Bicycling America's National Parks.

Besieged by more than 285 million visitors each year, it's no wonder that America's national parks have been making headlines. And while it's wonderful that Americans and travelers from abroad are visiting these national treasures, the way in which we do it--by car--is having a devastating impact on the parks, and on our enjoyment of them.

After all, most of us make the trek to Yosemite to experience the wonder of waterfalls and the peace and quiet of the back country--in short to "get away from it all." But by choking the park roads with thousands of vehicles every day, we are essentially bringing "it all" with us: noise, traffic, pollution, and--perhaps most profoundly--the insularity of our automobile culture. The problem has gotten bad enough in Yosemite, Zion, and the Grand Canyon that most cars are being banned from certain areas or left outside the park entirely. Bike rack-equipped buses and, in time, light-rail systems, will shuttle people to "central dispersal sites." With easy access to trailheads and vastly reduced vehicular traffic, cycling the parks is becoming much safer and more enjoyable.

That's where a new and unique guidebook series, Bicycling America's National Parks, steps in to help. While most national parks have hundreds of miles of paved and unpaved roads and multi-use trails that are perfect for two-wheeled travel, few people know about them. The Bicycling America's National Parks series offers trail information not found anywhere else--not in print, nor online, nor even from the parks themselves. The author has scoured the parks and the surrounding areas, ridden all the trails and roads, and interviewed park rangers and visiting cyclists to find rides that are legal but largely undiscovered.

Written by David Story, who writes about bicycling and adventure travel for magazines, the series goes on to guide readers to hundreds of miles of trails for both mountain and road bikes in California's renowned national parks. And additional rides near park boundaries expand the options even further. Says Story of the research he did in Muir Woods, "I came up with a route that travels into the monument itself, passes under mind-boggling redwoods, then emerges with a view of the coast that is absolutely dazzling. That was part of the joy of researching this book--unearthing the gems that even the parks themselves didn't realize they possessed."

Offering rides for families and weekenders as well as hard-core outdoor adventurists, the routes range in length from a 2-mile warm-up in Manzanar National Historic Site to a 100-mile tour of Yosemite. Each ride description includes a detailed map; directions; the length and difficulty of the ride; discussion of the sights you'll see along the way; and information about the trail or road surface, including whether a mountain or road bike is recommended. A trip-planning appendix for each park tells you where to stay or camp, do your laundry, eat, buy supplies, and repair or rent a bike--in short, everything you need to enjoy and explore the national parks while helping to protect and preserve them. Bicycling America's National Parks shows us how to love our national parks, without loving them to death.