Rocky Mountain: A Visitor's Companion

Most of this book consists of the kind of things that you see in a national park visitor center, such as brief texts on geology, habitats, history, and climate. In a book format, Wuerthner can go into a little more detail, and he does. Even so, most of the book doesn't dig very deep in providing this kind of information. Having read quite a bit about the park and visited on several occasions, I didn't really learn much. If you're planning your first visit, however, this would be a good source. These chapters are easy reads, and the book includes a lot of good pictures. It would have been nice to have more maps - - there is only one, a road map on the back cover. Geology, alpine plant communities, history, wildlife and elevation might each have been the subject of one or more specialized maps. The book suggests a nice sampling of hikes in its final pages. I've done many of them, and it's a good choice but again, maps would be nice. If you want to hike, see some of the other books on my Listmania page. What makes the book for me are the fauna and flora identifications, which take up more than half the book (about 125 pages). There are some pictures and a lot of side drawings of the animals of the park, with two or three species per page. Plant identifications show each species in flower, while tree and shrub pages show the overall shape of the plant, close-ups of leaves, and berries, needles or other up-close identifiers. These are very useful and have earned the book a place in my day pack.