A Little Ludwig Goes A Long Way

Been digging around a bit for more trail resources. Came across some useful sites. A lot of these are primarily bike trails over old rail and canal ROWs but still pretty interesting:

• The DNR summarizes trails across all state properties, including length and difficulty. Helpful because trail length does not correlate with park size at all. The list is organize by county, so here is a county map just in case you’ve forgotten the 88 counties and their county seats (which I had to memorize in 5th? grade)
• Buckeye Trail. A walking trail around the state, a lot of it on parkland, some on roads. Interesting and might be a fun way to see some stuff.
• North Country Trail. A trail through the state, connecting with neighboring states. Overlaps the Buckeye Trail but has some different elements.
• Miami Valley Trails Org. Nice interactive map of all the trails in southwestern Ohio.

OK Central Ohio doesn’t have a lot of huge national forests or national parks, and so at first I thought hiking opportunities were constrained.

But now I’ve stumbled across all these state nature preserves and some of them are pretty darned big — plenty of ~100 acre preserves, and some huge ones — Blackhand Gorge at 956 acres, Cedar Bog at 427 acres, Lawrence Woods at 1035 acres! I’ve yet to visit any of these but I will get out to at least one in the next week.

• Possibly the most ill-considered travel item ever — those TSA agents love a good joke. Ha ha ha, strip your clothes off sir.
• Vex robotic kit. Never had robot love, but if i did…
• Sticky tripod. No idea why but seems like I should have in my camera kit.
• I don’t know why I don’t have an eye-fi yet.
• Cooling bandanna. At less than $2 I should certainly get
• Dramm fogg-it hose nozzle. Doesn’t the name sound like a spoonerized curse phrase?
• Dynomighty wallet. If they had a buckeye one i’d be there
• Digital rachet wrench. Seems like a horrible idea.
• Traverse switchplates. Nice, I hate generic plastic switchplates.

Frustrating morning, up early and out to the trailhead but road chained off. Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest – Current Conditions is supposed to have current conditions, and you can also call the North Bend ranger station 425 888 1421. However they all claim the road is open but it was clearly chained off. Grrr. Try again next weekend.

Awesome find by Brett — Redtrails, Wish it showed current snow levels!

• Brett on Stuff » Distilleries of Scotland. A reason to hike Scotland
• WOW — stronger authentication than your bank. What does that say about the world.
• Running DC thru the house. An idea whose time has come again?
• Indie games DB. Often way better than mainstream games
• Guided Bullets. Why not.
• Thingiverse. Kind of an open source design site.
• Denhaus — awesome pet furniture
• Nitrogen-infused golf clubs. Golfers will buy anything.
• Dutch 5 Euro coin. Awesome, wish I could order. Not the first time I have been blocked from ordering a euro product, wish I could sign up for a forwarding PO box in Europe.
• Mini Magnetosphere. Maybe we all need one of these

Brett on Stuff » Chia Seed for Backpacking.  Brett is an amazing resource.  I have no idea if I will ever need this piece of information in my life, but now I know how to prepare and eat Chia seeds.

Heading up later this week and needed a reminder — A Little Ludwig Goes A Long Way » Blog Archive » Hiking on Lopez Island — the shark reef walk is still great and I want to hit Iceberg point again. This map provides some detail on finding the trails, but you really need the chamber handout. If I get one this week I will try to post a scanned copy of.

 first time I’ve ever seen an owl in nature. Apparently a juvenile barred owl. Very curious about us.

Toolmonger » Blog Archive » Power-Drill Tent Stakes — OK I love to use power tools but I tend not to carry them while camping, not even if I ever car-camped. I guess this is for people setting up tents at shows, etc.

• Coghlan’s – Product Display — mini lantern and clipon headlamp. I’d actually use the headlamp
• Easyroaster. Cool but I don’t really like hotdogs or smores.
• Yaktrax traction control. I rarely try to hike on snow.
• Mini Tissues. Just because I like the rehydration aspect.
• Lightweight drybags. Maybe I should just pay Brett to outfit me.
• Carbon fiber tripods. These claim to be lightweight but is this really the lightest possible?

Brett on Stuff » A Backpackers Dream — wow this site is really awesome, who needs to hike anymore? Top 10 survival tools over on wired — handy. Micro LED light — another ultralight goodie from brett

Brett on Stuff ? Little Annapurna Day hike — what a great review, I wish all trail reviews had this level of detail! Sounds like an awesome hike

• Welcome to NALGENE Outdoor! — all things nalgene
• Brett on water treatment
• Brett also on how to pack ultralight

And just in case I need motivation to get outdoors — daily exercise dramatically lowers men’s death rates

• The Gadgets Weblog: Wacom Bamboo Fun — I’ve always wanted a tablet.
• Painter’s Pyramid — actually seem highly useful
• 160Megapixel camera — on the road to gigapixel cameras
• Sandisk TakeTV. this keeps calling out to me as the way to get home movies down on the tv.
• 8 core macpro with decent graphics options
• Garmin forerunner 405

• Awesome Local Deals Content in Seattle & Atlanta at Starting Up by Rahul Pathak — Rahul talks about latest Judy’s Book release — the content is starting to vastly improve…
• Phil’s Blackberry app gets some good press coverage\
• The opportunity for Network Magic — home networks are just way too frickin’ complicated
• Marine forecasts for the San Juans — thanks Rich
• Rich also on how to read charts … I learned all this as a kid on Georgian Bay but a good refresher
• Brett finds the best guide to the west coast trail — good luck brett!

Protector Boats — not in the market but man these look awesome.

Weekend hike was Mt Catherine, just past Snoqualmie Pass. Cold and rainy, must have been 45 degrees at the base early Sunday morning. This guy had a much better weather day than me — Mt. Catherine, WA — pretty much all I saw was cloud.

• NITON XRF Analyzers for Toys & Consumer Goods — I saw this on a news program, testing toys for lead. totally cool. $1000 to rent for a week so probably ridiculously expensive.
• iStraw — well we just had a case of giardia in the extended family so this looks pretty good
• Urwerk Watch — another stupidly priced watch but awesome
• Electric bike. Absolutely no need for this.
• Two dimensional kid popup. This is a little disturbing for some reason.
• Pie slice ejector. I only need this about once a year, but when you need it, you need it.
• Hand made knives and tools. I’m not sure how functional, but they are cool
• Puke inducing flashlight. A thousand and one uses.
• Your Personal Moon.

• No-staple stapler is better for the environment (and looks cool) — I hate freaking staples. This looks useful and cheap
• B&W Zeppelin iPod speaker system. I would probably never actually buy this but it looks wicked.
• Powerkayak. Take a nice ecofriendly sport like kayaking, and jam some gas-consuming horsepower onto it! Wonderful!
• Tancher wrist beacon. I think this is just a concept but looks cool and is lifesaving
• Credit Card multitool. This would be super useful. TSA approved?
• Another HD hard disk videocam. Decent reviews.
• Digium asterisk appliance. Now if it would just use my cell service as the outbound line…
• A bunch of awesome watches all with a black theme.
• Emergency food supply
• Edge Brownie Pan. OK I actually got one of these. It works great — the fins really help with heat distribution.