The Best Coast: A Road Trip Atlas: Illustrated Adventures along the West Coast's Historic Highways

by Chandler O'Leary

Go on the ultimate West Coast road trip this summer with The Best Coast—a full-color illustrated travel guide to all the must-visit roadside attractions, beloved landmarks, hidden histories, and offbeat delights on Washington, Oregon, and California’s historic highways, include the Pacific Coast Highway!  


From San Diego, California, all the way up to the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State, you'll find unusual facts, hidden history, epic Americana, and off-the-beaten-path adventures up and down the coast. 


This Road Trip Atlas Includes:  

Route Maps - the coastal route via historic Highways 101 and 1 (the PCH) and an inland route up Highway 99
City Guides - San Diego, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Sacramento, Portland, and Seattle
30+ Itineraries and Side Trips - Catalina Island, Joshua Tree National Park, Sequoia and Yosemite National Parks, wine country, Crater Lake National Park, the Columbia River Gorge, Mount Rainier National Park, the San Juan Islands, and Vancouver, BC.
Travel Tips - safety, rules of the road, wise planning, and packing lists (for the traveler and for the car)
Wildlife Checklists
Index of places, parks and attractions
Resources - navigational aids, travel information, passes and permits, books, websites and films 

Hit the road with this one-of-a-kind road trip travel guide through California, Oregon, and Washington that tells the story of the diversity and depth that created the West Coast we know and love today!

Genres: Travel, Nonfiction, Art

224 pages, Paperback

Published April 9, 2019

About the author

Chandler O'Leary is an illustrator and lettering artist based in Tacoma, Washington. A graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, she is the proprietor of a small stationery imprint called Anagram Press. She is also the author and artist behind the illustrated travel blog, Drawn the Road Again. Her illustrated road trip guide, The Best Coast: A Road Trip Atlas, was published by Sasquatch Books in 2019, followed by a companion book of postcards in 2020. Her next illustrated travel book, On Island Time: A Traveler's Atlas, will be published by Sasquatch Books in March 2023.

She collaborates with Jessica Spring on the ongoing Dead Feminists broadside series, which connects quotes from historical women with contemporary political and social issues. Chandler and Jessica's book about their series, Dead Feminists: Historical Heroines in Living Color was by Sasquatch Books in October 2016.

Reviews

[Debi · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is not a typical tourism guidebook. It’s a beautiful collection of paintings paired with succinct paragraphs depicting gems of all sorts along the coast. I am so glad I purchased this indulgence in addition to the more ordinary guides. It’s both calming and energizing to page through.

[Kate Belt · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is memorable. I love the charming illustrations.

[Marsha · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful love letter to the West Coast. Highly recommended.

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another fun travel/art book from Chandler O’Leary, this time focusing on the delights of the West Coast’s historic highways: Highways 1, 101 and 99. O’Leary also points out side trips that are worth getting off the beaten path for. As in her other book, On Island Time: A Traveler's Atlas: Illustrated Adventures on and Around the Islands of Washington and British Columbia, this one is chock full of hand-drawn maps and illustrations of many delightful roadside attractions. If you are planning a West Coast trip, this book is a fantastic guide.

[Carly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved the illustrations!

[elizabeth sawyer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Absolutely beautiful illustration - what a fun book for this author to weave together travel + art. The West Coast is covered in surprising detail to give you a sense of each zone, route and potential stops. But it is not a fully mapped out precise atlas and travel guide. It is a wonderful book to be inspired and ponder where and how to map your road trip but then you’ll need to use additional resources to fully plan. Would be a nice addition to a travel book collection or someone new to West Coast especially.

[Dray · Rating 4 out of 5]

Being a road trip enthusiast, I found tis book refreshing after many more dense compendiums by Lonely Planet, Moon or Fodors. This book covers a lot of ground in bite size chunks with highlights only. If you want deep detail this is not your book. But...if you want an easy to read, well illustrated book chock full of can't miss destinations on the west coast, this is a great book.

[Katra · Rating 4 out of 5]

I need a road trip so badly and this book needs to come with me. The amount of information here will fuel many, many excursions and O'Leary's accompanying watercolors might inspire me to do more than look!

[Joyce · Rating 5 out of 5]

LOVE LOVE LOVE Chandler's illustrations! I appreciate the author's brief and humorous descriptions of many interesting places. I've saved so many places to visit on my map. Last but not least, the no-glare print and paper plus water-colored drawings were treats to my post-Lasik eyes.

[Krista · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully illustrated with watercolors, this guidebook sparks adventures through Washington, Oregon, and California, both along the coast and inland. It will definitely come in handy during my next road trip!

[Brenna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beauuuutiful illustrations + detailed, genuinely useful travel tips. This will be my sole resource for our upcoming pacific coast roadtrip 🌞

[Leila Kern · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a fun and charming book! Plenty of ideas for road trips when the world opens up again! For now, I had a wonderful armchair road trip. Beautiful illustrations.

[Jenny · Rating 4 out of 5]

A nice book to get a person thinking about traveling again.

[Arlette]

Skimmed for travel planning purposes. Not adding to the annual reading count.

[Mariah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful and very useful

[JulieK · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful illustrations, well-chosen highlights, interesting factual nuggets.

[Catherine · Rating 5 out of 5]

The art is lovely!

[Donna Luu · Rating 3 out of 5]

The art/illustrations are pleasing, but no amount of cajoling will interest me in the inland coast route on Old highway 99. This book did give me some news ideas for the coastal route.

[Renee · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book. I bought it as a gift and ended up reading the whole thing first. The writing is witty and highlights places that made me excited because they’re hidden gems I know and love, or places I haven’t been and want to. The illustrations are incredible and add so much nostalgia and make me want to travel to all the places - and help me have a bit of travel feeling even from home.