100 Hikes/Travel Guide: Oregon Coast & Coast Range

Welcome to Oregon's Coast -- 363 miles of cliff-edged capes, public beaches, wild rivers, sand dunes, rainforest, and coastal mountains. Many of the top attractions are within easy reach of Highway 101, but others are accessible only by trail. To help you explore both the civilized and the wild parts of Oregon's spectacular shore, this book blends two kinds of guides -- a detailed Travel Guide for touring by car and a complete Trail Guide for planning adventures on foot.

The book is divided into 18 sections from Washington's Long Beach south to California's Redwood National Park. Each section begins with a Travel Guide that includes an overview map and a description of the area's car-accessible attractions. Both the map and the text are annotated with symbols identifying campgrounds, lighthouses, museums, and other popular destinations. Here too are tips for bicycling, birdwatching, kayaking, canoeing, and horseback riding.

The overview maps show major Highway 101 mileposts, so it's easy to use the Travel Guide as a highway logbook. As you drive from one area to the next, simply flip forward or backward through the book to the next Travel Guide map.

Following each Travel Guide section are descriptions of that area's hiking trails. To help you choose a hike, symbols in the upper right-hand corner of each hike's heading identify trail features. For example, 64 of the hikes have symbols recommending them as best trails for hikers with children, 36 hikes begin near campgrounds, and 44 pass through old-growth forest. Travelers with limited physical abilities need not miss the fun, because a list at the back of the book describes 42 paved, planked, or graveled trails accessible to everyone. Altogether, the guide covers every trail in Oregon's scenic coastal region.

William L. Sullivan is the author of six books and numerous articles about Oregon, including a regular outdoor column for Eugene Weekly. A fifth-generation Oregonian, Sullivan began hiking at the age of five and has been exploring new trails ever since. After receiving an English degree from Cornell University and studying at Germany's Heidelberg University, he earned an M.A. from the University of Oregon.

In 1985 Sullivan set out to investigate Oregon's wilderness on a 1,361-mile solo backpacking trek from the state's westernmost shore at Cape Blanco to Oregon's easternmost point in Hells Canyon. His journal of that two-month adventure, published as "Listening for Coyote," was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award in creative nonfiction . Since then he has authored a popular series of "100 Hikes" guidebooks to the regions of Oregon. Other titles in the series are "100 Hikes in Northwest Oregon," covering Mt. Hood, the Columbia Gorge, Mt. St. Helens, and the Portland area; "100 Hikes in Southern Oregon," including Crater Lake National Park, the Rogue River, the Siskiyous, the Trinity Alps, and Mt. Shasta; and "100 Hikes in the Central Oregon Cascades," covering the Three Sisters, Mt. Jefferson, Bend, and Eugene areas.

He and his wife Janell live in Eugene, but spend summers in a log cabin they built by hand on a roadless stretch of Oregon's Siletz River.