Travel Oregon

From artsy Ashland in the south to the almost exotic mid-coastal Oregon Dunes to trendy Portland in the north, there’s plenty to investigate in the Beaver State. The attractively designed Travel Oregon Web site addresses a visitor’s every need—lodging, sightseeing, shopping, wine drinking, etc. A section called “50 Road Trips We Love” includes “Call of the Wild,” a rugged four-day wildlife-viewing trip starting near Klamath Falls, and “Land Before Time,” a two-day trip featuring “ancient tropical plants” and “prehistoric fossils of three-toed horses, camels and rhinoceroses” (who knew?). I was particularly drawn in by “Oregon Cuisine”: The descriptions of Oregon’s earthy offerings—“organic hazelnuts and squash, broccoli and herbs, apples and pears, beets and berries” and ocean delights—“fresh line-caught salmon and cod, pink shrimp and Dungeness crab”—make for mouth-watering, almost poetic reading. The “Roads & Weather” section links to an Oregon weather-cam map allowing one to view the current weather situation at many points all over the state, such as the snowy scene I saw on Siskiyou Summit on a recent Web cam peek.