Follow a picturesque adventure tour along the Oregon Coast’s Interstate 101 that captures the majesty and quirkiness of the state. The 338-mile exploration begins at the California border in Brookings concluding with crossing the expansive Astoria-Megler Bridge into Washington. The background and commentary from each chapter is concise and insightful giving you an intimate glimpse of a West Coast region bountiful in aesthetics and generally absent of tourist herds. Ideal for the roadtrip warrior or day-tripper. En route, your itinerary will feature: Natural and Historic Attractions Humbug Mountain Battle Rock Bullards Beach Sand Dunes National Park Spinreel Campground Tahkenitch Creek Devil’s Churn Seal Rock Wayside Beaver Creek Yaquina Head Devil’s Punchbowl Neskowin Beach Sand Lake Recreation Area Storm Rock and Three Arch Rocks Octopus Tree Haystack Rock Architectural Wonders Isaac Paterson Bridge Bullards Bridge Conde McCullough Memorial Bridge Umpqua River Bridge Cape Creek Bridge Haceta Head Lighthouse Yaquina Bay Bridge Yaquina Head Lighthouse Cape Meares Lighthouse Astoria-Megler Bridge Tour Attractions, Artistic Works and Oddities Whale Bone Sculpture Moolack Beach Highway Collapse Lil Sambos Restaurant Tillamook Creamery The Fish Peddler Oregon Coast Scenic Railroad Seaside Carousel Haunted Astoria

Washington Coast Guide: Beauty, Novelty and Curiosity Follow a picturesque adventure tour along Washington Coast’s Interstate 101 and north of Seattle Interstate 5 that captures the majesty and quirkiness of the state. The exploration begins at the Oregon border with crossing the expansive Megler-Astoria Bridge into Washington. The background and commentary from each chapter is concise and insightful giving you an intimate glimpse of a West Coast region bountiful in aesthetics and generally absent of tourist herds. Ideal for the roadtrip warrior or day-tripper. En route, your itinerary will feature: Natural and Historic Attractions Long Beach Peninsula Southwestern Estuary Marshlands and Sloughs Ocean Shores Point No Point Beach Crescent Lake Rialto Beach Tree Graveyard Cape Flattery Shi Shi Beach and The Point of Arches Blakely Harbor Park Notable Bridges and Crossing Spans Megler-Astoria Bridge Wishkah River and Heron Street Bridge Agate Pass Bridge Hood Canal Deception Pass Bridge Tour Attractions, Artistic Works and Oddities Raymond Iron Sculptural Cut-Outs Aberdeen: The Floating Cadaver Fleet of Billy Gohl Norwegian Town of Poulsbo Japanese-American Exclusion Memorial Sacred Stone Labyrinth and Prayer Wheel Fort Ward Park Port Townsend Victorian Architecture Fort Worden Sequim Lavender Festival Camp Hayden Skagit Valley Tulip Festival Fairhaven’s Haunted Sycamore Building Bellingham: Serial Killer Kenneth Bianchi’s Killing Site Haunted Old Town Café Waterfront Tavern: Serial Killer’s Hideaway Tavern

In the 1920s and 1930s, Oregon's legendary bridge engineer Conde B. McCullough designed a first-rate collection of aesthetic bridges on the Oregon Coast Highway to enhance an already dramatic and beautiful landscape. The six largest of these, at Gold Beach, Newport, Waldport, Florence, Reedsport, and Coos Bay, eliminated the last ferries on the Oregon Coast Highway between the Columbia River and California. McCullough planned to build one bridge each year after completion of the Rogue River Bridge at Gold Beach in 1932, but the tightening grip of the Depression threatened his plans. In 1933, McCullough and his staff worked day and night to finish plans for the remaining five bridges, and in early 1934, the Public Works Administration funded simultaneous construction of them. The combined projects provided approximately 630 jobs, but at least six workers perished during construction. After the bridges were complete, Oregon coast tourism increased by a dramatic 72 percent in the first year.

What is a Californigonian? What was waiting by the door that night? What possessed us to adopt two puppies at once? How is playing the piano like ice skating? Why stay in Oregon when it rains all the time and the family is still back in California? Find the answers to these and other questions in these posts selected from ten years of the Unleashed in Oregon blog. Chapters will look at the glamorous life of a writer and the equally glamorous life of a musician, true stories from a whiny traveler, being the sole human occupant of a house in the woods, and dogs, so much about dogs.

New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Chiaverini's compelling historical novel unveils the private lives of Abraham and Mary Lincoln through the perspective of the First Lady's most trusted confidante and friend, her dressmaker, Elizabeth Keckley. In a life that spanned nearly a century and witnessed some of the most momentous events in American history, Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley was born a slave. A gifted seamstress, she earned her freedom by the skill of her needle, and won the friendship of First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln by her devotion. A sweeping historical novel, Mrs. Lincoln's Dressmaker illuminates the extraordinary relationship the two women shared, beginning in the hallowed halls of the White House during the trials of the Civil War and enduring almost, but not quite, to the end of Mrs. Lincoln's days.

"I come from Des Moines. Somebody had to." And, as soon as Bill Bryson was old enough, he left. Des Moines couldn't hold him, but it did lure him back. After ten years in England he returned to the land of his youth, and drove almost 14,000 miles in search of a mythical small town called Amalgam, the kind of smiling village where the movies from his youth were set. Instead he drove through a series of horrific burgs, which he renamed Smellville, Fartville, Coleslaw, Coma, and Doldrum. At best his search led him to Anywhere, USA, a lookalike strip of gas stations, motels and hamburger outlets populated by obese and slow-witted hicks with a partiality for synthetic fibres. He discovered a continent that was doubly lost: lost to itself because he found it blighted by greed, pollution, mobile homes and television; lost to him because he had become a foreigner in his own country.

"From the author of the hugely popular Things We Set on Fire, a deeply emotional novel of three wounded souls brought together by a historic house on the Oregon coast"--