Customer Reviews

Cody's Guide to Oregon's South Coast

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"Cody's Guide to Oregon's South Coast" is a CD-Rom that provides a series of 23 maps and over 1,100 color photographs of over one hundred miles of Oregon's South Coast from Bullards Beach State Park to the California state line. "Cody," in this case, is J. Cody Couch, a native of the area whose Internet marketing day job does not stop him from combining his love of hiking and photography in this guide to his native environs.

When you start up this CD-Rom, which you can use on a Windows PC without any installation, you start off by zooming in on one of the 13 areas defined by overlapping boxes on "The Big Picture." Doing this will take you to a corresponding map that provides more detail and there are some additional sub-maps where appropriate. The maps provided include: Bullards Beach State Park, Bandon State Park to Floras Lake State Park Map, Cape Blanco Area, Port Orford Town, Gold Beach Area, Otter Point State Recreation Site, Brookings-Harbor, and Harris Beach State Recreation Area. By purchasing "Cody's Guide" you get the right to print up the maps to use when you go check out these locations on your own.

Each of the detailed maps have blue arrow icons which mark photo locations: when you put your mouse on the icon (there are over 400 of them) it will tell you the photo caption and then you can click on the icon to see the color photograph taken at that spot. Many of the icons will take you to pages in the middle of a photo-series, which is how you get to the rest of the over 1,100 photographs. The photographs all have captions; just enough to provide key details without being overly informative.

Everything is really interconnected on this CD-Rom, so there are lots of ways of getting from one part to another. If you actually go to the Table of Contents, instead of plunging right in, you will find sections on How to Use Cody's Guide; Composite Photos; Flora & Fauna; Places to See; Printable Maps; Rocks, Islands & Reefs; Signs; and Web Links.

The inclusion of all the Signs is interesting (there is everything from "Fresh Sea Food" to "Messy Activities Prohibited"), but if you have ever tried to follow directions that involve looking for signs then actually getting to see the sign would be helpful. The one on Rocks, Islands & Reefs is key because as you look through the photographs of these various sites you will quickly see that these are the main attractions along Oregon's South Coast. I also like the photographs of the lighthouses. However, the section on Flora and Fauna is limited to what Cody happened to capture with his camera when he was out and about; the section is not intended as a real guide, but rather as an indication of what you might see on a trip. Besides, you would want to be lugging around a book not a lap top computer when you are out hiking around these areas.

As Cody explains on the back of the jewel case, you can use this guide either to plan your next trip to this area or you can simply enjoy a tour in the comfort of your own home. I was tempted to say that once you watch "Cody's Guide to Oregon's South Coast" there is no reason to go there, but that is not really the case. I am going out to the northern part of the state this summer and driving down the coast to see some of these sites in the south certainly is appealing to me, especially Coquille Point and the Brookings Area.

The format of this CD-Rom is both interesting and effective and I can see how it could be used for capturing all sorts of locations around the world. Of course, for all I know there could be similar projects like this devoted to anything from the Everglades to Westminster Abbey, but I have not seen anything like this before so I get to be impressed at this point. Where "Cody's Guide" would be different from similar CD-Roms is that it is clearly a labor of love that should provide a nice boost to tourism in this region.