Utah Wins Best State Website

Hey… I've got some news for you. As part of running a blog for the past five years, I've had to become fairly acquainted with the issues and techniques of web development. And, as such, find myself frequenting the blogs of "opinion leaders" in the area of web design and development.

One site that I visit fairly regularly is: Design Shack run by Josh Johnson, Joel Bankhead and David Appleyard. In addition to writing articles about how to blog effectively, they occasionally scour the web themselves and give ratings and rankings to sites they find in some particular category – and they are very well thought of.

One of their recent articles was a ranking of the websites run by each of the 50 U.S. states. Now these sites are government web sites, published by the state as their "official" presence on the web – not only to represent the state but to be the "gateway" for it's citizens to contact and obtain services from the state. Just take a guess which state won the very top honor.

Press to Read The Rest ...

Colorado Backroads: Offroad Trails Map Update

Actually, some time ago I spent what seemed like a year one month completely going through the Colorado Master Map and updating it to include the trails in the book "Colorado Backroads & 4-Wheel Drive Trails" by Charles A. Wells and published by FunTrecks.

The book contains descriptions for trails through colorado's most scenic areas so I was excited to see how they traversed the actual globe. I quickly began experiencing difficulties almost around every corner. Wells sometime used, lets say, "alternate" road and area names – at least different than I could find in any of the databases.

I could see that the book had only sparse GPS coordinates but most of the time with even just a few you can follow Google Earth satellite images along the trails – not to be. Colorado is covered in snow much of the year and a canopy of green the rest of the time so trying to follow trails from the outer atmosphere is maddening.

So, even though it was updated months ago, and I decided to go ahead and publish what I could to the server; I, none-the-less realized people would need some explanation about the different format these trails required and planned a blog post. Which post, I'm sad to say, got delayed… until now.

Press to Read The Rest ...

Gold Mines of Gold Butte

I have a friend who loves historic Gold Mines… well, all mines actually!   He's never heard about a mine that he didn't want to go visit. To look at them, to walk around them, to explore them and photograph them. He loves to drive his side-by-side up any old mine road to as close as he can get… even if it's straight up.   He's been to so many mines, and has so many mine photographs, we kid him that he must be writing a coffee-table book about them.

And he has chosen a pretty good place to snowbird because hundreds of the things are within a day-trip of his winter-time home. There are more than 40 claims on Gold Butte alone which have historically taken gold in some amount. None, unfortunately, are still in operation; and, as we have previously shown, the BLM is taking great pains to eradicate them from the face of the earth.

Today's map is a neat "network link" that I found at a website (MineCache.com) which will display all the mining claims in a Google Earth viewport which have been known to contain at least some gold.   [A free Google Earth file of this route is available at: Gold Mines of Gold Butte.]

Press to Read The Rest ...

GEO-tography: Mountains

Black, white, red, blue, brown, rocky, smokey or superstitious – the one thing they all have in common is: they're mountains!

Continuing our series of posts about GEOtography, today we have a collection of photographs that we found on the web about mountains of all sizes, shapes and colors.

Despite their ubiquity around the globe, these photos pretty much tell the tale that: mountains are usually, really off-road.
[Remember, like always, these are full photographs so be patient while they load.]

Press to Read The Rest ...

USGS Map Waypoints: Colorado

Well, what was started over 5 months ago is finally done: the Colorado USGS Features file.   I had a request from a reader to do the same thing for Colorado that I did for Utah, Nevada, Montana and elsewhere and did start it but just too many things got in the way.   [For a free Google Earth file of this route see: Colorado USGS Features (2.6 mb)]

All that's over now and it's finally completed… all 64 counties of 'em! It does go a bit faster now that I'm used to the grind; but, it's still a fair amount of tedium which is why it probably gets relegated to the back burner so easily.

It has turned out that these USGS Features files are quite a bit more useful than I had anticipated which is why I've had so many requests for them. You may have noticed that Google Earth has changed perceptibly over the past couple of so-called "updates."

Press to Read The Rest ...

USGS Map Waypoints: Montana

I bet no one saw this coming: I completed the file with all the USGS Waypoints for Montana. Neither did I.

Why did I do Montana before Arizona or Colorado, Offroading Homes usual group of states with offroad maps? One reason – I haven't heard anything from readers in either of those states for a long time and I had a brand new trail submission from Montana.

Besides, lest we all forget, this is the state with Yellowstone! They even have a county named: Lewis and Clark!

So 54 hand-coded, mind-numbing counties and 65,249 waypoints later – "we've got mappage!"   [For a free Google Earth file of this route see: Montana USGS Features]

Press to Read The Rest ...

Offroaders Awake - Endure (Embrace) The Politics

The single most destructive thing a responsible offroader can do is to sit back and do nothing!!!

Seniors are especially vulnerable to the militancy and deceitfulness of the environmental groups who seem (this election year) to have governmental "backdoor passes" due to the likes of Obama, Harry Reid of Nevada and Susan Holecheck of Mesquite.

Those of us who feel like we've "paid our dues," and now are entitled to let the "kids" do all the heavy lifting while we go out and do all the unfinished exploring of our world that we deferred until the kids were raised – we've got a rude awakening!

Press to Read The Rest ...

GEO-tography: The West

While researching for ATV-SUV map posts, I often run across landscape photographs which are so striking that they cause me to stop and look. I often don't have a place for them in an article but save them away to pull out and look at while trying to think of a next place to ride.

Once in awhile, not often enough, the photographer will have either geocoded or described the location of the image and I can look it up in Google Earth. That makes it even more enjoyable.

On the scale of what we normally enjoy to look at in photographs, items roughly rank: people we know and where we live right before where we've been and what we like to do.

In the manner of my previous "lichen" post I thought I'd dust off a few of my favorite "where we live, where we've been and what we like to do" images and see what you think. All are in the western U.S. and if you click on the author link you can see the full entry on the authors web site.

Press to Read The Rest ...

Lichen Unto Us - Gold Butte Full Of It

How many of us ever stop to look at Lichen? I do, but I have to confess it's pretty much just in passing - even on Gold Butte.

We mostly think of the tiny, colorful stuff in relation to wet, damp, cool places; but, I'm here to tell you it's all over the desert as well. Naturally, I don't have to convince riders in Utah, Colorado, California, Wyoming or Arizona that their rides are full of rocks with lichen attached.  But, Nevada… well… that's an equine of a different wavelength.

For them I present — DATA! Look at the photo of Ladybug Rock in Cottonwood Wash to the right. Ignore the ladybug if you can and look at the rock. I can see at least three kinds of lichen. Can you?

Press to Read The Rest ...

"Megalithic Portal" Website

Recently I was told about a webpage entitled: "Megalithic Portal Meets Google Earth" so for grins I took a look to see if by chance they had something in the area.

It turns out they actually did — at least a few. Additionally, it seems the site is based in England and was set up (at least probably initially) by persons selling information about Stonehendge, hence the grandiose name.  [For a free Google Earth file of this route see: Megalithic Portal Sites]

I guess people had difficulty distinquishing between "lith" (meaning 'stone') and "glyph" (writing) because eventually their database began including "ancient" sites of all types and from all over the world.

I have extracted from their database, those sites which are found in the western US and put them into the Google Earth file linked above.

From perusing the sites they list in the area's I know well, it seems like their database is quite limited, and I cannot acertain its accuracy. However, as there are a couple near snowbird headquarters which I have not heard of, I thought you would like to see them too.

You should take a quick peek at the file, if for no other reason than to just see how many "ancient" sites people have submitted from around the world.

Not Gonna' Happen This Year

The one thing that I look most forward to all year has blown up in my face… the annual ride up to Kennecott overlook with my bud Jeff and his kids.

That's what you get, I guess, when you put it off till the fall like we did. The weather turns cold and the kids don't seem to want to go out in it. We've done the ride ever since Herriman became summer snowbird headquarters.

Press to Read The Rest ...

New Trails: Colorado North Central Region

Under the gun to see that the person who loaned me the book got it back in time — I continued the all-night vigil and hand entered more than 20 new trails in the Colorado North Central Region. All of the trail description's have also been improved and/or re-done.   [For a free Google Earth file of this route see: Colorado Trails]

Take a quick look on over to the website and see my handiwork! With the Southwestern Region done last week and the Front Range Region done last month, almost the entire Colorado map has been upgraded!

Now is probably a good time to explain how/why Offroading Home maps integrate with the written maps in the book: Colorado Trails North Central Region by Peter Massey et. al..

Press to Read The Rest ...

New Trails: Southwest Colorado

Somewhat like getting hit in the head with a rock, I just got a new book and found that it contained 25 more trails than what it had supplied on disk. That meant a lot of "hand drawing" of track lines and entering of waypoints if I wanted to add it to the master file — which I obviously did. [For a free Google Earth file of this route see: Colorado Trails]

Take a look on over at the web site and navigate to Colorado Trails Southwest Region, and see over 25 new trails and 23 other updated desctiptions, directions and locations.

Press to Read The Rest ...

Map Update: Colorado - Front Range Region

A new book "Colorado Trails Front Range Region: Backroads & 4-Wheel Drive Trails"
has been published by Peter and Angela over at Adler Publishing (who have apparently moved from California to Colorado).

Therefore I felt it was time to "upgrade" the Colorado Offroading Maps a bit. I have added all the book's "Trailheads" to the map and will be adding tracks as I can obtain them. Additionally, I have had a couple of trail submissions in the area so there was even more data to add. [For a free Google Earth file of this route see: Colorado Offroad Trails]

Press to Read The Rest ...

St. George ATV "Rendezvous"

I accompanied Charley up to the ATV gathering in St. George this weekend. Hundreds of ATVers from all over several states gathered to commiserate and ride the many red-rock trails around here.

Of course it didn't hurt that there was no snow and shirt-sleeve weather.

We arrived late in the day really just to see the vendors and to "network" a bit with the riders. Unfortunately, when we arrived it was basically deserted. Everyone had finished riding for the day and was out getting cleaned up for an awards ceremony and dinner.

We spoke with the vendors and gathered all the maps we could (which wasn't many). If you frequent these types of things you may already understand how vendors work. I sort of expected people who were really interested in expanding the sport and providing "value added" to those who attend.

Unfortunately, what I experienced were salespeople who were salivating over a captive market. Eight dollars for a 25 cent chin-strap buckle - get real! I actually didn't see any of the local vendors there that I knew, and did catch one vendor who persisted in lies (which exaggerated the value of his product).

Always do right... this will gratify some and astonish the rest.”
Mark Twain

A BLM lady was there with color brochures and pushing the use of flags ... no mention about all the trails which have been closed, or why. Her handouts seemed quite a bit heavy on all the things we COULDN'T do and almost nothing on what we could do.

I was able to disseminate the blog address to a few people before we headed to St. George for dinner at Cracker Barrel - moderately priced, substantial food... clumsy waiters who dropped and broke a whole rack of plates and glasses.

Note to organizers: Think "value added" - trail map handouts and not letting anyone exhibit unless they bring at least one really good deal with them!