No comments about Arctic Spectacles: The Frozen North in Visual Culture, 1818-1875.

1 comments about Insiders' Guide to Bellingham and Mount Baker (Insiders' Guide Series).

1. THE INSIDERS' GUIDE TO BELLINGHAM AND MOUNT BAKER is an exceptional guide to the Northwestern section of Washington State. It describes all of the shopping, dining, recreation, media, sightseeing, physical fitness opportunities, schools, and other stuff that you need to know in order to make a successful move to the area. However, it's also a great book for those who wish to vacation there, as well as for people who simply have an interest in the area. This is a great book that you should not pass up.

No comments about The Backcountry Horseman's Guide to Washington (Falcon Guide).

1 comments about Haboo: Native American Stories from Puget Sound.

1. A collection of 34 legends of the Coast Salish and Skagit Indians. Each story averages about three pages with drawings, sketches and maps throughout.

No comments about Washington D.C. in Photographs.

1 comments about Ghost Hunter's Guide to Seattle and Puget Sound (Ghost Hunter's Guide).

1. Ghost Hunter's Guide to Seattle and Puget Sound is an in-depth look at supernatural sightings in the geographic area surrounding Seattle and Puget Sound. Spotlighting dozens of sites and recounting the ghost stories and lore of each, Ghost Hunter's Guide to Seattle and Puget Sound is enhanced with black-and-white photographs, a suggested further reading list, a list of local historical societies and museums, recommended internet resources, and index, and more. A highly accessible and definitive guide for Seattle-area ghost hunters!

5 comments about Artificial Imagination.

1. ReKalpanik S. takes us through his arrival in USA as a student and subsequent travel to several places - San Francisco, Seattle, Nashville, and San Diego. In each places, he focuses on similar aspect of his life as a technologist and an immigrant - acceptance by local people, standing out as a ethnic minority and foreign born, life as a technology execuitve and family life. In addition, he covers local food, people, culture and sources of enjoyment, joy, and finally, and his quest for love and balance.
   
   
   He adds so much meaning, passion and humor, he is so open with the readers that I felt like I was reading a private letter that someone would write only to their best friends.
   
   The writing is refreshingly unexpected, humorous and meaningful. Great read!!



2. 
   This book takes many life concepts expressed in different forms and combine them in a mishmash. He structures the 12 different personal essays, each highlighting a particular transitional period in his life or a specific experience in to a beautiful collage of experiences in this book very successfully. What a funny memoir!
   
   Kalpanik S. is a fine writer with a lot to say about a lot of things and a unique way of making you laugh! I highly recommend her book.



3. As a travelogue, Welcome to the USA is pretty good, Kalpanik certainly made me think about wanting to go to San Diego, Seattle and Nashville.
   
   as a character. Kalpanik seems simultaneously incredibly thoughtful and serious and yet someone who has a carefree attitude towards life, someone who handle life as it happens!
   
   It's a light reading, and yet thoughtful; funny yet serious; conversational yet literary!



4. Whether you ever wondered about meaning of it all, or you want to read something light amusing, or want to see places like Seattle, San Diego, and Nashville from the eyes of the writer, or vicariously live the life of a student at University of California, this book is for you!
   
   This book combines elements from good humor, a memoir, a scenic travelogue, a touching love story, science fiction and philosophy.
   
   The author, pretends to be an Artificial Imagination computer program simulating human creativity, describes the life/career journey of a modern nomad through the Hi Tech world of California and Washington (Settle). The book is clever, witty and obviously written by someone very intelligent but still manages to be very down to earth and funny! it's light reading, the author has a conversational style, you feel as if you are reading a letter from a close friend!!



5. This is the story of a brilliant young man who seems to be always on the move, moving from one interesting city to the other.
   
   At the beginning, the author leaves New Delhi for US, where he is awarded a fellowship to study at University of California, but he gets caught into culture shock, as well as an internal dilemma, seeking a deeper meaning of life. While he is most vulnerable, he manages to fall in love with one his student but is unable to express his feelings.
   
   Then he seems to have gone through the roller coaster ride of the technology industry emerging as a winner, a successful technologist leading a group of innovators.
   
   We end in beautiful San Diego, with a moving story about how the author and his family face the Inferno, the great wildfires of 2007.
   
   I don't believe anyone has experienced living unless they have ventured around like the author has. It is in his narratives, his reaction to the challenges he faces and his observations of people and culture of various places that he truly shines.
   
   It is my top read of the year!

5 comments about Foghorn Outdoors West Coast RV Camping: More Than 1,800 RV Parks and Campgrounds in California, Oregon, and Washington (Foghorn Outdoors).

1. Great book, I found a great campground in Columbia CA
   that I would have never found without it.
   Good information on the campgrounds including web site addresses, phone numbers etc.



2. This guide is wonderful! It gives lots of information for not only the national park system but forest service, state, and private. I never knew so many campgrouds were available for our use. This book will become our mainstay for searching out where to go whether it's a weekend or full vacation. Thank you Foghorn!



3. The RV camping guide is one of the best because it gives you a little history of each region as you make your way down the road. Many of their property ratings are dead on, but I know of one highly rated RV resort in the book that is nothing like the book suggests.
   On a scale of one to ten it was rated a 9 with a glowing review that made it sound like one of the finest RV parks in North America. When we arrived there was a run down dump of a place with mostly full-timers and an amazing amount of trash and junk strewn around. The full service sites with amazing views were actually muddy side by side parking spaces with potholes and hundreds of wild rabbits-- many of which were busy breeding. You had to drive around these rabbits because they weren't about to move. We turned our rig around and slowly drove around more passionate bunnies and sloshed through the mud and potholes to make our way out of this horrible so-called resort. As for the world famous pecan pie served in the resort's restaurant--- They can keep it.
   I would still reccomend this book but only with a stern warning that the author sometimes gets it wrong.
   We are convinced he must have had a nice meal there and was given a free slice of pecan pie for the road.



4. The book has a comprehensive listing of campgrounds. However it didn't appear the author looked at the logistics of getting longer or wider RVs into the campgrounds or thoroughly address what size RVs the campgrounds are suitable for.
   
   Example: Table Mountain in the LA area. From the book: "There are 115 sites for RVs up to 32 feet or tents."
   
   I checked this campground in a Toyota Camry. It has several loops, most of which have very narrow access roads. I had the foliage scrape the narrow Camry on occasion. There were several sites which could accomodate a 32 foot trailer which were near the entrance of the campground. There were numerous un-level sites. The book had no warning about entering the narrow one-way loops with an average sized RV.
   
   Example: O'Neill Regional park in Orange County. From the book: "There are 85 sites, eight drive-through, for RVs up to 35 feet and tents."
   
   This park is the opposite from Table Mountain in that it has wide access roads and many very large sites. Even some of the average back-in sites are 50' long and some of the pull-throughs are a hundred feet long. The sites are relatively level.
   
   My thought is the author isn't an RVer and didn't look at these campgrounds from an RV perspective. The guide is most useful from the point of view of a popup trailer, smaller truck camper, or class B motorhome.



5. WOW! This book has it all! I have camped in Oregon, Washington and California for over 50 years and, yes, I own a number of campground guides. I couldn't agree more with the author's ratings of the hundreds of campgrounds I have visited. He provides great details on the campgrounds, maximum site length, contact and reservation information and even fishing suggestions. This book has also opened my eyes to very highly rated campgrounds slightly off the beaten path that I wasn't aware of. The book is broken into easy to follow sections depending on what area of each state the reader is interested in. Furthermore, there are no advertisements in the book that make the reader wonder if the ratings have been influenced by advertising income. In short, this is the camper's bible.

1 comments about Stevens Pass: The Story of Railroading and Recreation in the North Cascades.

1. Stevens Pass has always had an aura of mystery about it. Even while Seattle boomed during the great gold rush of the 1800's, there remained no way to cross the formidable North Cascades. Inspired by the Orient trade, railroaders spent years looking for a suitable route over the mountain until surveyor John F. Stevens discovered a pass in 1890.
   The Great northern Railroad lent romance to the crossing of Stevens Pass. But its real saga consisted of the nearly superhuman feats of construction crews, ghastly design mistakes, unpredictable acts of nature, and the determination of magnates, despite countless unforeseen obstacles, to connect communities by rail.
   The other half of the saga consists of individuals who traversed the mountains, built crude homes, and schooled their children at home or in drafty log schoolhouses with few books. Nefarious pioneers took advantage of the isolation to work scams, fight, steal, and even murder.
   More than a regional history, this story tells of the Wellington disaster, a killer avalanche; the period when ski jumping events grew crowds of thousands; the growing efforts of the United States Forest Service to serve recreational seekers; and the scoundrels and heroes of the new frontier.
   I enjoyed this book immensely, and learned a lot about an area in history that at one time was sitting in my own backyard, so to speak.

3 comments about Northwest Shore Dives.

1. The third edition of this book is an improvement on the previous and includes new dive sites, 55 in all. The dive sites are located in Washington State in Puget Sound and Hood Canal. All include a picture of the site which makes it easy to find them, the written directions are excellent. The tide and current table calculations are great, even going so far as to let you know if you should plan your dive for tides or currents. He even includes information on things to do for non-divers while they hangout waiting for divers to return. The maps are exceptional, most have depth measurements and all include ebb and flood current information that really makes it easy to plan dives at these sites. I have dived some of the sites listed in the book and the descriptions are excellent. Highly recommended for those diving in the Pacific Northwest.



2. The information is up to date and correct. I use this book exclusively to plan my dives. I have met the author and trust his knowledge of the dive sites and the information given in the book.



3. This book is highly regarded among divers in the BC/WA/OR area. My only criticism is the latest edition (3rd) wasn't really updated much in that it still lists the Edmonds Oil Dock as a "working" pier. This hasn't been a working pier for a long time. But other than that, it's still an excellent book, highly recommended.