I teach digital photography in a college course. The text I require is Scott Kelby's book. If you want a book that goes into a little more depth, I recommend Martin Evening's book. For composition, I like "Natural Design", by Gloria Hopkins.
Here is a link
http://gloriahopkins.com/
I have 2 gitzos and an Induro 213. The gitzos I use for heavy lenses (primarily 600mm) and the Induro for anything up to 300 f/4. The induro ($390) was less than half the cost of the gitzos and is very good for my uses. A wimpy tripod causes more problems than it solves. It is currently available with a 25% discount.
Take both. I would never go anyplace where I expected to take serious images without a tripod.
Nature photography, which includes both landscape and wildlife.
The nature photographer, John Shaw, once told me that if I wanted to improve every lens I owned by a significant amount, I should get a solid tripod. He was right. I rarely make an image now (other than grandkids) without the tripod. It does make a difference. Not only are the images sharper, but the process forces you to slow down and carefully analyze the image you are trying to create.
You could shoot raw + jpeg while you are deciding about using raw. The raw files can be processed in the software provvided with the camera body. You may want additional software for some of them.
I have both full-frame and apc Canon bodies. The full-frame are a big advantage when using wide angle lenses. The apc are an advantage using telephoto lenses. I find the full-frame bodies most useful for landscapes and the apc body most useful for wildlife (where telephoto lenses are pretty much a necessity). If you don't need 24mm (and wider) then you probably don't need a full-frame body. I have not bought any EF-S lenses because I don't want lenses that can't be used on my full-frame body. The kind of photography you want to do should decide whether or not you want a full-frame body.
I realize that you can get wide angle EF-S lenses, but if you get a full-frame body, they won't attach. I won't spend money on lenses that I can't use on all my bodies.
I've had three shoulder surgeries (both involved). If you do the physical therapy seriously you will probably recover full, painfree, use of the shoulder(s) as I have. Good luck and do the therapy, at home as well as the therapist's.
The jpeg image that your camera produces is processed in camera by someone (in Japan, Korea, or wherever the camera is produced) who has never seen the subject of your image. If you are content to let that person process the data your camera captures, that is your choice. If you think you can do a better job of capturing the emotional impact of what you saw when you pressed the shutter button, then use the software that you can control to produce what you saw/felt/imagined.
The cheap frames from Michaels, etc, don't have a deep enough rabbet to hold glass, picture, 3/16 backing, and mat or double mat. I recommend the simple black metal mats such as Nielson. For a single matted image, I recommend white. For double mats, I like to choose colors that draw out colors in the image. For a 16 x 20 image, I would use at least a 20x24 frame, maybe even a 22x28.
If a white bird is small in the frame like this one, I close down 1.5 or 2 stops and proceed from there. (Use the histogram) If the white bird is large in the frame you will have to open up 1.5 or 2 stops. The above advice does not apply if you are using a spot meter on the bird alone. In this case open up 1.5 to 2 stops from the meter reading, and again check your histogram.
I have both. I use the 2.8 indoors to photograph my grandkids at basketball, and the f/4 outdoors.
I think that prints from digital are better than prints from slides and/or color film. I also have given slide shows both ways (Leica slide projector, Epson digital projector) and on 6-8 foot screens, both look good. The big difference is the difference in dynamic range of the images. Digital is way ahead here. It is even farther ahead if you do HDR processing to increase detail in both shadows and highlights.
Just a comment about one of the responses about experimenting on unimportant images. Lightroom does not change a single pixel of the raw capture, only its interpretation. You can always revert back to the original raw file. Just another reason to always photograph in raw.
I second David Kay's warning. No point taking chances. I have given the same advice to my kids about posting images of my grandkids.