Map a summer road trip's best friend.

Byline: Best of . . . The Register-Guard

It's almost summer and Team Best of ... has road-trip fever. Bad.

Tired of pretending we like slogging through the endless rains of winter, or sitting cooped up inside waiting for a break in the clouds, we want to get away.

This time of year, we don't care where; we want the wheels turning toward some place just over the horizon. When we go, we always take the best map of Oregon, a nifty little number produced right here in Eugene by cartographer David Imus.

Imus has married the best of road map specifics with the intricacies of topographical map detail to create a useful guide that does more than tell us how many miles it is between, say, Prineville and the John Day Fossil Beds monument (83), or whether we can expect two-lane blacktop or single-lane gravel.

On a recent outing, we threw the camping gear in the back of the truck and high-tailed it for Southeast Oregon's Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. And we packed the Imus map.

After a couple of days of bird watching, we wanted a closer look at Steens Mountain. The Imus map showed us the best views right away.

Its contour lines and careful shading suggested that the drama of peaks rising steeply above the desert to 9,700 feet was all on the east side of the range that runs north-south. The map also let us know that to enjoy the view, we'd have to endure 64 miles of gravel road. But the road was good and the stunning views of those rocky, snow-covered peaks blew away our winter doldrums.

Next, we turned our attention to Hart Mountain Antelope Refuge west of Malheur, where the Imus map indicated a campground with hot springs - a detail missing from the Oregon Department of Transportation map. The hot springs proved a boon when the weather turned from spring sunshine to blowing snow.

Imus didn't produce this work alone. He got help from premier outdoor author William Sullivan, who wrote as concise and useful a guide to Oregon's best places as we've ever seen for the flip side of the map. The locations Sullivan selects for special mention are also marked on the map, making them easy to find.

The map isn't perfect. Unlike the state highway state map, it doesn't mark all the roads that are closed or unmaintained in winter. Also, it's big and unwieldy, and after just two days in the car was tearing at the folds.

In fact, this is our second Imus map. We shredded the first one after a couple of years of road trips.

The good news is that Imus will have an updated version available sometime this fall. While it'll be slightly bigger than the current one, Imus promises it'll be indestructible.

We can hardly wait. When we don't have a clue where we're going, it's the map that tells us the most scenic way to get there.

The Best of ... archive knows what's down the road. Find it at www.registerguard.com/bestof.

BEST ROAD MAP

OF OREGON

Imus Geographics

Where sold: University of Oregon Bookstore, 895 E. 13th Ave.; Willamette Stationers, 510 Oak St.; Central Print, 47 W. Fifth Ave.; or online at imusgeographics.com

Cost: $7.95