National Trails Day 2009

Need a reason to hit the trails? Try National Trails Day 2009 in June. Click on http://www.americanhiking.org/index.aspx for details and a trail near you.

Better yet, help the trails by doing some service. For the Appalachian Trail in Massachusetts see this link http://amcberkshire.org/files/2009_Project_Schedule_0.pdf for the summer projects.

Medical Tourism Survey results posted

We have posted some of the results from our medical tourism survey on our website found at http://www.wsc.ma.edu/medicaltourism/. The perception questions and evaluation of sustainable tourism practices have been omitted for further analysis.

Free access for Sage Journals ('til 30 Ap 09)

Every once in a while you get free online access to journals. And Sage Publications is one to do immediately. Visit the home page at http://www.sagepub.com/home.nav and then click on "Sage Journals Online" for temporary access.

This is a great opportunity for all you Recreation Geographers!

Recreation and Geography Linked

If the Library of Congress links Geography and Recreation, who am I to argue?

Recreation, Tourism and Sport Speciality Group, AAG

Perhaps you stumbled across this page in your search for recreation or geography information, but a great site for everything recreation, tourism and/or sport geography can be found at Alan Lew's website for the RTS Speciality Group of the Association of American Geographers. See http://www.geog.nau.edu/rts/ for details.

Westfield River Trail Guide

I gave a talk at the Annual Westfield River Symposium last month and talked about trail opportunities in the lower watershed. See this website to download the trail guide http://robertbristow.home.comcast.net/. It had been available on the river.wsc.ma.edu site but this site is no longer online, so I mirrored the data on my personal site for your hiking pleasure. It is raining right now, but since the temperatures are getting warmer, now is the time to get outside!

Enjoy.

Westfield River Whitewater Races!

A fantastic day yesterday on the river. A friend joined me for one of the Westfield River canoe clinics and we paddled down the river. Great air temps; not too cold and not too warm! The river was flowing about normal. See <http://waterdata.usgs.gov/nwis/rt> for the stream flow information of your favorite river and get out this spring.

The Westfield River Whitewater Races are the oldest continuously run can race in the US. See this website <http://www.westfieldriverraces.com/>for details about the race and photos!

So for the recreation geography part we have some guys, paddling their canoe on the Westfield River (people participating in some activity at some resource).

Maybe I'll see you canoe day on Saturday 18 April 2009!

Northeastern Recreation Research Symposium

Just got back from the annual NERR conference at the beautiful Sagamore in Bolton Landing NY. This event typically coincides with the AAG annual meeting but given a chance to present in front of 30 interested colleagues during 3 or 4 concurrent sessions compared to 10 colleagues and 5o concurrent sessions you can see the attraction. Papers are published by the USDA Forest Service and retrievable from http://www.treesearch.fs.fed.us/.

Did I mention the Sagamore? Under new management, they still do their best to make you feel special.

If you are a recreation geographer, plan on NERR 2010 (3/28/2010 - 3/30/2010), where the weather might be sunny and in the high sixties or a blizzard. But it will always be an enjoyable time!

rsb

Recreation Geography Defined

Sure, you might know what recreation is. And you probably had a geography class back when you were 13 years old. But what is Recreation Geography?

re-cre⋅a⋅tion 
–noun
1. the act of creating anew.
2. something created anew.

ge⋅og⋅ra⋅phy
–noun, plural -phies.
1. the science dealing with the areal differentiation of the earth's surface, as shown in the character, arrangement, and interrelations over the world of such elements as climate, elevation, soil, vegetation, population, land use, industries, or states, and of the unit areas formed by the complex of these individual elements.
2. the study of this science.
3. the topographical features of a region, usually of the earth, sometimes of the planets.
4. a book dealing with this science or study, as a textbook.
5. the arrangement of features of any complex entity: the geography of the mind.
(source Dictionary.Com)

Well, combining the two terms we come up with my definition:

Recreation Geography is the study of humans participating in some leisure pursuit at some setting. That is, people, activity and park.

People are categorized by the socio-economic and demographic characteristics. Activities are what people are doing and the park could be the Grand Canyon, the neighborhood, or your couch!

In this new blog, that premiers on April Fools' Day 2009, I hope to inform the readers about what recreation geography is all about and hopefully illustrate, as the definition implies, that recreation geography is all around us.

If this is something that floats your boat, bookmark this page for future reference. If not, go back to Google!

rsb