Recreation is any voluntary activity that is enjoyable and fun. Recreation refreshes, revitalizes and improves a person's quality of life. Consider some recreation activity you may have an interest in. Suppose you are interested in gardening but have never tried it. Let's take a look at how you can learn about it, do it, and in the process get connected to your community in ways you may have never imagined. We are using gardening here as an example, but remember it could have been anything from bike racing to computer programming. The first thing would be to ask your friends, family and staff for some suggestions. To get more information about gardening you begin to use your local library as a real resource- checking out books about gardening. While you are at the library, you notice the community events bulletin board and see that there are many events and organizations doing things in your community that you would like to know more about. For that matter, look at your newspaper's community events calendar. Your community might also have a community garden. What a great way to meet your neighbors! Another benefit of gardening has been that you are now very connected to locally grown food, and you are benefiting from a better diet and from the physical activity of gardening. Interest in gardening is just one example of ways in which recreational activities can lead to establishing beneficial connections within the community. This paper provides a list of recreational resources for numerous activities. As these resources evolve and grow over time, updates to this manual will be added.