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. Then the elevations are looked up in a U.S. Geographical Service database. 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!