Yeah, definitely get ahold of that book and bring it and consult it every day. We called it "The Textbook".

Like everyone else says, ride north to south.

I never felt it was dangerous, and I am borderline clinically paranoid about these things.

The outer, more coastal option of the Washington route is very isolated, but it was well worth doing and seeing. What shocked me, as a city boy (originally from Chicago, but then living in Berkeley) was the massive amount of clear-cutting, especially in Washington, but it is pretty bad in Oregon too. They logged right up to the border of the Hoh Rain Forest of Olympic National Park. We rode through there just after the 1991 Gulf War, and there were loads of signs and yellow ribbons that said "We support the war and the timber industry." We went into a shop that sold T-shirts depicting an Earth First! hippie guy nailed to a tree with a spotted owl shoved up his arse. I kind of felt like they were looking at us like people in Alabama looked at civil rights activists coming through their town in 1965. I kept my mouth shut.

If you take the inland route, I think it is more conducive to the more typical cappuccino-sipping cafe-hopping that people tend to associate with bike tourism.