Book: Oregon: An Explorer's Guide
Written by Mark Highberger (The Countryman Press)
Reviewed by Erick Mertz

---

The gift was Oregon. As a 16 year old with the newly unfettered privilege of a driver's license, I unwrapped a book, Oregon For the Curious, given to me by my parents. They bought it on their way out from New York and were passing the book on to me. I was dumb to it then, but now I know the gift wasn't necessarily the book; it was the state whose virtues it espoused.

Over the years, that book has become a pencil scrawled, dog-eared testament to my travels throughout Oregon. Toll bridge receipts and my speeding ticket from Oakridge are wedged inside as memories. It has taken me to unique street corners in Joseph, the best darn burger in Lakeview and to too many tucked away waysides south of Depoe Bay to count.

Again, the gift of that book was the gift of Oregon.

Travel author and local Mark Highberger's new book Oregon: An Explorer's Guide works in a similar fashion. Providing dining and lodging options for most of Oregon's outposts and cities, there is a lifetime of travel destinations contained for the adventurous with a little fuel to burn. For a newcomer or an itchy local, Highberger's book is the antidote for a state that sometimes feels overwhelmingly big.

Highberger's book however speaks to a more refined travel readership. The options include numerous fine dining and some spendier bed and breakfast locales in favor of detailing the nooks and crannies of individual camping spots. This is Oregon for the more comfortably curious. Still chock filled with anecdotes and the tiny asides that are the essence of spicy travel, it won't take you to all the strange barns a few miles down the logging road or the Frank Lloyd Webber houses in Silverton, but it will pin point a satisfying barbecue.

The author's choices are, for the most part, spot on. As an Oregonian who has sought the strange and unusual within the boundaries of his home state, I am in almost total agreement that the selections Oregon provides are some of the best we have to offer. Sure, a few of my discovered alcoves and lunch spots are neglected, but overall, it is extremely satisfying to know, I'm not the only person who's driven an hour out of my way for Bronco Billys; maybe, too, it is comforting to know that this place is still big enough to hold a pocketful of secrets.

Bronco Billy's? Where, you ask? Check it out.

© 2003 - Erick Mertz