Frommer's Oregon

We carried the book with us during a two week tour of the coast and found their recommendations and descriptions of sites and backgrounds to be very accurate. The book was a good buy for us.

I find the Frommers' guides to be most helpful when planning a trip and staying in an area for more than a day or two. The in depth details for motels, restaurants, and sights are great! My husband and I are planning a trip to the Columbia Gorge area and Oregon Coast in late spring and have studied this guide in detail. We used a Frommers' last year for a Bermuda trip and found it to be most helpful.

I took a trip with my family to Oregon a few months ago and we used this book as our guide, and it ended up becoming our Oregon Bible. We stayed for about a week and stopped in many locations: Portland, the Columbia River Gorge, Mt. Hood, Bend, Eugene, and all the way up the coast from Florence to Cannon Beach (and we still barely scratched the surface, it seems). We did the recommended restaurants, attractions, parks, hikes, and lodgings and found the descriptions for each were spot-on and detailed. We mostly ate and stayed at the no-star/one-star places and even those were excellent. Of course, the 3-star system that Frommer's Guides use is subjective but we ended up mostly agreeing with them (one exception was the Oregon Aquarium - it was good, but I'd say 2 stars rather than 3). We're first-timers and our trip was a bit of a whirlwind driving tour, so we learned a few things about Oregon and road-tripping in general: - Driving, especially in vast places like Oregon, can take a lot out of you. By the time you get to your next location, you may be too tired to do much or it may be too late, etc. To fully appreciate a given locale, try to spend at least one FULL day in the same spot. We wanted to do a lot of hiking throughout the trip, but only ended up doing one excursion (although it was mind blowing!) due to time constraints/exhaustedness. - Although Frommer's is good about giving you hours of operation and such for various locations, you should still call ahead to make sure it's open. And be careful - not all locations in the guide have the hours listed, especially if it's only mentioned in the middle of a paragraph (as opposed to having it's own separate entry). The Newberry Volcanic Monument south of Bend is an example... it ended up being closed on the day we were there. You never know when something will be closed for unforeseen reasons, out-of-order (ie. the elevator to Sea Lion Caves, rendering it inaccessible), or booked-up early (ie. Columbia River Gorge riverboat cruise). Also, when visiting any mountainous region, make sure the roads aren't closed due to snow (even in May or June!). - And a short mention about the Portland Metro Tram: it's a good way to see some of the city and is cheap, but it takes a _long_ time to get where you're going, especially if it's somewhere outside of Downtown (like, say, Forest Park). A trip can take an hour on the tram as opposed to 15 minutes or less by car. We don't have public transportation like that where we live, so we were not aware of this fact. - Don't rely on this guide (or any guide) to be your sole road map. I highly recommend buying a large, detailed map separately. All in all, we found this guide to be enormously informative, accurate, and indispensable, really. The author really knows his stuff.

An essential guide to travelling throughout Oregon! It was a life- saver during those times that we would enter a town and want to know what there was to see or do in it. I used it everyday on my 7 day vacation! I will continue to purchase Frommer's products for whatever destination I am planning.

This is a great book for an overview of the total state. If you are looking for lots of info on one particular area this probably isn't what you are after, but it gives a good description of each area. We found it useful for our trip but not terribly in depth about each area.