You could spend an entire vacation in the Pittsburgh area with a cell phone for a tour guide.

A local cell phone walking tour series called Tour Anytime takes visitors through the heart of the Pittsburgh steel industry, along with other local attractions. The project was launched two years ago by the Rivers of Steel National Heritage Area, along with the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources.

Only a few steel industry artifacts remain at the site of the sprawling Homestead Works -- it's now the site of the Waterfront retail development. But equipped with a cell phone and map, a visitor can learn a lot about the industrial powerhouse that once stood there.

Tour Anytime's Homestead steel history tour takes visitors on a three-mile loop along the Monongahela River and through the Waterfront shopping complex, past historic landmarks such as the Carrie Furnace, the massive 12,000-ton press, the stacks and the pump house. It also describes the sites of long-gone portions of the mills, like the Big Shop, which stood near the space now occupied by Lowe's home improvement store.

Tour Anytime also offers an audio history/walking tour of the Homestead Steel Strike of 1892, a GPS-guided tour of the Sprout Fund's public art projects throughout the city, the Frick Art & Historical Center, the West­moreland Museum of American Art and the Mattress Factory's outdoor garden installation.

Walking tours of Grant Street and Mellon Square are in the works.

Tour Anytime plans to launch MP3 versions of these tours, which visitors can download and listen to on iPods or other portable music players.

To access the tours, go to the Tour Anytime Web site (www.touranytime.org), choose a tour and download a map with the points of interest marked. Then call 412-254-2154 -- and start walking. There's no charge for the tours, other than the cost of the cell phone minutes used.