Originally Posted by
hanktrefethen
Thanks for all the tips, In the end I sorta feel like getting 700c is limiting. Sounds like they aren't the best option if I suddenly get the urge to cruise down a dirt road or explore a trail near camp. I had my eye on an Aurora and a Randonee but they are both 700c wheels and I'm thinking a 54" trucker or another tourer with 26" wheels is they way I'm leaning.
Another option is to get an older, steel mountain bike (hard tail, no suspension fork) and convert it into a touring bike. If you search around here on BF you'll find several threads on this. An older mountain bike (late 80's, early 90's) has a geometry a lot like a modern Surly LHT.
Just to be clear, though - I think the issue of 26-inch vs. 700c wheels gets a little confused; folks mix up wheel diameter with tire size.
A Surly LHT, for example, comes with 26-inch wheels in the smaller sizes and 700c in the larger sizes. Any of them, though, can take pretty fat tires and should be more than adequate for cruising down a dirt road or exploring a trail. After all, most cross bikes comes stock with 32c or 35c, and those do fine on dirt. Same with an REI Safari, as noted above - that's a pretty rugged bike that is more than adequate for dirt.
So for light trails/dirt road/gravel the key is tire clearance (I think the Jamis Aurora, a nice bike, has pretty tight tire clearance - the space on the hubs is for road hubs, not MTB hubs, so I think they don't take very large tires). Other 700c tires would be fine if you can put big tires on them.