Potential Trips, Places To Go, Info to save
Stuff to do, places to go, information I didn't want to lose.

Trip Sources / Ideas

• Food

  • Ordinary guy Tucson restaurant review: http://ursa.as.arizona.edu/~rad/restaurants.html

• Hiking/Camping/Trip Sources

  • Arizona Sierra Club Outings

  • Arizona Hikers with BBS. 

  • Arizona Hiking Trails, listed alphabetical or by region.

  • Todd's Hiking Guide - AZ and Utah. Great list.

  • Tucson Hike list (can also expand out to other regions/states).

  • Tucson Hikers:  http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TucsonHikers or TucsonHikers@yahoo.com

  • Great Outdoor Rec Page.  GORP 

  • TheBackpacker.com  Pick a state for trail information.

  • Backpacker.com - Affiliated with the magazine.  Log in for more info.

  • Canyoneering links -- good rope & other technical information

    • Canyoneering USA main page and tech page.  Tech has pictures

    • American Canyoneering Assn.

• General Tucson area stuff to do.

  • Tucson Parks and Rec division with a list of places to see.  Zoos, botanical gardens, etc.

  • Tucson Visitors Guide web page, with a links to fun places.

• 4x4 / Offroad Links

  • 4x4Now home page:  Info on new trips, trip reports, books on 4wheeling, and 4WD route books

  • 4x4Now By-state trail reports.

  • Arizona Off-Road:  Excellent trail reports with GPS coordinates.

  • 4 Wheel Drive trips:  Arizona based trips to Mexico.

  • 4x4 Trails, Arizona:  http://4wheeldrive.about.com/od/arizonatrails/

  • 4x4 Trails, All southwest:  http://4wheeldrive.about.com/od/southwesttrails/

• Bicycling information

  • Arizona Bike Shops, by city: http://www.sportsfun.com/gaba/azlinks.html

  • Arizona Greater Biking Assn:  http://www.sportsfun.com/gaba/

  • Tucson:  Mountain Biking: http://www.cherba.com/atmb/index.html

  • Tucson:  Sonoran Desert Desert Bicycling Club.  Rides every week.

  • Tucson ride list: http://www.epicrides.com/events.htm

  • Tucson ride/races list: http://www.topofusion.com/diary

  • Tucson Mt Bike Clinics: http://www.soljourneys.com  520-795-0035 (also has other trips)

  • Specialized fluid  vs Slime:  Specialized works better, but dissolves patches. 

  • Mountain Biking in Dallas. Believe it or not the Dallas area has a number of very good mountain bike trails. Dorba has all the details. http://www.dorba.org/cgi-bin/trails/index.cgi   Erwin Park is a good ride. Arbor Hills was nice. Grapevine Northshore is very good. Rowlett Creek is good because there are a lot of small loops so you can pick your level of difficulty and distance. If you're willing to drive 1.5 hours the trail at Tyler State Park is excellent. It is by far the hilliest of the trails around Dallas. LB Houston is a good beginner level trail. It is basically flat but has a lot of twists and turns through the woods.For 'other' scenery, I rode the green belt that ran from Plano down to White Rock Lake. It's a nice ride on a paved trail, and runs along the river a few points as well. It's obviously flat, but once you hit White Rock Lake (a nice ride-around), the scenery was great with all the girls out riding/jogging/hanging out.   There's also some good riding up at Amarillo, or down at Austin/San Antonio. I'd also drive out to Big Bend, but that's a bit of a haul. Chicago to Dallas: 5 states, 967 miles. (About 16 hours, 45 min) Dallas to Big Bend: All in one state, 575 miles (about 12 hours)  The three main spots that would rent bikes are REI, Wheels in Motion, and Richardson Bike Mart; when shopping I was happy with all three. Google might have more.

     

• Maps and Info

  • Delorme Trail File Swap Forum

  • DeLorme mapping products.  They don't use Navtek data and thus their roads aren't the most up to date (although sometimes they beat them).  But they have GIS-type tools, so you can have multiple draw layers, hot links, embedded photos, send maps to friends, etc.  And that means they're great.

  • Offroad Guides GPS track files for Arizona, Colorado, and Utah

  • EasyGPS - Great program for managing your waypoints, routes, and tracks, especially on non-routing GPS's

  • ExpertGPS - Same as above with a one-time fee and it downloads topo maps and aerial imagery from free servers.

  • TopoFusion. Similar to Easy and ExpertGPS, but written by a bunch of guys who like to mountain bike.    Has a lot of great extra functions, like contrast/brightness control over the downloaded images, the ability to merge two images on top of each other and adjust opacity, and my favorite:  You can enter multiple GPS tracks and the the program will average them out into a single track.

Information I found worth saving

• Pack light or pack heavy?  You eat better packing heavy, but light tends to make you a happier hiker.

• Outdoor Law.  Interesting legal information on why things are.

• Ecology.  Return of wolves changes the entire ecosystem, down to plants and minnows.

• Forgotten heroes.  Climbers and Explorers you may not have heard of.

Outdoor Friends
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