Kesey to Callahan: Cruising the Columbia

A Drunken Literary Journey up the River. The Columbia River isn't some sanitized, photogenic tourist trap-it's a dark, complex, and conflicted artery cutting through the heart of the Pacific Northwest. If you're looking for a toxically positive cruise director in a polo shirt, you've got the wrong book. In Kesey to Callahan: Cruising the Columbia, we navigate the water the way it was meant to be experienced: from the Rainier Beer-slicked docks of Astoria to the sun-scorched basalt flows of the east.
This is a local's perspective on the weirdest of the weird, delivered one dive bar at a time. Forget the "Disneyfied" recommendations. We're hunting for the local scandals, the grease-trap diners, and the kind of punchlines only a local with a twisted sense of humor could love. Inside the chaos: The High-Proof Port Guide: A curated crawl of the best walkable dives and points of interest at every port of call.
Literary Porn: The finest independent bookstores to get lost in when the river fog rolls in too thick to sail. The Ghosts of the Gorge: Diving into the trauma of the damming of the river through the lens of Kesey's woods and Callahan's dark, ink-stained humor. The Unfiltered River: A journey through the improbable and the eerie-from UFO sightings to atomic bombs and chemical weapons depots. I love this river, and I'm taking you to all its most improbable spots.