Customer Reviews

Lonely Planet Southwest USA (Regional Travel Guide)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I am a major, lifelong supporter of Lonely Planet from the first core Asia books. I have till date not filed a review of a book online, but felt compelled to highlight some major deficiencies in this product and make a recommendation to look elsewhere for information on the American Southwest. Of late, I have begun branching away from Lonely Planet for more detailed information, but still rely on it for useful phone numbers, maps and other logistical information. For a three week camping trip in the Southwest with a few splurges along the way, I wanted to rely heavily on just such a book.

In the Southwest book, much of this information was not present (for example, 'Many campgrounds are available in local state parks' is one of the entries, but no phone numbers, maps nor details given. Not only were options for lodging half-heartedly described, often food options and maps were entirely missing or erroneously described.

The cities are a bit better described, but that isn't offering much of an excuse for an area and geography that is utterly unlike any on earth.

It is not surprising that this particular book is so short on useful information given its small size, but I found it egregious that LP would compromise so heavily on its core responsibility - providing useful, practical information that saves time and enhances the travel experience.

I highly recommend flipping through another guidebook in your local bookstore or experimenting with one of the other brands before relying on the Lonely Planet in this case. I plan to do so for the near future.

I recently made a road trip across the American Southwest and purchased both the Lonely Planet 4th Edition (December 2005) and the Rough Guide 4th Edition (October 2006) as my guides for the week-long adventure. Lonely Planet emerges as the clear winner when the two are compared side by side. It is less than half the thickness of the Rough Guide book, yet has more coverage per town or natural site. I commend Lonely Planet for using such a thin but readable font and thin, high-quality paper to make this guidebook have such a small footprint.

The Lonely Planet guide is divided into tabbed chapters by state (the guide covers Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Las Vegas, and Southwestern Colorado). Maps cover both regions and downtown areas of the major cities and towns in the Southwest. For each city, restaurants, hotels, attractions, and essentials like internet access, post offices, bookstores, and medical facilities are listed. The sidebars contain information from a historical or side note perspective--these are perfect for reading aloud during the inevitable driving time for any Southwest adventure.

If you are planning to spend a long time in the Grand Canyon or other attraction area, I recommend purchasing an additional supplemental guidebook. As a road warrior, I appreciated that this book has all the essentials, but leaves week-long trips to Las Vegas or the Grand Canyon to other guidebooks.

Lonely Planet has taken an interesting turn with this edition: drastically cut the content and quality and increase the price! Because I spend a lot of time in the southwest, I buy every new edition when it comes out. I'll be looking for something else now. What happened, Lonely Planet??

There don't seem to be many all-encompassing guides that address travel in the Southwestern US. However, I was excited to see that Lonely Planet was among them. After reading some of the reviews on this site, I was a bit apprehensive about purchasing it, but a combination of my high regard for Lonely Planet and the alternative of having to purchase several books convinced me to buy it. After spending the past month trying to use this book as a resource for planning a week long vacation in the Southwest, I have to agree with the critical reviews.

Perhaps the editor of this text had a trigger-happy finger with the delete key; whatever the reason may be, this text is missing a good bit. There are many generalizations and few applicable insights. I found myself having to rent other texts from the library, do a good bit of research online, and print maps of the bigger parks from their websites. The maps that are included are difficult to read and a good portion of notable features are missing. Many areas and parks don't have real maps though, including Mesa Verde. The attention given to state parks is even worse. Their treatment of Monument Valley was especially disappointing, as there is less than half page on it, no mention the park's lodge or area's restaurants and statement like, "There are tours" that leave much be further researched. I'm also wondering why the dinosaur tracks outside of Tuba City aren't mentioned; why the IMAX theater outside the Grand Canyon isn't noted; why there isn't any mention of famed attractions inside some of the parks (such as Double Arch in Arches and Angel Arch in Canyonlands); why multi-award winning Las Vegas restaurants such as Bouchon (whose founder was recognized by Time magazine as "Best Chef in America") aren't noted; and so on.

Obviously, there is a lot to cover, but I'd happily pay an extra $5 - 10 for a slightly thicker book that does the region more justice. If I could revisit my purchasing decision, I'd look at Moon's Four Corners guide a bit more (their guides have been just as good and even better than Lonely Planet's in my experience) and supplement it with a small Vegas guide.

It's considerably difficult to make sense of so much land in one book, so this guide ends up with brief entries and succinct recommendations. It's useful for suggestions on where to eat and sleep, and places to visit by car. If you want to do a more "adventure" trip, such as to the national parks, you might be better served by more specialized books out there for specific areas. Nonetheless this is handy to have in the car to help decision making on places to eat and stay, while informing what one might want to see. There is a Lonely Planet guide to the entire US. With so much to cover in limited space lots of good stuff inevitable gets left out, and what ends up covered (and in what level of detail) is largely a matter of personal preference.

This guide has tons of info for food, lodging, shopping, services, attractions, and activities. Margin "tabs" make it easy to thumb to a specific area. My only complaint is the greyscale maps are unreadable because of tiny fonts and low contrast.There is bleed thru from backside of pages also causing contrast problems and readability. Overall though, it is a good, packable guidebook.

Does not include Texas or California! Ok, maybe they left these states out because they are huge, but it would have been nice to know. Like, really, how is California not a part of Southwest? California is as West as you can get.

Really good to build and itinerary and pinpoint the most important stuff to do. Can work as the sole information source, but I would recommend to do additional research to find more details and advices about areas named in the book.

Every time I've used a Lonely Planet guide book I've always been entertained by the fun and educational writing, spot-on and occasionally quirky pictures, and accurate, up-to-date descriptions. This Southwest USA guide is no exception. I like to use this one to plan long-distance road trips - I can get an overall picture of not-to-miss highlights here; if I need more details, I can go to other sources of course. I think the best use of this book is to give the reader a great starting point for any southwest travels. I'm pretty sure Lonely Planet has several other guides to specific destinations - those guides have more details, say for example Las Vegas - one critic here says there's not enough about LV - they clearly haven't seen the great LV guides available from Lonely Planet - they're the places to look for insider's tips and extra details. This book is an excellent regional guide.

I feel this book has been very helpful in planning my forthcoming trip to the area. However, compared to other lonely planet volumes, I feel the details concerning points of interest, lodging and dining are a little skimpy.