Hi Journeyman, welcome to the forum
You're going to have to answer one major question before we can give you a proper answer. How much money do you want to (or have to) spend?
The other thing to think about is your learning and progression. Somewhere along the line (if you want to learn more about photography) you're going to have to come to a compromise between size and features. There are compacts with big zooms and manual exposure controls but they are a relatively limited set of controls.
There are slightly bigger cameras which have even bigger zooms and full manual controls (as well as the fully automatic point and shoot modes) which would be better cameras to grow into, but they are larger and, hence, will weigh a little more.
Just to give you an idea, here are some of the most popular compacts and bridge cameras that would fit your bill. These all feature some sort of manual control, big zoom ranges and a whole host of other fancy trickery...
Compacts include the
Canon Powershot SX210 IS,
Fuji F300 EXR and the
Panasonic TZ10.
Bridge cameras would include the
Canon Powershot SX20 IS, the
Fuji S2800HD, the
Panasonic FZ45 or the
Olympus SP 800 UZ.
Perhaps the most important things to look at here aren't the individual camera specifications (at the moment anyway) but the style and sizes of these cameras. Oh, and the prices!