The best mobile-friendly Web sites for outdoor fun and travel

By Shannon L. Cheesman KATU.com Producer/Reporter Published: Dec 5, 2008 at 3:28 PM PST Last Updated: Dec 5, 2008 at 4:05 PM PST
The best mobile-friendly Web sites for outdoor fun and travel

PORTLAND, Ore. - The whole point of heading outdoors is to get away from it all but there's no denying that bringing along your cell phone can be quite handy.

You get the comfort of knowing that should anything go wrong help is just a phone call away (provided you're in an area where you can get cell service, of course).

And if you've got Internet on your phone, it can also be a pretty nifty way to get your hands on some very useful information while you're out traveling (again, provided you've got that all-important cell service).

For instance my Blackberry Curve has helped me:

  • Find the cheapest gas in whatever town I happen to be in.
  • Find out what the weather is going to be like (very important information when you're on an outdoor adventure).
  • Figure out how to get home, back to camp, to the nearest town, etc. after getting lost.
  • Find the nearest RV dump station.
  • Find a place to eat when nothing in the trailer seemed appetizing.
  • Stay entertained on long, boring drives.
  • Settle an argument with my husband.
  • Avoid that big crash that has shut down the highway.

You get the idea... but how on earth to do you find all this information? 

You've just got to know where to go - specifically where to find those mobile-friendly sites that you can easily read on your phone's web browser... and that you can bookmark for future reference.

To make it easy for you, I've put together a list of some of my favorite mobile-friendly sites and I did a little research to find a few more you might want to try out. 

And of course, if you've got a favorite mobile-friendly site you don't see on the list, be sure to share it with the rest of us by leaving a comment at the bottom of the story. 

READ FIRST - HOW TO USE THIS GUIDE

  • All of the links in the guide below lead to mobile-friendly sites and are meant to be opened in a cell phone browser.
  • Go ahead and click the links so you can get an idea of what the mobile sites look like.
  • If you find one you like, simply go to that link in your cell phone's browser by typing it in. 
  • An easier way is to e-mail the link(s) to yourself, open the e-mail message on your phone and click from there.  But the really smart way to do it is to pull up the mobile version of this story in your cell phone browser. Here's the URL - http://www.katu.com/outdoors/featured/34943034.html?m=y.

KATU Mobile Edition

Note: KATU also has a subscription-based 'Mobile Pro' edition with more features, including video.  You can find out more here.

Maps

Weather

Gas Prices

Food & Drinks

Traffic/Travel

RVers

  • RVdumps.com (not a mobile-friendly site, but it comes up pretty decent on my Blackberry)

Skiing

Time Wasters

USE WITH CAUTION: Remember, the goal is to enjoy the outdoors... not sit around playing with your cell phone all day, no matter how bad you may want to. 

Note: For you Twitterers, you might want to check out 20 ways to Twitter from your mobile phone.  But again, please heed my warning about wasting all of your time on your cell phone when you should be communing with nature.  You've been told.

Shannon L. Cheesman is a Portland-area Web Producer/Reporter who specializes in the outdoors. She writes and reports for Fisher Interactive Network, which consists of 13 local news/information Web sites in Oregon, Washington, Idaho and California.