Pacific Northwest Travel Video Guide

Pacific Northwest Travel Itinerary

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The Pacific Northwest states of WASHINGTON and OREGON , while similar in climate, topography and generally liberal politics, are quite different in their attitude toward expansion and progress. Since the 1990s, Washington has been home to high-tech businesses, sprawling growth, bustling military bases and notorious freeway gridlock, while Oregon remains lower-scaled in both design and temperament, thanks in no small measure to its stringent land-use laws and "urban-growth boundaries" surrounding its larger cities.

Significantly cooler than California to the south, both are split by the great north-south spine of the Cascade Mountains , with their western sides more appealing by far. Throughout these hilly western regions, the ocean rains have created a verdant landscape, thick with woodlands that on the Olympic Peninsula become localized rainforests. This fertile land is where the population is most heavily concentrated, although the principal cities are not along the exposed coast itself, which remains - in Oregon at least - remarkably pristine, scattered with remote, rugged beaches. Both Seattle and Portland lie roughly fifty miles from the Pacific Ocean along the I-5 Interstate, running from Canada to California. Seattle, the commercial and cultural capital of the Northwest, is a major national port perched on the edge of the beautiful, island-strewn Puget Sound , with a busy network of local and long-distance ferries among the container traffic. Portland lies adjacent to the rich farmlands of the Willamette Valley, long the historic heartland of Oregon.

Across the Cascades, the east is far drier and less hospitable, peppered with desert and scrubland, much of which is prone to drought and periodic wildfires, which have become

increasingly common in recent years. Of the towns, only Spokane is of any appreciable size, though the booming resort town of Bend is a far more appealing destination, as its Cascade-straddling location makes it a useful base for sampling the mountains, desert and, especially the beautiful Columbia River Gorge . Of outstanding interest also is the scarred territory between Seattle and Portland around Mount St Helens , which erupted with devastating effect in 1980.

Your Tips For Pacific Northwest

• Mid-Atlantic USA Travel Videos
  USA Travel Itinerary
  The three Mid-Atlantic states - NEW YORK, PENNSYLVANIA and NEW JERSEY - stand at the heart of the most populated and industrialized corner of the US. - USA
  

• Texas USA Travel Videos
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  Still cherishing the memory that it was from 1836 to 1845 an independent nation in its own right, TEXAS stands apart from the rest of the United States. - USA
  

• Great Lakes USA Travel Videos
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  Swept by tumultuous storms and traversed by fleets of oceangoing tankers, the interconnected Great Lakes form the largest body of fresh water in the world; Lake Superior alone is more than three hundred miles from east to west. - USA
  

• California USA Travel Videos
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  Publicized and idealized all over the world, CALIFORNIA really does live up to the myth. - USA
  

• Southwest USA Travel Videos
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  The four sparsely populated Southwestern desert states of NEW MEXICO, ARIZONA, UTAH and NEVADA are extraordinary, unforgettable and unique. - USA
  

• Florida USA Travel Videos
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  Brochure images of tanning flesh and Mickey Mouse give an inaccurate and incomplete picture of FLORIDA . - USA
  

• Alaska USA Travel Videos
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  No other region in North America possesses the mythical aura of ALASKA ; even the name - a derivation of Alayeska , an Athabascan word meaning "great land of the west" - fires the imagination. - USA
  

• Pacific Northwest USA Travel Videos
  USA Travel Itinerary
  The Pacific Northwest states of WASHINGTON and OREGON , while similar in climate, topography and generally liberal politics, are quite different in their attitude toward expansion and progress. - USA
  

• Capital Region USA Travel Videos
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  The city of WASHINGTON DC and the four states of VIRGINIA, WEST VIRGINIA, MARYLAND and DELAWARE constitute a cross-section of the nation. - USA
  

• Great Plains USA Travel Videos
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  THE GREAT PLAINS , stretching west of the Mississippi through OKLAHOMA, MISSOURI, KANSAS, IOWA, NEBRASKA and SOUTH and NORTH DAKOTA , are lumped together in the popular imagination as an unappealing expanse of unvarying flatness and conservative "Middle American" values, a huge national joke to be passed through as fast as possible. - USA
  

• New England USA Travel Videos
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  The six New England states of MASSACHUSETTS, RHODE ISLAND, CONNECTICUT, NEW HAMPSHIRE, VERMONT and MAINE like to view themselves as the repository of all that is intrinsically American. - USA
  

• Louisiana USA Travel Videos
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  Swathed in the romance of pirates, voodoo and Mardi Gras, LOUISIANA is undeniably special. - USA
  

• South USA Travel Videos
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  As Mark Twain put it in 1882, "In the South, the [Civil] war is what AD is elsewhere; they date everything from it. - USA
  

• Rockies USA Travel Videos
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  Exploring the Rocky Mountain states of COLORADO, WYOMING, MONTANA and IDAHO could literally take forever. - USA
  

• Hawaii USA Travel Videos
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  The islands of HAWAII , with their volcanoes , palm-fringed beaches , verdant valleys , glorious rainbows and awesome cliffs , hold some of the most spectacularly beautiful scenery on earth. - USA