Help Pick the Best from the Northwest

Some good news from our colleagues at the Center for Sustainable Destinations came out this week – they’ve announced a partnership with organizations in Oregon and Washington to create a geotourism project for the Central Cascades region in the Northwest. If you’re not familiar with our geotourism projects, here’s a quick recap: The CSD works with local partners and the public to identify authentic, sustainable aspects of a region – be it culture, food, shopping, activities, events, or landmarks. Right now, you can log onto the project’s website www.thecentralcascades.com, and nominate places that you think best represent the region’s character. CSD will then put them all together to create a geotourism mapguide, which are amazingly accurate and helpful maps. (I’ve used them before and found that I hardly need a guidebook.)

The “Central Cascades” area designated for the map stretches from Mount Rainier National Park to Crater Lake National Park, including communities plus private and public lands in both states. The printed Central Cascades MapGuide will be available in September 2009. A parallel interactive Web site is also being developed, so check out the site now and help others find the best places to visit.

And if you’re interested in contributing to other mapguides, Montreal is still taking suggestions through today. CSD also has a complete list of available maps for Guatemala, Rhode Island, Arizona, Vermont, Romania, Norway, Yellowstone, Montana, Appalachia, Peru, Honduras, and Baja, Mexico, many of which are free and available as PDFs online.

Photo: via the Central Cascades site