Outpost

Your Adventure Planning Website

Welcome to OutpostUSA, your adventure planning website. Our readers are individuals, couples, and school, church and Scout groups who want to experience outdoor America but need help in organizing their trips. We offer specific suggestions and insights on how to get there, where to stay, where to eat, and what to do. We cover everything from amusement parks and beaches to the national parks. For most trips, we offer a range of choices, but in a few lodging situations we focus on only one because we think staying there is an important part of the experience. We provide plenty of photos because marketing surveys tell us you want to SEE the lodging, restaurant, trail, slope, beach, river, historical site or ride. We give as much historical background as possible so you can appreciate the context of your trip.

Our site has a definite Kentucky, Ohio Valley, Midwestern flavor. 70% of our readers live in Kentucky, Ohio and Indiana and another 20% live in states adjacent to those. So our routefinding directions start from there.

Unlike many web sites, we never evaluate anything we have not personally experienced, be it trails, rivers, slopes, rides, lodging, restaurants or beaches. And we return to these sites annually, to keep the information as up to date as possible. You will notice this is not one of those websites where readers are asked to post their own reviews. Our research says that while that is a quick and easy way for a site to create a lot of content in a hurry, it is not reliable. You don't know who the people are, and you never have a context for their opinions. Here, you can get to know us, figure out what our biases are, then read our reviews confident that we are very consistent in what we're looking for and what we dislike. But we do provide the Forums for you to ask questions or add your own opinions.

We provide a wide range of outdoor experiences, from one day hikes, amusement park visits or canoeing trips to two and three week vacations or expeditions.

We especially urge parents to take your kids to as many of these places as possible, and we urge schools, churches and Scout units to restore the major trips we cover. In the global economy of the 21st Century, America is being challenged by cultures quite different than ours. If we are to survive those challenges and preserve our way of life, we have to know who we are. A large part of who we are is found at Plimouth Plantation, The Old North Church, Lexington Green, The Old North Bridge, Williamsburg, Washington, The Alamo, Tara, Monticello, Mt. Vernon, Fort Ticonderoga, Fort Laramie, Fort McHenry and Theodore Roosevelt National Park. If children are to grow up understanding and appreciating what it means to be American, they have to visit those sites. And they have to visit the Grand Canyon, Niagara Falls, Hatteras Island, Yellowstone, the Boundary Waters, Mesa Verde and the Wind River Wilderness. It's more important to visit Plymouth and Boston than Disneyworld, more important to visit Hatteras Island and the Grand Canyon than Myrtle Beach and Fort Lauderdale. If it means we have to budget carefully or spend more time fundraising, so be it. We were handed a torch by the previous generation. This is how we pass it on.