Getting Here and Around

Most visitors arriving by plane fly into Portland, home of the state's largest airport. There are smaller regional airports in Bend, Coos Bay, Eugene, Medford, and Pendleton. A smaller number of visitors arrive by Amtrak, which has major service connecting Portland, Salem, Eugene, and Klamath Falls with San Francisco, Seattle, and Spokane.

Major interstate highways connect Oregon with neighboring Washington, Idaho, and Northern California, making it easy to include the state as part of a regional Pacific Northwest road trip to Seattle, Vancouver, and environs. Interstate 5 is Oregon's major north–south freeway, and Interstate 84 cuts east–west across the northern part of the state from Portland through the Columbia Gorge and then southeast toward Boise, Idaho. Other major roads through the state, all of them offering plenty of beautiful scenery, include U.S. 101 up and down the coast, U.S. 97 north–south along the eastern edge of the Cascade Range, and U.S. 20 and U.S. 26, both of which run east–west from the coast through the Willamette Valley, over the Cascades, and across the state's vast eastern interior.

The only destination within Oregon that's genuinely easy to visit without a car is Portland, which is served by a superb public transportation system that includes buses, streetcars, and light rail.