The Pinellas Trail has the best map ever!

The Pinellas Trail is a 34-mile long rail trail that stretches from downtown St. Petersburg at the south end of Pinellas County to Tarpon Springs at the north end. I've never ridden the trail, but I'm looking forward to doing is some day soon. For one thing, it has the best map.

Some of the rail-trail maps that I've run across are almost rudimentary--a schematic of the route showing major highways. Others at least include the trail head parking areas along the trail. Better still are the maps that also show the mile marks and at least the major roads crossing or approaching the trail.

The Pinellas Trail map is really more of a guidebook. I bought a similar guidebook for north Georgia's Silver Comet Trail, but the the Pinellas Trail guide is much more detailed. There are twenty pages, each of which covers less than two miles of trail. A portion of each page is a map, showing the trail, spur trails, every street in the vicinity, parks, water sources, restrooms, restaurants, bike shops, coffee shops, and just about anything else that might be remotely useful while traveling on the trail. The remainder of the page is devoted to descriptions of the resources on that page.

Now, this isn't so useful for the competitive cyclist crouched atop a carbon-fibre dragonfly while he flashes from one end of the trail to another and back again without a pause, but he isn't the typical trail user anyway. The guide makes more sense for the casual cyclists out for a bit of active recreation. Want to pedal a few miles up the trail, stop for lunch, then ride back? You can plan it with the guide. Out for a walk on the trail and want to stop for coffee? Check the guide. Trail users from the local area may already know some of these things, but tourists not at all. The guide makes the trail more tourist-friendly, while letting them know where they can spend money along the trail.

Now, you can also do this with the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy's interactive maps at TrailLink.com and Google, but with a printed map or guidebook the work is already done for you and you don't have to haul around a computer or wireless device. There is a problem with keeping a guidebook up to date (my ride on the Pinellas Trail might end up being more interesting than I'd like).

Close to home (i.e., my home), the St. Marks Trail could benefit from such a guide. For instance, there are places to buy a drink that you can't see from the trail, but are only a block or two away. Weekend cyclists would like to know this, and business owners would like them to know. The guidebook would make both groups happy. Perhaps both groups would support a guidebook through sales and advertising, making the author of a guidebook happy as well.

Meanwhile, I'm going to look at my maps of the Pinellas Trail and plan a ride.