Recommended
Outdoor recreation sites worth reading
The official outdoor recreation sources we check ourselves, kept short on purpose. A person picks every entry and writes it up.
Official sources
Agencies, regulators and the organizations that publish the rules and the data. We use these ourselves. None of them asked to be listed and none of them link back to us.
Forest Service Know Before You Go
fs.usda.gov
Permits, fire restrictions, seasonal closures and what a given national forest expects of visitors. Fire restrictions in particular change week to week through the summer, and the fines for missing one are real.
National Park Service Trip Planning
nps.gov
Hours, fees, closures, permits and alerts for more than 400 national park sites. Go to the alerts page for the park rather than its front page, because road and trail closures land there first.
National Weather Service
weather.gov
Forecasts, watches and warnings for anywhere in the country, with no advertising and no model dressed up as certainty. A point forecast for the trailhead itself is far more useful than one for the nearest town.
Recreation.gov
recreation.gov
Bookings and permits for campgrounds, cabins, lookouts, day use and lotteries across every federal agency. If a site is run by the Park Service, the Forest Service, the BLM or the Corps of Engineers, this is where it is reserved.
Run a site we should know about?
We read everything that comes in. Independent sites about outdoor recreation only, and a person writes the description, so there is no need to send us one.
Add your siteWe link to these sites because we think they are useful. None of them paid for a place here, and nobody can buy one. If a site stops being worth reading, it comes off this page.