Making a training plan?
 

I've done some hunting online for training plans, but mostly everything I run into is either vague, requires you have expensive equipment, or seems a bit gimmicky (ride from 0 to 100 miles in a month sort of deal). I'm just building base and going out to ride a lot, but I am not sure if there is any specific sort of exercises I should do to help myself move along? Recommended rest days amount?

If you are " just building base" then you don't need any special equipment. A heart-rate monitor would be helpful, but it's perfectly possible to work on perceived effort.

The basic principle is that you should mix it up. The bulk of your time on the bike should be long steady distance (LSD) riding. If you can organise your time to allow you one ride of five hours once a week that would be good. Do it at an intensity that you can maintain, but don't dawdle. You should be tired, the last hour should be hard.

The rest of the week should consist of rather shorter rides. One or two of them should be a bit more intense. No need to immediately start intervals if you are base-building, but at least one ride of about an hour at the highest pace you can maintain for that time is a good idea.

Rest a couple of days a week. Schedule your rest days after your hard days. And when you are on the bike, make the hard days hard and the easy days easy. The latter is the difficult bit, most people go harder than they should on their recovery days. As a result they don't recover properly, stay tired, and therefore can't go hard enough on the hard days.

I've found a couple of Chris Carmichael's books on close-out at local book stores, very helpful but lots of Lance anecdotes.

I've got the Heart Zones Cycling book and there are lots of ideas for training rides mapped out and it describes how to make a training plan. I'm going to program up my Garmin with some of the workouts because there's a lot to remember. Up to now I've just being doing some intervals from the sticky in the racing sub forum.