Touring - Offroad touring steed?

Hi all, I'm looking to get a mountain bike for recreational trails riding, I'm wondering what bikes people have had success with for offroad touring.

I'm considering using the bike for overnighters, perhaps doing some 7-10 day offroad tours in the future. For the moment, however, I'm not looking for a heavy load-carrier - just an XC bike which will last for a few days on the trail.

Front-runners at the moment are Giant Alias/Talon and Merida MATTS series - both in the recreational to sport range, not particularly high specced or heavily built bikes.

Cave,
I guess my question would be...do either of these have braze-ons for racks? If not, are you planning on trailer?

My tourer is a Trek 4300 - definitely a sport or recreational bike. Check out the "pictures of our MTB conversion" thread for an idea of what I did. http://bikeforums.net/showthread.php?t=334033

I tour on gravel roads, paved roads and non-technical singletrack. But, I would take this to the mountains for some Forest Service trails if the opportunity presented itself.

I used to have an old Mongoose mountain bike built at the end of the 1980s. I rigged it out for touring and took it on abandoned railway beds and some incredibly rough forestry roads in B.C. as well as on highway tours. This bike was old school. It had no suspension but was designed for serious off-road work. A bike without suspension was a mixed bag on rough roads and trails. The ride could be quite bumpy but I didn't lose much power in the shocks. Sadly, it was stolen a couple of years ago.

I'm now using a touring bike which uses the same frame as a cyclocross bike. The only surfaces this bike doesn't like are sand and loose pea gravel. The Mongoose, with its wider tires, could negotiate those surfaces much easier.

I love this Australian offroad tour story:

http://wildworks.co.nz/csr/photographs.php

The Merida definitely has eyelets. A "normal" rack would work fine on the v-brake version.

The Giant seems to have better components for the (official) price. Not sure about eyelets, but the disc brakes would make them useless anyway.

Hardy, I enjoyed those photos! Amazing what some people do.
Countrydirt, thanks, that's exactly the sort of thing I wanted to see.

It will definitely be for recreational MTBing 1st, so I guess I'll just ride a few and see what works for me.