Camera Purchasing Help!

Any suggestions on what direction to go when buying a new camera?  As you can tell from my regular food photos on this blog, my pictures are, well, poor.  I actually used to care about photography quite a bit, spending time in the dark room developing yearbook pictures back in high school.  Since loosing access to those amazing cameras, my photography skills are just awful!  I'll blame the camera, I'm sure there's something lacking on my end as well, but I want to improve, which is good enough for me.  My current camera is an old Sony.  It's my first digital camera since switching over from film ages ago.  My old Canon film camera was quite nice, but now useless. 

I originally thought I'd just upgrade my small hand-held digital camera since a lot of pictures that I take, I take while hiking, and I pay big bucks to have light gear.  I'm not going to hike in a huge camera everywhere I go.  Then I realized that I take tons of pictures that don't involve hiking!  Why not keep my current digital for the few times a year I go backpacking, then invest in a nice digital SLR for everything else? 

I guess my one limitation is price.  I wouldn't say I'm cheap, but I would say I have a fear of investing a large amount of money into any one thing.  I think this is because I've only been out of grad school for 2.5 years, I live with a grad student, and, well, I don't make much money, especially for the city I live in.  God forbid I ever need to buy a vehicle or a house! 

It's easy to take a cool picture with views like this and a good looking guy in the foreground, but when the view isn't so exciting, my camera is a failure.  This is Dave on Grays Peak (14,270 ft).  See more from this trip here:  http://lifeafterluckycharms.blogspot.com/2010/07/dave-and-i-had-little-freak-out-moment.html

Pretty things are easy to photograph, but I had to take 30 pictures to get two good ones with my current camera. 

Anyone have a camera that takes great pictures that I should know about?  Or any general camera advice?   I'm going to do my own investigation, but why not start with your suggestions?