Synopses & Reviews
The Columbia River Gorge
It’s like a national park but with better restaurants.
Columbia Gorge Getaways is the only complete visitor’s guidebook to the Columbia River Gorge, one of the nation’s first National Scenic Areas. With this book, you’ve got a year’s worth of weekend-long adventures in and around the gorge’s historic riverfront towns, on both the Washington and Oregon sides of the river. And it’s all within 115 miles of Portland.
With the book’s 12 ready-to-go vacation itineraries, it’s like having a personal tour guide always ready in your glove-box. The itineraries—plus a one to five-day highlights tour—contain everything you need to know to have a blast in the gorge, from its beaches to its back roads, historic downtowns, hiking and biking trails, shopping, brewpubs and wineries, rural inns, historic sites and museums. Appendices cover festivals, along with gorge outfitters, guides, lessons, rentals and excursions.
Review
"Laura O. Foster provides itineraries for the weekend travel warrior from Portland, carefully curated experiences that include a lot more surprises than you’d think. And Foster relays a lot of the local history — the timber industry, dams, Native American culture and salmon fishing — to deepen the visitor experience beyond what visitors can see today. " Portland Tribune
Review
"This is not your free AAA glove box pamphlet….these break-out adventures deliver every road, stream, path, museum, campground, working alpaca farm, bed and brew and converted old schoolhouse hotel the gorge has to offer. Customized maps serve as handsome accessories that deliver textured overviews of the landscape while helping travelers pinpoint exactly where they are in relation to where they want to be next." Eugene Register-Guard, June 26, 2016
Review
"Packed with helpful maps, drive times, insider tips on food and lodging, historical photos, anecdotes, hiking suggestions, tons of cool little things to do you would never know about, lots of history and a cultural perspective on the native residents and through it all, Laura`s intelligence and humor make it a super fun read!" Randall Tipton, in Painter's Process
Review
"Engaging and full of tasty little knowledge nuggets. Reading it is like traveling with a friendly polymath, who also has a sense of humor." Maggie Rudy, author of The House that Mouse Built
Synopsis
An all-Oregon team created this book: maps by Matthew Hampton of Cascade Cartography; design by Brad Smith and Etah Chen of Hot Pepper Studios; edits by Jenefer Angell of Passionfruit Projects, printing by Bob Smith of Book Printers Network; and text and photos by me, Laura Foster. I've been writing Pacific Northwest guidebooks since 2001. This is the first of my seven books that I am publishing myself, as Towns to Trails Media, LLC.
About the Author
Laura O. Foster writes about Portland and the Pacific Northwest. Her books take readers on explorations of a city’s or region’s geology, architecture, neighborhoods, parklands and human and natural history. Born and raised in Aurora, Illinois, Foster moved to Portland in 1989 where she lives with her husband Kevin Foster.