Jennifer’s List is a growing database of bicycle trails, maintained by Jennifer Hodgdon.
What is a bicycle trail?
For purposes of this site, a “bicycle trail” is a pathway, mostly or completely separated from automobile traffic, where bicycles can be ridden. This site concentrates on trails that are suitable for the average bicycle, not requiring a mountain bike. Most are paved; the exception is that a few very-long-distance (100 miles or more) gravel trails are included.
What do the categories mean?
- Flat vs. Hilly: Even a “Flat” trail can have a few small hills! In some cases I may not know for sure how flat or hilly a trail is, but generally I have given converted rail lines and trails that are following rivers a “flat” rating unless they are climbing mountain passes. Add a comment if I’ve gotten it wrong for a trail you know more about.
- Solitude vs. No Solitude: This is a subjective estimate as to whether I think you will encounter many people if you go riding on the trail on a sunny weekend. Again, in some cases I may not be sure about this, so add a comment to correct the site if it’s wrong.
- Construction and Street Riding: It is often the case that trails that are under development require a few blocks of riding here and there on streets, to connect finished sections; sometimes, the final trail will still include such sections.
- Rural, Suburban, and Urban: Urban means a dense city, maybe 100,000 people or more. Suburban means the sprawling areas that normally surround such cities. Rural means smaller towns, agricultural areas, and wilder areas. Some trails travel through a combination of areas, and in those cases, the trail has been marked as belonging to multiple categories.
- Gravel vs. Paved: Trails that have sections that are paved and sections that are gravel have been marked as belonging to both categories.
Who is Jennifer?
Jennifer Hodgdon is a freelance software developer via her company, Poplar ProductivityWare. She is an avid outdoors-person, and has taken several multi-day and multi-week bicycle tours; she also enjoys hiking, backpacking, rock climbing, mountaineering, her volunteer work, and foreign travel. She currently rides a Bike Friday Sat-R-Day folding recumbent bicycle, and lives in the Seattle, Washington metro area in the United States. She has a personal web site at jhodgdon.com, and writes a bilingual blog about peace, social justice, and foreign aid, HodgBlog.
How was this site created?
This site was created using the WordPress open-source blogging tool; Jennifer is part of the WordPress volunteer development and documentation team. The mapping and elevation portions of the site are created using a WordPress plugin called Routes, which Jennifer wrote and made available (free); Routes uses the Google Maps API. The rating system uses the WP-PostRatings plugin.
To be more specific, the trail routes are entered by either typing in addresses, clicking on an interactive map at points along the route of the trail, or importing a GPX file from someone’s GPS unit. For the first two methods, Google Maps’ “geocoding” service and the interactive map itself convert the addresses and clicks into latitude/longitude values. Elevations can be looked up and/or corrected using Google Maps’ service. Finally, the elevation profile charts are computer-generated from these numbers, and the data is ready to display.
Comments
If you have general comments about this site, you can enter them below. Enjoy!
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Although outside of the “pureist” definition of bicycle trail, I also rode the Craters of the Moon National Monument scenic drive this last thursday, which was an absolulely excellent workout, starting from 5700 ft up to about 6500 ft, and some of the most extreme road biking that I’ve ever done on their paths out into the lava fields. Think some other gonzos like myself (50+ yo none the less) would like to see. I have pics of that ride also.
jpk
Yes, there are certainly a lot of scenic non-trails out there! Some other sites on the web list favorite routes of all kinds — see the bicycling resources page.
–Jennifer
I’m interested in finding out how to replicate the elevation piece you have or encouraging you to add a section for urban bike rides with the elevation included.
Can you provide any additional info on the steps to take the route and get the elevation?
Anyone can replicate the functionality of the site. All of the mapping and elevation is done using the Routes WordPress plugin, which is available for free download (see link above). The download site has instructions.
–Jennifer
News: The Routes plugin used to make this site now supports the features Larry suggested: text/URL tagging of points, and GPS import. See main post above for how to get the Routes plugin.
–Jennifer
I know it would be more work, but would you ever considering expanding your trail list to include other countries like Mexico. There are some really amazing trails in Baja California I could suggest.
Sure! I haven’t been adding many trails to the site at all, though… too much else going on. If you’d like to consider volunteering to add trails, let me know.
But I do want to keep the site to trails that are compatible with the site guidelines (see above) — i.e. mostly paved trails that can be ridden without a mountain bike.
Regards,
Jennifer