The Best in Tent Camping: Oregon: A Guide for Car Campers Who Hate RVs, Concrete Slabs, and Loud Portable Stereos (Best Tent Camping)

I have lived in Oregon for 4 years and love the camping and hiking Oregon has to offer. I looked to this book to introduce me to the best car camping in the area. I hoped to find a book that would help me weed through some of the bad experiences to make the most of my weekend adventures. So far, I have found this book disappointing.PROS:-Good coverage of the entire state: While for me personally this is a con, because I rarely camp more than 2 hours away from my home city... I think they do a good job of covering the entire state.-Nice "Key Information:" This section covers some main bullet points that we're all looking for: dogs? alcohol? reserve ahead? fees? main facilities? It's all right here in this easy to read section.-Clear Follow Up Info: This is one of the few books I've read that has extensive additional contact information for every site. It has web pages, phone numbers, and any other contact/follow up information available.CONS:-Seems like a hiking book: While the book has many great information bullet points, the bulk of the paragraph text written by the authors reads as if they wanted to write a hiking book but could only get funding for a camping book. I appreciate the focus on "things to do" within each park, but I'd rather focus on the actual sites and facilities.-Missing recommendations for camp site: They (thus far in my reading) do not recommend specific camp sites within the facility. With a book that is zoomed in on only 50 sites in the state, I was looking for specific recommendations. I would love to have seen something like: "try to get campsite #9 for the best view of the creek."-Ratings way off: From the sites that are reviewed in this book, I see large discrepancies within their ratings and my personal experiences. For example: Silver Falls State Park received a 3 out of 5 stars on Privacy, Spaciousness, and Quiet. I strongly disagree. This park is one of the most popular, crowded campsites I have ever been in. It remains to be seen how the rest of the recommendations will pan out.ODD:-Index: This index lists the page number of each review as the last page in the review. I found this odd. The review may start on page 88, but the index lists it on page 90 (the last page of the review). Strange.-Spelling/Grammar: I am no perfectionist by any means, but found it strange that a published book would not have used spell check. There are extra letters in words, and other small errors in spelling and grammar.

Solid guide with a nice mix of coastal and inland sites. We used the book to plan a week in Oregon and found the site reviews very accurate and helpful in steering us to great campgrounds we wouldn't have found left to our devices. When we were unable to reach one of these sites, we were dismayed by our lot as the alternate state campgrounds we found were overcrowded, RV filled, and exactly what we didn't come for. Highly recommend this book. Pyle offers usefuly ratings for various dimensions including best season to visit, level of campground bugginess, solitude, etc.

This series of books on smaller campgrounds is quite helpful. It gives alternatives from the larger and more overused hordes of RVer type of hectic environments. I have come to enjoy these type of places as a more serene experience in almost a secluded neck of the woods.

Good and comprehensive book for campers.

When I got the other guides it actually tell you which campsite is better that the other this one just describe how the campground looks like overall, sorry not so helpful, seems like the author just drove by the campground loop and wrote a very mediocre review.

For those of you who have a desire to vacation but need to lower expenses, you might find that camping is something to investigate, and this book is a great resource. It is based specifically for Oregon, but has great information that could apply to anywhere. As for the Oregon specific information, the book is invaluable. If you are new to the area or well-established, I think you can still find helpful information here. It is well organized and well written.

An injury kept me from backpacking this year so we did more car camping than ever. I was very worried that this would mean crowed campgrounds sleeping closer to strangers than I do in my dense urban neighborhood. Thanks to the recommendations and thorough reviews in this book we spent the summer camping in peace. We stayed at several of the recommended spots and each was exactly as the author described.

At the time of this review I had only visited one site so far listed in the book. I'm not sure when the author updated this book, but when we visited Three Creeks Campground near Sisters in late Sept 2007 (we purposely waited until after Labor Day/School was in session to hopefull avoid the crowds) it was full of exactly what she said it DIDN'T have. Not only was it jam-packed, but RVs and campers outweighed tents (I think there was two, and we were one of them). There were kids running around yelling and screaming and the RV/Campers were always firing up their generators for hours on end. These were the things we were trying to avoid.I'm not discounting this book yet and will try other sites. My other camping experiences over the summer have resulted in the same crowding, noise, etc. Perhaps the camping of old where you find peace and tranquility is no longer to be found.