Some of the links take you to a place to buy the item. It doesn’t cost you more, I get a few cents from the transaction.

Weather

I am always looking for weather reports. I use weather spark  for a nice look at averages. This helps me decide on the direction for seasonal travel. For the daily hint the best one so far is the National Weather Service. Then I go crazy and look at were the wind is fierce on the wind map from hint.fm. This is a data driven site that takes huge amounts of data and makes images. Way cool. (Surface wind data comes from the National Digital Forecast Database. These are near-term forecasts, revised once per hour.)

Entertainment

Many people watch movies. For some reason I don’t. But I listen to podcasts … on my morning and evening walks. My new favorite is Recode Decode (Recode’s Kara Swisher, Silicon Valley’s most revered journalist, hosts candid interviews with tech execs, politicians, celebrities and more about their big ideas and how they’re changing our world. Tune in every week for enlightening conversations with people like Tesla CEO Elon Musk, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and many more). I also listen to Call Your Girlfriend, 99% Invisible, To The Best Of Our Knowledge, The Moth, and TED Radio Hour. Of course I have a huge stack of books that go to bed with me at night.

Directions

I use paper maps. DeLorme and/or Benchmark. I am old. What can I say? I do use Google maps for directions in confusing towns, but love to dream with the paper maps.

For more detailed geologic info I go to a wonderful site that really illustrates and explains each state. Here I find out where the mountains are, where the county lines exist, and where the elevation changes.

I use freecampsites.net to find interesting places to camp that cost little or nothing. The National Forest, by law, has to have maps of each district within the forest. These maps (called MVU Maps) are a boon to campers because they show where you can camp for 14 days. For free! You can also get the maps digitally through Avenza. Sometime it costs, sometimes free, depending on the map.

Work

You can volunteer with the Forest Service here. Other federal volunteer positions are here. I worked for Rocky Mountain Recreation Company, was paid, and had a great couple of years.