MICHELIN GREEN GUIDE USA WEST
 .......Michelin is well known for producing quality guidebooks, and their USA West is no exception. The book covers many popular destinations, including the western U.S. national parks, and cities such as Denver, Dallas, San Francisco, Santa Fe, and many others. It even has information on Alaska, although 12 pages can’t begin to scratch the surface of such a vast landscape – even when just listing the highlights.
.......The book includes such must-see places as Glacier National Park, as well as smaller sights, such as the Will Rogers Memorial outside of Tulsa, Oklahoma.
.......Places are rated from zero to 3 stars, with 1 star being “interesting,” 2 stars “worth a detour,” and 3 stars “worth the trip.” We would generally agree with their recommendations, but certainly not all – after all, any rating system is just someone’s opinion.
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.......The book has quite a few excellent color pictures, as well as a limited number of maps. It includes a calendar of events, but the listings are not divided by region or state, but are all over the west. As with most Michelin Green Guides, the USA West book does not include dining or lodging recommendations, leaving those for the Michelin Red Guide series. Currently, there is not a Red Guide to the western U.S., which for us is not a drawback, as we generally don’t care for dining and lodging recommendations in guidebooks – they’re too often limited and out of date.
.......We do find the geographic arrangement of the USA West guidebook rather odd. The book covers regions such as “Santa Fe Area,” “Yellowstone Region,” “Dallas-Fort Worth Area,” and many others. But it then arranges the regions alphabetically, therefore taking the reader (for example) from Grand Canyon to Hawaii (2900 miles/4700 km west in the Pacific Ocean) to Houston (3900 miles/6200 km back east in the middle of the U.S.). Our other complaint is that sometimes special places which are nearby to each other are covered in separate chapters. For example, several places in the Colorado Plateau/Desert Southwest region which are in close proximity are covered in the Colorado Rockies (pg. 106), Canyonlands (pg. 92), Grand Canyon (pg. 167) and Santa Fe (pg. 342) chapters.
.......Still, the Michelin Green Guide USA West is a fine book, especially for general information about such a large and diverse region.
.......Michelin also publishes Green Guides to a few other U.S. regions, including USA East, New England, California, and others.
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