When I finally escaped Toronto almost 10 years ago, it was early September and the city was less hot, less humid, and more exuberantly natural than usual. Heading southwest, picking up the Lewis & Clark Trail through the middle of the continent, I stumbled into a magic trick: though the weeks passed, and the east fell into fall, it got neither colder nor drearier. By October, I was in Oregon and the ocean twinkled, still coolish but swimmable, along miles of people-free sand.

In the last 10 years, the Pacific Northwest has become a legendary travel destination. Like all legends, it is a mixture of fact and fancy. Many of the guidebooks to the region (which includes Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia) promise to make travellers’ dreams come true by revealing that little bit of paradise only the locals know about.

There is a sense of urgency in many of these books. As Hidden Pacific Northwest laments: “It’s getting harder and harder to find those special hidden spots – go soon before ‘hidden’ no longer applies.”

Hidden Pacific Northwest is a good example of the guides to this area, with its dual emphasis on urban luxury and outdoor recreation. The hallmark of the Pacific Northwest, this juxtaposition of adventure and sensuality attracts visitors but presents a challenge in focus that not all guidebooks meet. Hidden Pacific Northwest succeeds quite well, recommending drives, hikes and ambles through far-flung corners of the area, as well as theatres, restaurants, and parks for urban stopovers. Most commendably, it suggests that readers patronize visitor centres and information booths, rather than commercial tour operators, to find their information. The book emphasizes alternatives to car travel, and pays heed to gay and lesbian, senior, and disabled travellers, important tourist subgroups traditionally ignored. Its hand-drawn maps are useful for context; though no substitute for a Rand McNally, they are welcome relief in a book that otherwise assaults readers with a desktop-published sameness in its design.

Sasquatch Books addresses the city/wilderness split by publishing two separate guides. Like Hidden Pacific Northwest, Inside Out Northern Rockies is for travellers, not tourists; it favours blending into the surroundings in order to walk a mile in the locals’ shoes. The Inside Out series, though it does steer its readers through the towns and cities of the area, specializes instead in those outdoor activities that attract most visitors in the first place. As Inside Out Northern Rockies advises: “the best places in the region are the ones that denizens favour: establishments of good value, often independently owned, touched with local history, run by lively individuals, and graced with natural beauty.”

Inside Out Northern Rockies – for “active travellers” – focuses its discussion of each town, park, or valley on appropriate recreational pursuits. Edmonton, for instance, is not so much a provincial capital as it is a springboard to hiking, cycling, fishing, canoeing, golfing, swimming, cross-country skiing, wildflowers, and wildlife. It makes Calgary, the city of my youth, appear completely new to my jaded eyes: out with the concrete canyons and seeping suburbs, in with a weekenders’ cosmopolis brimming with delightfully unfamiliar walks, kayaking, and cycling. This is inspired travel guide writing: making all of us – visitors and locals – see our surroundings in a new light. It takes us out of ourselves and allows us to visit a new perspective.

Northwest Best Places (also from Sasquatch) has been the gastrocultural bible to the area for the last 20 years. It is thorough and accurate, the New York Times of guidebooks, but less than adventurous in its recommendations. It is staid, incorruptible, high-brow. With its hand-drawn maps to each city and region, it is, of all the titles here mentioned, the most urban. In most entries, the things-to-do sections suggest at most an afternoon of shopping, walking in a local park or conservatory, or, daringly, taking a very wee hike. Its main flaw is its age; the 11th edition was written in 1995 and the next edition won’t appear until November. I spotted a number of outdated recommendations, as is typical between printings.

Northwest Best Places helped bring gourmets to the region; Best Places to Kiss in the Northwest strives to attract lovers. It divides each area into sections on indoor and outdoor kissing, with a puckered lips rating (none to four) on each listing. Its prose style is romantic (“let your taste buds begin a love affair with the prosciutto, strawberry, and arugula salad”), but its definition of where travellers find romance – be it city streets or mountain passes – is limited. In the section on Vancouver, for example, it makes no mention of the city’s extensive beaches. Have its writers never seen South Pacific? Its theme sets this book apart from other guidebooks and if your definition of romance includes charming decor, down duvets, and good bathroom facilities – preferably ensuite – this book will cater to your romantic agenda.

Wilderness Canada, though its subject is outside the Pacific Northwest, deserves mention here because in less than 100 pages it whets its reader’s appetite, it seduces, it whispers, “why not check it out yourself, be where these people have been?” A coffee table photo guide to the Northwest Territories, it features lots of pictures of snow, fish, and bears, but also lesser-known wonders of the territory’s towns and countryside, like the islands of the Mackenzie River Delta and the fall colours of the tundra. With more narrative, didactic prose, and paragraph-style listings of accommodations and how-to-get-there information, it disproves the tradition that guidebooks are meant to be flipped through, not read. This is a treat from beginning (including a strangely misapplied epigraph to the beaver) to end.

Most disappointing is Quick Escapes in the Pacific Northwest. Also meant to be read in chapter-length adventures, its design and layout discourage and its writing style grates. Significantly, the superficial nature of the “escapes” offers either three days signed on with a tour company (meaning no choice in where to eat or sleep, or what to do), or two days in a city hitting the malls. Its ham-fisted recommendations seem so forced that after reading “stop at Whidbey’s Greenbank Farm…then taste and purchase the farm’s velvety loganberry liqueur,” I went back to the beginning of the book to find some disclaimer reassuring me that the author had no connection to any merchants mentioned in the book. I was not reassured. On the plus side, it is the only book apart from Wilderness Canada to use photographs, and these tend to speak more eloquently than its I’d-rather-be-shopping author. If your goal is to become so much like the locals that you wish you were on holidays, this book is for you.

When I set out to cross the continent, I had an out-of-date copy of Let’s Go U.S.A., lots of time, and boundless curiosity. The last will still get you from here to there and back, but the past decade has admittedly seen many of the hidden delights I stumbled upon shrivel in the harsh light of commerce. Perhaps guidebooks should not be expected to please all the people all the time. Be honest with yourself: if you’re heading out this way and you’re on a deadline, what are your real interests? Know yourself, and the right guidebook will follow.