piece, click here. To read the sidebar, click here. Villano is a regular contributor to various sections of the Chronicle, writing a weekly gaming column and two Wine Country Destinations columns each month. To read all of his stories for the publication, click here.