A guide for what you need to buy, read or consume to enhance your recreation and travel experience

GEAR

Vargo Titanium Bottle/Pot

$99.95, www.vargooutdoors.com/ Titanium-BOT-Bottle-Pot

It's a bottle. It's a cooking pot. It's both. And it's also really expensive. But, come on, don't you want to be the coolest camper or hiker in the backcountry with this titanium device? It holds 34 ounces of water, weighs only 4.7 ounces and can fit in your backpack's water bottle holder. But you can also turn it over and use it to cook dinner.

READ

• "Almost Somewhere: Twenty-Eight Days on the John Muir Trail," by Suzanne Roberts

$19.95, University of Nebraska Press, 262 pages

In 1993, as a recent college graduate, author Roberts, a teacher at Lake Tahoe Community College, had no clue what to do with her life. So why not hike the John Muir Trail? This memoir/travelogue recounts how the adventure changed her life. She also writes with verve, as in this aside while hiking near Tully Hole near Squaw Lake: "Tully Hole sounded to me like a derogatory nickname for a high school girl, as in, I can't believe what Tully Hole did with White Waters last night in the Circle K parking lot."

THE LIST

• 17 Things Animals Do Better Than Humans

www.adventure-journal.com/ 2012/08/the-list-17-things-animals-do-better-than-humans

Perhaps No. 18 is that animals have longer attention spans. So, because we're dealing with humans, we'll provide only the top three things animals do better than us, courtesy of the clever folks at Adventure Journal.

1. Lifting things

Humans: Can clean and jerk 1.7 times their bodyweight

Rhinoceros Beetles: Can lift 285 times their bodyweight

Winner: Rhinoceros Beetles

2. Flying

Humans: Have to pay a minimum of approximately $100 US to fly, plus more for checked bags

Birds: Can fly for free, do not check bags. Do not take bags.

Winner: Birds

3. Digesting food

Humans: Have to cook meat

All other carnivorous animals: Do not have to cook their meat

Winner: All other carnivorous animals

THE QUOTE

Outside magazine writer Katie Heaneyon trying Stand-Up Paddleboarding (SUP): "It has to have something to do with Jesus Christ. It has to do with wanting to be able to walk on water, don't you think?"

© Copyright The Sacramento Bee. All rights reserved.

Order Reprint