California to St. Louis Car/Bike Trip

Trip Statistics and Goodbye

2009-06-07T07:55:00.000-07:00

Here's the map of the entire trip:

So, you see, we actually followed the original plan:

Total Miles Driven: 6,630
Home to St. Louis: 3,316
St. Louis to Home: 3,314

Bicycle Miles Ridden: 280

Average Gas Mileage: 36.45 MPG

Total Trip Cost: $2,083
Four nights in hotels: $255
Twenty nights camping: $308 (Average campsite cost: $15.40)
Eating at Restaurants: $399
Groceries: $490 ($450 was subtracted from the trip cost, since that's our normal grocery bill)
Gasoline: $398

Total Weight Gain Lena: -2 pounds
Total Weight Gain Al: -4 pounds
That's right, we both lost a small amount of weight. Possible reasons:

Even with the driving, camping life is less sedentary than normal life. There's a lot of walking around, setting up camp, packing, getting water, getting firewood, etc.
We lost muscle, since we did less vigorous exercise than on our normal home schedule

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Goodbye! We hope you enjoyed slogging through all the posts in our blog. If so, please let us know by signing our guestbook:

You can view the guestbook by clicking here.

If you weren't sufficiently bored by this blog, feel free to visit Al's Surfing Safari blog, his Sight-reading blog, Al and Lena's 2007 Waikiki blog, their 2008 Waikiki blog, their 2008 video Christmas card, or their San Juan Islands bike trip blog. Blog, blog, blog, blah, blah, blah...

Sister's House to Home

2009-06-02T08:12:00.000-07:00

We had an uneventful final day of driving. At a rest area I watched this Raven work hard at getting things out of the trash.

When we encountered the coastal fog we knew we were almost home.
It felt great to pull into our garage after our big circle of driving around the western U.S.

How many miles did we travel? How much weight did we gain? How much money did we spend?

Find out all these things in the next post (it will take me a few days to put it together).

Collier State Park to Sister's House

2009-06-01T07:18:00.000-07:00

The rain stopped by morning and we stuffed things into the car for the last time (yeah!), and watched a chipmunk clean up the rain-soaked tortilla crumbs.

Then it was back to the snow again, at crater lake, the deepest lake in the U.S. (1,932 feet deep).

They had an Xanterra-managed lodge here also, which was tres-chic.

After a Chinese lunch at Ma's in Shady Cove, and a wifi session in White City, we arrived at my sister's house in the woods near Medford, where we slept in one of those "real-bed" contraptions again.

Stay tuned for the final day of driving, and a summary of the trip with a map, total costs, and total weight gained.

Bully Creek to Colliers State Park

2009-05-31T13:46:00.000-07:00

OK, so you remember the grungy bathroom/shower from yesterday?

When I awoke around 5 AM and went to the bathroom, there was a guy sleeping on the peeling-paint bench right by the shower. I know what you're thinking: "Aw, poor homeless man is so desperate that he's sleeping in the foul bathroom." No, this was a normal, clean-cut 20-something in a bathing suit and T-shirt. He woke up when I walked in, and I asked him "Was it too cold in your tent?"

"No," he said, "I couldn't find my campsite!" He got up stretched, and walked off, saying "Boy, that's a bad night when you go camping, and can't find your campsite."

The sun was just coming up, and I got the pancakes going by the time Lena got out of the tent.

Today was strength-training day, which included barbell squats using Lena's 300-pound duffel while the tent dried out.
Then we packed up and headed off.

We had thought we'd had great luck in finding a campground soon after dinner even though none showed on the map. But it turned out it was bad luck, because if we hadn't seen the Bully Creek Reservoir site, we would have stopped here, at this dreary, depressing private campground.

So, I know what you're thinking now: "Al. That doesn't make sense. Why would it be bad luck to stay at a nice campground, and good luck to stay at a dreary depressing campground?"

Well, here's the answer: "Because at the dreary campground, there was big lightning strike, right across the road, and we could have had a front-row seat!" We stopped here for ice, and the campground owner showed us the tree that had been struck by lightning the night before.

The strike came right down the side of the tree, exploding off the bark and sending it flying hundreds of feet away. Yeah, win some, lose some.

So anyway, we continued on, as today we would cross most of Oregon. The central part of this state is surprisingly scenic, with dramatic canyons and desert lakes. I saw some great thunderstorms, but we didn't have that much rain on the car.

For lunch, we stopped at a small rest area in the desert and had tuna sandwiches.

We encountered more interesting cloud formations like this one. It is completely unretouched.

These next photos will give you a feeling for the view around Lake Abert in Central Oregon. Be sure to click on them to get the full impact.

We were trying hard to find a coffee shop with wifi, but weren't having much luck. Two of the actual responses to "Do you have wifi?" we got were "Wi What?" and "Who?" so we knew we weren't likely to find anything.

At one place that had a big WIFI! sign on the outside, the proprietor told me that it wasn't hooked up. But right by the restaurant there was an information sign that showed info about "The Perpetual Geyser" in Lakeview, so we kept our eyes open.

It was shown on the map, but when we got to Lakeview, there were no signs for the geyser. We found it anyway, this lone geyser in Oregon, just on the side of the road, with a fence around it to keep people from burning themselves. It was actually better than Old Faithful, because it went off every 90 seconds or so.

We had planned to drive to one of the campgrounds at Crater Lake, but stopped instead at Collier State Park. That was lucky, as it turned out, because the campgrounds at Crater were closed (too much snow).
This was the best-maintained campground I've ever seen. For example, the fire ring had apparently been vacuumed out before we came. Ironically, there were signs posted saying "Due to lack of funds, we have cut back on maintenance."

It was raining lightly, but with loud thunder, while we prepared some dinner-sized breakfast burritos.

Afterwards I showed off my ability to enjoy chocolate chip cookies with beer.

That photo also shows something I've gotten tired of on the trip: breathing in smoke.

We retired as the rain got heavy, and slept with great confidence in the waterproof properties of our tent. It was also a little sad because this would be the last night of camping on the trip. But just a little.

Stay tuned for Crater Lake.

East Table to Bully Creek

2009-05-30T10:03:00.000-07:00

It wasn't as cold here in the Targhee National Forest, and we made a nice cooking fire with the free firewood (collecting is OK here).

The snake river is some sort of highway for the birds; here are some pelicans passing through.

I used warm water for washing my hair (mixed cold with boiling water). This worked great until Lena forgot to mix in the cold water at rinse time -- Ow!

The views on our drive through Idaho were similar to some of the Windows wallpapers. Click on this image, and you'll notice that some of these clouds had a funnel-type shape. This was due to rain falling out of the cloud. It resulted in very isolated showers.

We stopped in Arco, Idaho for another buffalo burger. According to some, Buffalo is more healthy for you. I didn't notice any difference in taste.

Lena insisted on playing on the local submarine.
This is what happens when you leave the camera in movie mode instead of photo mode.

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Next was a quick detour to Craters of the Moon National Monument. This would have been boring, but as you can see, the whole place is set to 1/6 of normal gravity, making it hard to walk.

This is one place where overweight tourists have an advantage.

The clouds are better here in Idaho than at home, and many have recognizable shapes (this photo is unretouched).

We drove all the way through Idaho before we started looking for camping. Vale, Oregon is where we stopped for dinner at a Mexican restaurant that could have been in Tijuana.

We had no idea where we'd camp, and there were no campgrounds on the map, but soon after dinner, we happened on a sign for Bully Creek Reservoir state park that had camping, and once again, got the very last campsite.

This place was very well maintained and neat, except for the bathrooms. These, in contrast, were straight out of a third world country with peeling paint and slimy floor surfaces. They also smelled of rotting fish, because the fish cleaning station adjoined the bathroom.

Here's a picture of the shower. This picture will be relevant for the next post, so keep it in mind.

After we got camp set up, I went for a short bike ride.

After a nice sunset, we went to bed. Since it was Saturday, and this was a party-type campground, there was lots of drinking and celebrating going on. Our earplugs blocked all that out, and we slept well.

Stay tuned to find out who slept in the bathroom and why.

Yellowstone to East Table

2009-05-29T14:21:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, even in Yellowstone, Campground Hosts get divorced.

On our way south, out of Yellowstone, we stopped at its biggest attraction, Old Faithful. To me, it was pretty crowded, but of course this is the low season. Here's a shot of the huge main parking lot by Old Faithful.
This must be a zoo in the summer.

Old Faithful wasn't that faithful for us: about 30 minutes late for its scheduled eruption.

We got a raincheck for a free second viewing, but it was time to push on. BTW, we saw a smaller geyser in Oregon that I liked a lot better. See later posts for more info.

The lodge at Old Faithful was quite nice. Many of the lodges and concessions have apparently been outsourced to a company call Xanterra. We saw this here and at Crater Lake (see later posts). The lodges look great, but there's something overly commercialized about them. More "Trump-Tower" than "National Park."

Plenty of great views on the way out, and along the Grand Tetons. BTW, the fire damage from Yellowstone's 1988 fire (which burned 38% of the park) is still very much apparent. Many of the trees are less than 10 feet tall, and they are towered over by the dead ones, and surrounded by fallen trunks. You can see that in the first two photos here.

Here are the grand tetons.

Since it was a Friday night, we were worried about finding a campsite, so after a good lunch in Jackson, WY, we stopped early in the afternoon at the East Table campground in the Targhee National Forest. It was on the Snake river, and very close to Idaho. It was totally deserted when we got there.

The river was high, and large tree trunks would occasional flow down, making loud wood-splitting noises when they hit things. We also saw rafters and plenty of pelicans and geese.

The clouds looked menacing, so I prepared the tent for storms that never came.

These packets contain pheromones designed to discourage beetles that destroy the trees.

Great dinner, slept well, blah blah blah.

Stay tuned for thunderstorms and people sleeping in filthy bathrooms.

Yellowstone Day 2

2009-05-28T16:21:00.000-07:00

Here's what we woke up to on our second day in Yellowstone:

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This guy was really big -- bigger than he looks here, because the camera always subtracts 400 pounds. Lena did not like it. She just wanted him to leave.

After that excitement, we had breakfast, and Lena found that with some Benadryl she could keep her sneezing to a minimum. Things were looking much brighter, so we stopped thinking about getting home, and went back to enjoying the trip.

First we went on an 18-mile bike ride on the road from Norris to Madison (in Yellowstone).

Next, we got back to the car, and drove off to look for showers and laundromat.

There are a lot of tourists at Yellowstone even though this is the low season.

We've hit a kind of scenic saturation on this trip, having seen so many incredible landscapes, but we could still enjoy the views here. Here are some shots from the "Grand Canyon of Yellowstone."

Since it looks so much like a painting, I photoshopped it so that it would look even more like a painting.

We hit a lot of overlooks and short trails, paint pots, and geysers, and finally retired back to the campsite. Looks like it was chili with embedded Triscuits and turkey franks today. The campground was strangely deserted -- the tents and RVs were there, but I guess everyone was still out sightseeing.

After dinner Lena knitted, but the smoke from our campfire and several others was getting to be too much, so I took a walk down to relax by the Gibbon River.

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We slept well again, thanks to our wonderful earplugs. The trick with these is to take a few weeks to get used to them before the trip. Otherwise, they are uncomfortable after a few hours.

By inserting them quite deeply, I'm able to eliminate all sound. As they expand, the noise of the toddler in the neighboring site playing the harmonica (more breathing in and out through the harmonica than "playing") gradually recedes until it is gone completely. This works for generators, loud talking, and music as well. I took them out at about 2 AM, but due to the snoring from a neighboring tent, I put them back in.

We have good luck and bad luck tomorrow. Stay tuned.

Prune Creek to Yellowstone

2009-05-27T15:58:00.000-07:00

It's been hard to find wifi places to keep up with the posting. But back to the story...

When we woke it was COLD! I've got a great Northface sleeping bag, but it's only a three-season bag, so I have to use the maximum warmth configuration.

This really is an amazing sleeping bag. I've had it since 1992 and it still looks brand new. It packs down to the size of a football.

But as I was saying, it was icy cold. You can see the frost on the grass and on the car. One of us had a great idea of just jumping in the car and finding a warm restaurant to eat in. Luckily the Arrowhead Lodge was only a few miles away, and was open at 6:30. This was a great place that caters to snowmobilers in the winter.
Here's Lena filling out some postcards after some superior eggs and pancakes.

The 64-year-old waitress lives in Florida, and every year she chooses a different national park, then gets a waitressing job there for the summer.

It was time to clean out the trunk and get things reorganized, and then we were off for Yellowstone.

We chose the northern route

and there was plenty of snow at the 9,430 foot pass over the rockies.

I had expected continuous mountains from here to Yellowstone, but instead there is a wide low plain between the Bighorn Mountains and Rockies. We split a filling steak salad at Granny's in Cody, Wyoming. Here's a photo on the wall of the restaurant compared with a photo I took:

The drive into Yellowstone was much further than we had expected, but the scenery was spectacular. Here's Yellowstone Lake, the highest big lake in the country.

Our first wild animal encounter was a buffalo, which Lena used to work more on the pointing thing.

We also saw a grizzly bear, but at a great distance. We came upon a lot of cars pulled over the side of the road, with a crowd looking in binoculars. Most of the people are unaware of what they were looking for, but eventually you get someone to tell you that to the right of that patch of snow, no the other patch, near that ridge by the dark greenery is a grizzly with two cubs. Finally, you can make it out with the binoculars. Kind of exciting, kind of not. It mostly made me want to get a bear costume and frolic around at great distances while the tourists wet their pants. Then I could move closer and do line dancing. I'll do this next time.

We got the campground at 4:30 to discover that it might be full. After much searching, we find one of the last sites. The sites are packed pretty close here, and we're somewhat surrounded by other tents and RVs, but we're glad to be able to stop driving. Actually, this had been a long day, and we were starting to think more about how nice it would be to get home again. Lena apparently has a strong allergic reaction to high-altitude pines, and the Claritin wasn't cutting it. This was my problem as well as hers because Lena's default sneezing mode is what I call a "scream sneeze." My knee was a bit sore also. Lena, who would be dictator tomorrow (we take turns), announced that we would probably get the hell out of Dodge.

But we had a job to do, so after a great dinner of something or other than we forget, probably hot dogs and beans, we went on a hike to the Norris thermal area. Most of Yellowstone is the crater of an active volcano (last eruption 634,000 years ago, but it is an active volcano -- it says so at the visitor center). About a half mile into the hike, we started encountering more and more fallen trees so there was a lot of climbing, crawling, and detours. After the big Yellowstone fire in 19?? the place is swarming with tall dead trees and new trees 6-10 feet high. The dead ones fall all over the place.

Anyway, we finally arrived at the geyser field, and got a good show.

We walked back to the campsite along the road, and we fell into bed around 9 PM. There's still a lot of noise in the campground at this hour, but we've got earplugs that filter out all noise, and we slept through until 7:30 PM the next morning.

Wait until you see what 2,000 pound creature greeted us right in the campsite when we woke up. Great video in the next post. Don't miss it. I know that the "camped in the crater of an active volcano" wasn't quite as exciting as what you expected, but this one will live up to its billing.

Devil's Tower to Prune Creek, WY

2009-05-26T15:49:00.000-07:00

We woke up to our fun view of Devil's Tower from the tent.

I had heard what I thought was a wide variety of birds, but when I got out of the tent, I saw that most of these different songs were coming from a single bird, this one:

I decided to go on a long bike ride, and Lena decided to stay at the campsite. With two long sleeve jerseys and a jacket I was very cold whenever the sun went behind a cloud. This was a great ride, with rolling hills and smooth pavement. Although the speed limit was 65, there was very little traffic, and the shoulder was wide.

This shot shows how the road wound through the farmlands. Click on it for a full view.

This picture was taken when I was 18 miles from the tower (where I started).

The cows along the route were apparently unused to bicyclists. One herd ran along the fence with me for a half a mile. Another herd took off in panic and tried to jump a barbwire fence. It looked like one was stuck, but when I came back it had gotten loose.

I turned around after 25 miles, and here I am with only five miles left.

I got back at around 12:30, and Lena had packed up almost everything. We took off and I felt that I deserved a 1/3 pound buffalo burger with homemade fries and a beer. I guess it's a little gross to always take pictures of half-eaten food, so I'm going to try to remember to take a picture before eating.

We arrived at the Bighorn Mountains very abruptly, and headed up over the pass. About halfway across Wyoming, in Bighorn National Forest, we started looking at campgrounds. We were at about 8,000 feet, and the first campground we came to was closed, and very snowy and wet. The next was Prune Creek. It was also snowy, but open and nice. Apart from the camp host, we were the only ones there.

On the menu was banger and mash -- that is, Aidell's chicken apple sausage and mashed potatoes (from a mix -- very good).

The wood from the camp host was soaking wet in parts, but after a while we had a nice warm fire.

We went to bed around 9:30 and slept well. We sleep even better than at home, partly because we're worn out after all the packing, driving, sightseeing, and unpacking. The mattress has done great now that we pamper it by putting a blanket under it.

We've got some adventures coming up. We camp in the crater of an active volcano, and a huge mammal comes into our campsite to give Lena the fright of her life. Stay tuned!

Sheridan to Devil's Tower

2009-05-25T12:01:00.000-07:00

Well, blog fans, time to find out whether we had a major mishap. Here is what the tent looked like when we got back from Keystone:

I tore open the door and found that everything was: DRY!

There was much rejoicing, and praise for REI. I really expected things to be pretty wet. There was a little dampness on one side, but that may have been from spilling the water bottle. Everything was totally dry, not even damp, and we both slept well.

Since this was our first camping stop since the change to mountain daylight time, we were up especially early. Checkout wasn't until 1 PM, so we decided to have breakfast and do some wifi and sightseeing before packing up. This would allow the tent to dry out a bit. Here's the valley as we searched for a restaurant that was open at 6 AM.

We found this great place in Hill City, SD. After a breakfast of pancakes, eggs, and toast, we did major blog updating, etc.

Then it was off to Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse.

Here's the front of Rushmore.

We also visited the Crazy Horse monument. They wanted us to pay $20 for admission, and the thing isn't even finished yet. We got a good view from outside the paid area, though, and here's a shot taken seconds after a huge blast that was part of the sculpting.

This whole area (Black Hills) is a bit of a Disneyland tourist place, with reptile gardens, mystery spots, caves, and 5,342 gift shops.

Back at the campsite we put the tent into it's drying-out configuration.

This was an interesting bird, with an interesting call. Identification?

Then we pushed on to Wyoming, and decided to stop at Devil's Tower National Monument. Here's Lena working on her pointing skills.

We didn't even know that they had a campground there, and when we checked it out, we found it was uncrowded, and very pleasant. Our site was secluded, and had a nice view of the tower.

Here I am putting the second coat of waterproofing liquid on the tent fly.

As soon as that was done, we hopped on our bikes to ride up to the visitor's center. It was only a few miles away, but a good climb, and a workout because we only had fifteen minutes to closing.

We made it with minutes to spare (only to find out that it would actually be open a few more hours).

Take a look at this shot. Can you spot the climbers?
Here's a magnified view of that same photo, showing the two climbers.
The average time to climb the tower is 4 hours. There is only one person who has done it without ropes, and he did it in 18 minutes!

There was a good prairie dog town down below the tower.

Back at the campsite, we had a great chicken-apple sausage meal cooked over charcoal.

And had a great sleep.

Stay tuned for a major change in elevation and temperature.

Chamberlain, SD to Sheridan Lake in the Black Hills

2009-05-24T07:05:00.000-07:00

We had a quick breakfast of oatmeal, coffee and hot cocoa as the sun shone on the bridge across the Missouri.
Then off we went. When I gassed up the car, I noticed a sign saying "Don't leave the gas pump unattended, you will have to pay for any spilled gas." Sure enough, I heard a click after our tank was full, but the gas continued to flow out of the nozzle. I couldn't get it to stop. I pulled the nozzle out and pressed the tip against the ground, but it kept flowing. I finally got it to turn off. When I started the car there was a huge explosion, and flames covered the bikes and the back of the car. No, that was the part I made up. No flames, just a pool of about a galon of unleaded on the pavement. I told the gum-smacking girl attendent about the problem, but I had a feeling that they weren't going to fix it. Could they really view that dangerous situation as a profit center?

Anyway, our next obligatory stop was Wall Drug. The Hustead's opened it in 1931, but because the town was so small, they just didn't get enough business to survive. Thousands of tourists drove by Wall, to get to Mount Rushmore, but they never stopped. Ted then had the idea of putting up signs on the highway for "Free Ice Water," and when they got back from erecting them, there was a line out the door.
Wall drug was actually pretty amusing, with a fascinating collection of western-themed paintings.

We worked hard to counteract the effects of our healthful breakfast.

And then, it was on to Badlands...

I was surprised to see a flock of pelicans overhead, who had perhaps taken a wrong turn somewhere.

Nice scenery.
We stopped to fix some lunch at the visitor's center. They had a machine for getting ice, but I noticed that there were some quarters stuck in it. A little work with my Swiss Army Knife's tweezers, and I was 25 cents richer!

We fixed a simple lunch,

and then we were on our way.

We traded 12 miles on a washboard dirt road (Gunilla was so happy to be on a dirt road, that she jumped out of her window mount) to see some prairie dogs,

and buffalo (aka bison).

An hour later we were now coming to Rapid City. The clouds were so dark and ominous, that I started wondering whether our 16-year-old, heavily used tent would still do a good job of repelling water. Because of this, we stopped at a huge outdoor store, and purchased some tent waterproofing spray.

We had some pretty hard showers while scouting out campgrounds, but Lena didn't bring up the "M" word once, and we ended up at the Sheridan Lake campground in the Black Hills of South Dakota. The weather kept the campground from being full, and I set up the tent while Lena set out the rotisserie chicken that we'd picked up at Wal-Mart. I applied the water repellent spray with a cloth (the spray part didn't work), and the rain started just as I was finishing.

Dinner was great, and only a little wet; It wasn't as dreary as it looks here.

After dinner, we headed in to Keystone to nab some wifi, and update the blog. This young bighorn (?) sheep was at the entrance to the campground, and seemed to be shedding his winter coat.

Halfway to Keystone, the heavens opened up. This was a major-league thunderstorm, and we had to pull off the road twice due to lack of visibility. I didn't have much hope for the tent, which had all our sleeping bags and pillows set up inside. Lightning strikes came every 30 seconds or so, with some being very close.

They didn't have any WiFi in Keystone, so we just hung out and had some soft-serve ice cream. I took these pictures to give you a feeling for the intensity of the rain.

As we sat there, we considered our options if everything in the tent was soaked when we returned. The first was to leave the tent overnight, and stay in a hotel. We checked a Keystone hotel, but the only rooms they had left were the honeymoon suite and some other expensive suites. The second option was to suffer through a cold wet night. A third was to sleep in the car at the campsite. Fourth, we could pack up all the soggy stuff and head off to a less-populated area and check into a hotel.

Finally, the rain let up a bit, so we got in the car and headed back to the campsite. As we drove in, we saw the two young women in the neighboring site packing up their water-saturated tent -- not a good sign.

I jumped out of the car, and went over to the tent to rip open the door. Would everything be dry, or would it be a sodden mess? Would we be having a major mishap?

Find out in our next post!

Sergeant Bluff to Chamberlain, SD

2009-05-23T05:49:00.000-07:00

Today was "wait for the credit cards" day, and it started with the Econolodge breakfast:

The actual breakfast was not quite as nice as the one in the picture, but it wasn't bad. We had bagels and toast and orange juice.

I then camped out in the lobby at 8 AM, working on the blog and waiting for the FedEx guy. I called the BofA to make sure it the cards had gone out, but the answer was ambiguous.

Lena spelled me at 10, and at 10:45 FedEx pulled up with our new cards. Much rejoicing, and we were ready to resume our trip.

So off we went across South Dakota, flying along at 75 MPH. We made the obligatory stop at the "World's Only" Corn Palace, in Mitchell, SD, which has been redecorated with corn parts annually since 1890.

Mitchell is a small town, but they have a modern mass transit system:
The overpriced cornball was quite tasty.
We got one of the last campsites at the American Creek campground in Chamberlain, SD. It was a nice place on the edge of the Missouri River.

We rode our bikes into town and got food for dinner and breakfast, and had a good nights sleep.

Thunderstorm adventure coming up in the next post!

Kansas City to Sergeant Bluff

2009-05-22T18:30:00.000-07:00

Before I get to our major mishap, here's an interesting statistic about the first half of the trip. When I googlemapped the distance from home to St. Louis, the answer I got was 2,194 miles. That was the straight route. Our actual driving distance to St. Louis was 3,331 miles! Here's a general map of our route:

Now to the mishap. I received an automated email alert from the credit card company saying that there was some unusual activity going on. Indeed, it turned out that someone had gotten our credit card number and was testing it to see if it was valid. So, we had to cancel the card and get a new one. Normally this involves a new card being sent out and arriving in a week or so, but that wouldn't work so well on our trip.

Perhaps this isn't a major mishap, just a medium mishap. However, I've found that without a credit card, one feels a bit like a second-class citizen. You can't reserve a hotel room or campsite, gasoline purchases aren't as quick and easy, and you have to track your purchases manually. Also, the mishap is putting a crimp in the free-wheeling nature of our trip.

So, I wanted to get the new cards while ASAP. The problem was discovered on the Friday before Memorial day weekend, adding to the complication. But with some time spent on the cell phone at a rest area, I set up a motel stay at an Econolodge, and arranged for overnight Fedexing (with Saturday delivery) of the new cards. That's why, as I write this, I'm sitting in the lobby of the Econolodge.

Our room was in cellblock A:

Actually, the hotel isn't bad at all. Small, but clean and comfortable. The rooms smell slightly of cigarette and fertilzer, but the advantages of being 20 feet from your car outweigh the lack of cushiness.

We had planned to go a lot further on this first day of our return trip, but it was better to get the card shipment all set up before late afternoon.

We took advantage of our change in plans by going on a bike ride in this super-flat region.

Trains are something we don't have at home, so we didn't mind waiting for this mile-long (?) train of grain cars to pass.
We headed out on the straightest road I've ever ridden on. There wasn't much change in scenery and no turning or climbing, so it felt more like riding a stationary bike than a real bike. However, the weather was great -- it felt a like big thunderstorm or tornado was about to arrive. There were also a lot of interesting smells -- seriously.

We've found that roads are not very bike-friendly here in the Midwest. I found this to be true in St. Louis and Kansas City as well. I had gone on a short ride from Jenny's apartment in KC, but had to just tool around the residential neighborhoods, since the bigger roads didn't have much room for bikes.

Our Iowa route had a concrete road with no paved shoulder. All but one of the cars gave us plenty of space; they were driving around 60 MPH.

We headed into Bronson, Iowa, a community with perhaps 80 residents.

The ride was 23 miles altogether, and we felt that we burned off those BBQ calories we'd accumulated.

We picked up some more healthful sandwiches at Subway, and had a relaxing dinner at the motel.

Did the new credit cards arrive to make us whole again? Find out in tomorrow's post!

More Car Shopping Days

2009-05-21T17:05:00.000-07:00

This post is for several days in Kansas City...

Most of our time in Kansas City was spent car shopping. Jenny did all the brainwork, and Mom and Dad were the chauffeurs -- taking her to the different cars she uncovered on Craigslist. She concentrated on Toyota Echos and Corollas and Honda Civics under $6,000 or so. It was important to complete this before we left, since then she'd have no transportation to the car candidates.

This was a major job: Jenny would run a Carfax report, then Gunilla would take us to a car, Jenny would test drive it, and, if interested, take it to an autoshop for evaluation. Was she successful? Find out at the end of this post.

We also interspersed some unpacking and couch reassembly. Here's the couch put back together:

Another priority was air conditioner shopping. She got this one for her bedroom for $40.

We took some time for walking around and eating. Here's a gondola driver on the river near the plaza near Jenny's apartment:

And Jenny prepared a delayed Mother's Day brunch for Lena:

And here's our shrimp burrito night -- tasty!

Two Gunilla stories:

1. At one point Lena and Jenny were out doing errands. They stopped in a parking lot and asked Gunilla for the closest grocery store, and she told them of a "Price Chopper" supermarket 0.0 miles away. They thought that was a silly answer, until they looked up and saw that they were right in front of the store.

2. One dark night driving back to the apartment, Gunilla really lost it. She kept recalculating and giving weird directions, then she said something completely new. She said "A better route is available." Yeah, no kidding. Not sure how I was supposed to respond to that.

When Jenny got her apartment through an agency, her reward was a $100 gift certificate at Cort's furniture store. While Jenny looked at what she could get for $100, I played with the Warren Buffett cardboard cutout.

This is me giving him stock advice:

We sampled some great barbecue here. The best was Jack Stack's Barbecue. We split a dinner for two (ribs, three kinds of sliced meat, and two orders of beans). There was still too much for us, and we took some meat home for sandwiches the next day.

The food was just about as good at Oklahoma Joe's, situated inside a gas station:

Back to the car shopping. On Wednesday evening, two days before we were scheduled to leave, it was down to two Honda Civics. One was a 2001 around $6,000, with 112,000 miles. It was at a used car dealer's and looked very good, but the mechanics evaluation discovered some problems. The other was a 2001 with 102,000 miles, and only cost $3,700. It did better in its mechanic evaluation, but it was a "salvage" vehicle. That means that it had been totaled. That sounds worse than it was, since it doesn't take much to "total" a vehicle that is almost nine years old. A riskier purchase, but that risk came with a cost savings of over $2,000. Note that Dad stayed out of the decision making.

Speaking of mileage, in the midst of all this driving, our Echo reached the milestone of 150,000 miles:

I wanted to get a photo at exactly 150,000, but that occurred that night in the wilds of Kansas City, when Gunilla was misbehaving.

Jenny did a lot of thinking about these two Civic options, and a lot of bargaining with the motivated sellers. She was just about to pull the trigger, when she spotted a newly posted 2001 Toyota Echo with only 78,000 miles for $4,500. This was just what she'd been looking for. She had the seller meet her at an auto shop where it got a clean bill of health, and after a few hours of haggling, she got it for $4,100.

Note that the above narrative doesn't convey all the complicated logistics of finding mechanics, driving here and there, following each other on the highway, and cell-phone negotiations. These were exhausting days for all.

But we picked up her new car the night before our early departure, and here's her new car, together with ours (all packed up for our return trip):

Stay tuned for our first major mishap!

Car Shopping Day

2009-05-18T17:54:00.000-07:00

Today was break day for Lena and Me while Jenny unpacked and started searching Craigslist for a used car to purchase. We went to look at this Echo

and Jenny is researching it now.

But the best part of the day was this: As we drove by a Krispy Kreme donut shop, Jenny noticed the "Hot Donuts" sign was on and said "When that sign is on, you can get a free donut!" So we made a stop, and, sure enough, Jenny and I (Lena was able to resist) had hot, fresh donuts right off the conveyer belt. This is something that you do not want to miss -- much better than a cold donut. Best donut I ever ate.

After Jenny made us a spaghetti dinner, I posted this blog entry, which means, that for the first time in the trip, I'm completely up to date!

Moving Day

2009-05-17T16:37:00.000-07:00

Work, work, work, and finally everything was out of the apartment.

And it actually fit in the truck.

So we drove off in our caravan -- I drove the Echo (with Gunilla) in front, and Lena and Jenny were in the the U-haul behind. We communicated with our Motorola walkie-talkies and it worked perfectly. It felt like I was towing a trailer with a 500 foot tow rope; I'd change lanes and the U-haul would change lanes.

The lunch stop was at JJ's Barbecue for some pulled pork and beef brisket.

This is a restaurant in which what you're eating is posted on the wall.

After another hour, both the drivers were getting sleepy, which called for strawberry shortcake and several cups of coffee. We split the dessert three ways, and still there was plenty.

Jenny supplemented the coffee with jumping jacks to wake up.

We finally arrived at the apartment, and found that unloading was easier than loading.

But we had one major problem: the couches were too big to make the turn around the landing up the stairs, and also were too wide for the doors to the apartment. After a lot of thinking cap work, we realized that they had to be dismantled somehow. Luckily, because the had recliners on each end, the sections had to be independent, and sure enough, I only had to remove eight bolts to get things apart. I took this picture to help in the reassembly:

With them separated, it was pretty easy to get them into the apartment. Here are the two parts of the loveseat.
After everything was unloaded, we rewarded ourselves with a CPK (California Pizza Kitchen) from the Plaza.
Kansas City wasn't hot, so we all fell asleep quickly even though Jenny didn't have an air conditioner yet.

Packing Day

2009-05-16T10:14:00.000-07:00

Today was packing day and Jenny's find-and-buy-huge-bulky-things-while-I-have-the-U-Haul day. That is, the only time the Jenny could conveniently buy a couch, table, or chairs from Craigslist is when she has a large vehicle to pick them up in. She had all the couches and garage sales picked out ahead of time, and early Saturday morning we picked up her U-Haul truck (somewhat smaller than the one shown here).
Then it was off to the garage sales. Here's Jenny parking it in a tight spot five minutes after she got it. It wasn't pretty.

The first garage sale had a dresser that she wanted, but as we pulled up someone else was carrying it away. The second had a couch and chair. She was on the fence about it, but just when she decided it would work, someone else said "I'll take it."

The next couch from craigslist had many people interested in it. It was 50 minutes away, and the owners wouldn't be home until 12:30. We'd been invited to a Dim Sum meal at a great restaurant with several of Jenny's best friends at 11, so we went there early, and were just finishing up when everyone else arrived.
We also realized that we hadn't gotten the dolly that came with truck, so we picked that up.
Jenny and I then headed off to nab this couch, and located it in a new subdivision in the middle of nowhere.

The couch was a large one with recliners on each end. A matching loveseat was thrown in for free because it was broken. Jenny also got a dining room table with free chairs (because the dogs had chewed on the legs), and bargained the seller down to $115. The couches look great, and I'll post pictures of them in a later post. I'm sitting in the loveseat now, which I fixed by tightening two bolts that had come loose.

Getting it out of the the house and into the U-Haul was a bear, since these things are heavy. It barely fit through the door.

Next we went down into the garage to get the kitchen chairs. There we found a mud encrusted, smelly, basketball-sized snapping turtle that had somehow gained entry or been put there. Picture this one covered in dried mud.

I tried picking it up by grabbing the sides of the shell, but it had very sharp claws that it raked against my fingers. Anyway, we confirmed that the smell was coming from the turtle and not the chairs, loaded up, and headed off to buy a bureau. In the course of a few hours she had a couch, loveseat, table, chairs and bureau for a total expenditure of $175.

Now to get all this stuff into the truck. U-haul has nice tidy diagrams showing how the different sized boxes fit on top of one another and they all fit neatly into the truck, like a Rubic's cube.

In the real world, however, things come in all different shapes and sizes, so fitting them in efficiently can be a struggle. At this point, we weren't sure everything would fit.

Jenny put together a scrounge meal, partly in an attempt to use up as much remaining food as possible. I tried valiently to reduce the supply of booze, but had to admit defeat after a while. The Bailey's Irish Cream was the best.

We were exhausted by evening. Since we had to pack Jenny's bed, it meant pulling out and inflating our airbed. When I finally collapsed onto it, I realized that it was partially deflated. That is, it had a new leak!

I don't understand what is causing these pinprick leaks. Before we use the airbed again, I'm going to buy something to put under it to protect it.

It took me 30 minutes to find the leak, and repair it. Then we had to wait another 30 minutes for the glue to cure, but we finally passed out, ready for the final packing and the drive to Kansas City tomorrow.

Commencement Day 2

2009-05-15T08:55:00.000-07:00

The university ceremony for all graduating students was on this second day, and there were robes everywhere.

It was pretty hot in the sun for this 2.5 hour ceremony. It would have been shorter if the speaker's podium had been in the sun. There were a few periods of welcome cloudiness and some nice breezes, but I was glad not to be wearing a robe.

Videos

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Lena fell asleep during the main commencement speech, and by setting the camera sounds to "mute," I got some great shots of this. I have been forbidden from posting them on the blog, so you'll just have to take my word that they were really funny.

Next, it was on to the famous Ted Drewes frozen custard shop. This is the best frozen dessert I've ever had.

The focus then shifted from graduation to moving, so we did more packing and errands, followed by a well-deserved graduation dinner at a wonderful Indian restaurant (A Taste of India). The best was the chicken korma. It was the best Indian food I've had.

Then back to the apartment for more packing.

Commencement Day 1

2009-05-14T08:05:00.000-07:00

Today includes the first of two commencement ceremonies. This first one is for the Biomedical Engineering Students (BME) -- they are "recognized," and each student has his/her's name called out, shakes hands, and receives a folder for the diploma.

Great breakfast at the hotel -- we skipped the waffles today.

Breakfast was followed by running on the treadmills at the hotel. I discovered that running while watching TV and changing channels is not a skill that I've acquired, so there were a few extremely humorous three stooges type moments as I windmilled around but didn't quite fall.

Next, it was time to iron the clothes that have been scrunched up in the trunk for thousands of miles, and then on to the ceremony.

We had great weather. Here are some pictures to give you a feeling for the day:

Here are all of the BME students:

Jenny with fellow BMErs (Sarah, Jenny, Kristen, and Kavia):

Next was a calorific open house/dinner at Terry and Jamie's (Adam's Parental Units) with about 80 guests. Thanks Terry and Jamie!

Finally, back to the hotel to recover for the big ceremony the next day.

Arrow Rock to St. Louis

2009-05-13T18:56:00.000-07:00

As I mentioned, we didn't have any rain during the night, but we awoke to ominous clouds and some thunder. It was still early, and if we left immediately, we'd get to St. Louis way before Jenny woke up. So, we decided to take a quick bike ride. After changing from our "camper" clothes to our "elite cyclist" outfits, we headed off, and it felt great to be riding again.

However, when we stopped to chat with a neighboring RVer, we learned that tornadoes with baseball-sized hail were forecast. Although it would have been good for the blog to get hit by a tornado, we switched strategies from "go for a quick ride" to "get the hell out of Dodge."

This turned out to be a reasonably good decision, since tornadoes did come through the area later, killing three people (video of that tornado).

So we pushed on, and did run into about the most intense rain I've seen. At one point we had to pull off the highway and wait it out under an overpass.

A few hours later we arrived at Jenny's apartment, and were immediately put to work packing.

Her apartment,

shared with Jess, Jen, and Sarah was designed before the days of pesky building codes. It has bathtubs that you have to crouch down in,

stairs that encroach on the living room,

and twisty turn stairways that require a roadmap.

Those are just the kind of stairs you want when carrying large, heavy boxes.

Next, it was over to the hotel, check in, and sneak the bikes into the room.

This was a nice hotel (Drury Inn) -- hey, I could get used to this. Free beer and wine at night, free long-distance calls, free wifi, and free breakfast. No leaky airbeds. Of course it came to $165 for two nights.

BTW, our per-night camping fees have ranged from $7.50 to $26, averaging around $15.

Next, we officially entered the high-calorie portion of our trip with a barbecue at the home of Jess's 'rents (Mike and Carol). Mike (on the right) smoked ribs and pork for six hours for this meal -- they were fantastic.

Mike's been following the blog, and gave me grief about not keeping it up to date.

Here are the graduates: Adam, Jenny, Jen, Jess, and Sarah.

Next, I lay in the car in a drunken coma while Gunilla guided Lena back to the hotel, and we slept in this thing called "a real bed."

Kanopolis to Arrow Rock

2009-05-12T18:55:00.000-07:00

I've had reports that some of you aren't clicking on the images. They're not as fun in this small size, so don't forget to click for full-sized viewing!

The wind was so strong in the morning that I didn't want a big fire, although there was plenty of free driftwood/firewood at the site. Also, the wind kept most of the heat from getting up to the grating, so I held the eggs down on the fire, and we had a tasty breakfast.

Today was fixit day, and here I am holding the fender trim for 15 minutes while the 5-minute epoxy sets.
Second fixit task: Airbed. My overly sensitive hearing is usually a disadvantage, but it pays off in the leak-finding department, and I was able to locate the pinprick leak on the side of the airbed. I'm not sure what made the hole. The PVC cement and duct tape repaired it in short order.

The next order of business was to visit Lindsborg, Kansas, a town devoted to Swedish stuff. Lena had been looking forward to this since it was recommended to us by someone on the bike forum.

Unfortunately, the place was a little depressing because, due to the recession, it was deserted. This shot shows the ghost-town-like atmosphere.

The food was about 70% authentic, but good in any case. We had Swedish pancakes and, for lunch, meatballs and sill.

It was a pretty long haul to our next stop, Arrow Rock, Kansas. At least it felt that way because we had a really strong side wind, and were starting to get some rain. The rain began about ten miles short of Arrow Rock, and Lena was starting to use the "M" word ("Motel"). The rain stopped, but it felt like a huge storm was about to hit.

When we got to the campground, I wanted to set up the tent immediately while Lena registered with the camp host. The problem was that the host talked like Larry the Cable Guy, and he and Lena couldn't understand one another very well. So I had to translate.

Things turned out fine, and I got the tent up quickly, and waited for the rain, which never came.

This shot shows how well the airbed fits in the tent.

The campground was very nice, with lush grass and free showers. There were only two other campers. We had a Subway sandwich (purchased earlier) for dinner then read our books.

We fell asleep expecting a symphony of thunder, but it was peaceful all night. And the airbed stayed inflated.

Bonny Lake to Kanopolis

2009-05-11T15:44:00.000-07:00

This day started with a quick pack-up and a walk to the edge of Bonny Lake.

The water was a bit low here, this is normally the boat ramp, but it is now about a half mile from the actual water.

We had a good grand-slam type breakfast at the local VFW helicopter restaurant.

The tip of some of the trim on the car had come loose a few years ago, and had I glued it back on with a hot-glue gun. This worked fine in our cool coastal climate, but it was no match for the desert. So the tip came loose, and added to the road noise. This required some temporary surgery using the duct tape/WD-40 principle (if it moves and it shouldn't, fix it with duct tape. If it should move and doesn't fix it with WD-40).
Speaking of road noise, some of the pavement in Colorado and Kansas causes an extremely annoying whine or whistling sound when you drive on it. It's like a single note on a flute played continuously. This road noise significantly increases driving fatigue. I've never experienced this before, and a little research shows that the road engineers are aware of how annoying it is.

Texturing of roadway pavement surfaces is necessary to provide adequate resistance to skidding, and to allow water to escape from under tires to minimize hydroplaning. This texturing, however, has been shown to contribute to tire noise on rigid pavements. Large aggregate mixes have also been shown to increase tire noise. Studies have been conducted by other agencies to evaluate which textures provide the needed safety attributes, while reducing the noise levels or the pure tone frequencies or “whine” that are annoying to the public.

I'm surprised anyone can accept it. The only advantage of this noise is it feels so good when you finally get to a non-noisy part of the highway.

Anyway, the problem wasn't present on this dirt road that Gunilla chose for us today.

Dinner was a pre-packaged salad -- quite good. At home it's cheaper to make this kind of stuff ourselves, but on the road one doesn't have all it was raw ingredients, so it's cheaper to buy the package.

After dinner I had a flat-tire clinic, patching the two spares and the two new "garage" flats (flats that don't happen until after the ride).

More views of the campsite:

The tires weren't the only thing getting flats. When we went to bed it seemed that the airbed was a little softer than usual, and sure enough, at midnight we were hitting bottom. We reinflated it, and were comfortable enough until morning.

Loma to Bonny Lake

2009-05-10T04:46:00.000-07:00

We found the ElderTang. It had found it's way into the adventure bag along with the blue plastic cereal bowl. Much rejoicing.

Another Oh-Dark-Hundred start -- someday we're going to learn how to sleep late. The first job before heading off was to sort the clean laundry. It wasn't quite as dark as this photo makes it seem.

This had been a great "refit" stop. We were cleaned, laundered, exercised, reorganized, and rejuvenated.

This world's shortest video clip demonstrates something else about this campground: it was mourning dove central. Listen and you'll hear them calling. It went on nonstop, day and night.

Video

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Here's roll call for the bags:

Top row: Al laptop, Lena big big heavy Imelda Marcos bag, Al cold weather clothes, sleeping bags and pillows, biking bag, Al warm weather, towels and sheet, tent, tent polls, cozy tent bag. Bottom row: dirty clothes, kitchen, Lena laptop, camping bag 2. Not pictured: Adventure bag (jackets and binoculars), electronics bag, chairs, toolbox, cooler, food box, frying pan bag, paper plate bag.

BTW, here's how the bikes are locked to the car. The cable links through a towing point, and goes to a U-lock around the bikes.

Today we followed the Colorado river through the rockies.

I have no idea who this guy is, or what he's doing.

We'd planned to drive through Rocky Mountain National Park, but we called ahead and learned that the summit road was closed. We still planned to visit it (after all, it would be free because we had our annual pass), but as we got up in elevation, the weather turned snowy and windy, so we changed our minds.

This shot was taken between snow squalls, but it shows the lack of lane markers on the road (all worn away) making driving difficult (Colorado Dept of Transportation hint hint).

We've done a lot of climate changing on this trip, and sometimes we end up with the wrong clothes on. Here's a driver change near the summit. You can't see it, but I'm wearing sandals and standing in a foot-deep puddle of ice-water.

The weather was pretty bad here, so we decided to take a break and look for some wifi and coffee. We stopped in Frisco, and found a great place (Rocky Mountain Coffee Roasters).

I dove into cyberspace, got a few day's info posted to the blog, and when I came to the surface, it was sunny out!

We got our leftover chicken and coleslaw, and I got a beer, and dined al Frisco at 9,042 feet.

These next shots are best viewed at full size, so click on them.

Vail and Breckenridge were huge, with lots of new building going on. In most places more than half of the trees were dead. We passed through Denver and on to our next campground: Bonny Lake. This place was almost deserted, and a little desolate due to the cloudy windy weather. On the menu: Baked beans and hot dogs.

The coyotes sung us to sleep.

BTW, Our mileage has improved substantially since that first 28 MPG tank. We had a 35 MPG day, and two 39 MPG days. I keep our tires at the max pressure of 44 psi, but when I checked at Zion, they were at 50 psi due to the elevation change, so I've kept closer watch since then.

Thanks to those of you who have told us that you enjoy reading the blog. It's fun to torture you by delaying new posts -- ha ha. I'm still about four days behind.

Coming up: duct tape car repairs, followed by Larry the Cable Guy and killer tornadoes in Missouri! Don't miss it.

Arches to Loma, CO

2009-05-09T14:53:00.000-07:00

I woke up at about 5:30 AM, took a look around at the desert sky and saw this rising in the east. It's not the moon, it's Mars. Venus was above and to the right (please correct me if I'm wrong). This shot was taken at 4X zoom with our Canon A560.

The moon was setting behind the cliff in the west.

Here we are getting our quick pre-breakfast ready (oatmeal).
The above picture shows Lena doing her Bernie Madoff impersonation, which she has spent many hours perfecting. Bernie Madoff:

Remarkable, isn't it? Here's Lena's impression of Bernie Madoff brushing his teeth in the desert:

These shots to give you a feel for our location -- there's snow on the mountains in the distance:

Each day we discover a few hitchhikers -- that is, caterpillars who have cocooned themselves onto our belongings and various body parts.

Since this was a Saturday, we knew we might have trouble finding a site at the next campground, so we got on the road by about 6:30. We encountered a few roadblocks.

Many of the telephone poles have perches above the wires so that the large birds won't land between the wires and electrocute themselves. Here's one in use:

I made coyote noises to make him fly off and give me this picture. This bird is a _____________ (someone tell me in the comments, please. I'm too lazy to look it up myself.).

Our actual breakfast was at Starvin' Arvin's near Fruita, Colorado -- french toast, egg, and toast.

Right after breakfast, at about 9 AM, we went to the Colorado welcome center, and asked about camping. There was a campground about 15 miles away. We called, and were told that they had one site left, so we boogied on up there, and grabbed it.

This place was luxury for us. 9:30 AM, after only a few hours of driving, and we already had a campsite, and it had showers and a laundromat! This was like a vacation.

The water heater for the showers was broken (to be fixed in an hour or so), but I took a cold shower anyway because I am so macho.

We unhurriedly set up the tent on some lush grass, and then took off for a bike ride. The roads were great, and there was very little traffic.

We stopped and asked a farmer where the nearest town was, and he directed us to Fruita, about 15 miles away.

Here's the only hill we encountered; we were able to avoid it on the way back by changing the route slightly.

This was a great ride, except for one thing: flats. We got not one or two, but a total of eight flats. Four on the way to town, one on the way back, and three more that didn't manifest themselves until we took the bikes off the rack the next day. A note for you carbon dioxide cartridge elitists -- if I'd had a CO2 inflator with only a few cartridges, I'd have been seeing the sights of Colorado on foot.

Here I am fixing flat #1:

Flat #5:

Why so may flats? Here's why:

All of the flats were caused by these, which are called "goathead thorns." I had thought they were pieces of wire when I felt them inside the tire -- that's how strong they are.

Anyway, in Fruita we had a great a chicken/cranberry/pear/walnut/blue cheese salad with a side of pizza at the Hot Tomato Cafe. You can see my tire at my seat where I worked flats #3 and #4.

On the way back we passed a Mennonite softball game.

Yes, the women are playing in full dresses and bonnets and army boots. It was hot with a bright sun. You should see them run around the bases. I have to say that this is one goofy-assed religion.

When we got back to the campsite, it was time for some luxurious showers, with hot water. Four quarters for four minutes.

Now it was time for some stocking up, so we asked Gunilla about grocery stores, and selected a Safeway in Grand Junction. She took us there via a strange backroads route, but it may have been the best way. Before we started shopping, we wanted to update the blog and check email, so we asked for the location of a nearby coffee shop.

This was the point where Gunilla really lost it. The first place was "Coffeetime" and she took us on a roundabout route to someone's house. OK, we figured, perhaps that was the owner of a coffee shop, and the registered address, or something, so we next chose a Starbucks. Another convoluted route, and when Gunilla said "Arriving at Starbucks, on left" we were looking at a vacant ditch, with no buildings nearby.

We handled the situation well, and said "Gunilla, go to your room." Don't feel bad for her; she lives in Gunilla's Malibu Dream House. Here it is:

So we gave up on wi-fi, and went into Safeway. We were going to get some chicken pieces and firewood, and go back to the campsite and cook dinner, but then Lena had a better idea: Buy some cooked barbecued chicken. This was perfect, and we had a tasty chicken and coleslaw dinner back at the site with no smoke in our eyes, and plenty of leftover chicken for tomorrow's lunch.

Lena got the laundry started after dinner, and we decided to drive into Fruita for our wifi fix. The two coffee shops were closed, but the Hot Tomato had wifi, and although it was a loud yuppie type environment, we got our work done, and I posted a few new days of blog.

When we returned, there was quite a party going on at the mega-accumulator's site across the street (here's a picture the day after)

but we put in our earplugs, and went right to sleep.

Stay tuned for the mourning dove convention and sandals in the snow!

Bryce to Arches

2009-05-08T10:42:00.000-07:00

Since we were at 8,000 feet, the morning started out quite cold. I try to get the coffee started before Lena wakes up. She usually appreciates this. I did this in Vegas by going down the the Starbucks and bringing her a cup while she was still sleeping. She asked me why I didn't get a stirrer. But usually she appreciates it.

The fire was started with some nice dry wood that we brought from Zion. The menu was scrambled eggs, lightly charred whole wheat toast, coffee, hot cocoa, and OJ. Here we are halfway through.

The eggs were scrambled in a disposable frying pan. That is, we'd bought a few frying pans at garage sales for 25 cents each, in an effort to find the perfect small pan. This one failed, because it was difficult to clean. But instead of throw it away we brought it on the trip, used it, then tossed it. One less thing to clean.

We use Egg Beaters type egg substitutes when camping. They taste almost as good as real eggs, but they don't break.

After breakfast we did a quick hike down into the canyon. We wanted to get on our way fast, because it was a Friday, and we figured that campsites would go fast at Arches National Park, our next stop. Little did we know, but they were already all taken by 7:30 AM. It would be nice to call ahead and ask "When do you think the campground will fill up?" However, if you call the Arches number you get "Press 1 for English, press 2 for Spanish" and it's all downhill from there. That is, you generally can't get through to a real person.

So, back to our hike, it was cold but heating up fast as we descended into the canyon.

Here we are halfway down. The name for all these sculpture-like structures is "hoodoo." They are formed because the different rock layers erode at different rates. Usually, you have a very resistant layer on the top.

With these photos, the luminance of the shadowed and sunlit areas are so different, that it's hard to get a shot that shows both.

The bottom of the canyon was quite nice, and worth the climb down. We would have enjoyed a longer hike -- maybe next year.

Here's an overview of the canyon, back at the top.
Here's a video taken at the bottom.

Video

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After the hike we went to the lodge where I played the piano to keep my hand in. However, it was horribly out of tune, and the black key for Ab above middle C was missing, so I just played one song and left.

It was at this point in the trip that we looked at our progress on the map, and realized we had better get our happy asses in gear if we were going to arrive in St. Louis on the 13th. We had thought to visit Canyonlands, Capitol Reef, and/or Escalante, but instead went right to Arches.

We arrived at the entrance station at around 3 PM, only to be told that the campground had filled up early in the morning. They gave us a list of other campground possibilities. So we worked our way through these very nice campgrounds, each with 3 to 19 campsites, located right on the Colorado River. It wasn't an easy process, since the windy road was narrow, and checking a campground consisted of driving on bumpy dirt roads and looking at the tags on each site. We repeated this process at 7-10 campgrounds, until we were about 30 miles from Arches. Neither of us cracked.

At the Hittle Bottom campground, we decided that if there were no sites, we'd continue on to Colorado. But we got the last site (see pictures below). We were pretty tired at this point, but figured that we'd regret it later if we didn't see Arches National Park, so we decided to drive the 30 miles back to the park, and go through it. Also, the alternative was to sit at the campsite in the direct sun. It wasn't too hot, maybe 80, and it was a dry heat. But still.

So, back to the park it was. The pictures don't do the structures justice, of course. These hoodoos are huge and weird. My favorites are the gigantic, narrow wall-type structures (no pictures, sorry).

This next shot is of a hoodoo called "Balanced Rock." We came at just the right time, 'cause look what happened as Lena bit into her apple!

We would have missed that if the campground hadn't been full, fate is weird, huh?

Here are some of the arches that give the park its name (remember to click on these images -- the bigger versions are better).

The park is in the process of licensing the one on the right to McDonalds.

Next, back to our campsite for a cold beer and setting up. Lena's on tent duty today.

There was an actual cowboy herding cattle while we did this. I'm quite sure that it was not something that they stage just for the tourists.

At first sight, the campsite appeared so barren and exposed. But it was actually just perfect for experiencing the feeling for this big-sky kind of place. Note that there's no water here -- you have to bring your own.

Here is a picture of the picnic table. It was flat before Lena sat on it:

As soon as the sun went behind the cliff, it got even more pleasant.

Here's a video of our awesome 360 degree view:

Video

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We had the second pair of hamburgers for dinner, and they were just as good as last time. We would have to atone tomorrow for our three burger meals in a row. The Eldertang is still missing.

Wait 'til you see the pictures of the setting moon and rising Mars in tomorrow's post. I'm posting this entry from a cafe in Frisco, Colorado. The weather here is changing from snow to partly cloudy, so it's time to wrap things up and move on. See you!

Zion to Bryce

2009-05-07T19:05:00.000-07:00

Since yesterday's ride was the most dramatic of our lives, we decided to do it again today.

I've got a nice video of the ride, so come back here later to see it.

After we got back, it was time to move on to Bryce. Because on both nights at Zion we got one of the last available campsites, the "find a campsite" stress level was raised significantly. So getting to the campgrounds early has become a high priority.

Here we are after the mile-long tunnel near the east exit to the park. I think that's where it is, but honestly some of these things are already blending together.

I last came through Zion around 1970, and it was fun to see the petrified sand dunes that had stuck in my memory.

We stopped at the Thunderbird lodge in Carmel Junction (super small town), and had perhaps the best service we've ever received. Everyone who worked at this place was having a great time. We rewarded them by ordering a coconut cream pie to split for dessert. This is my new favorite pie flavor.

We arrived at Bryce at three in the afternoon, got in free with our National Park Annual Pass, and chose one of the last remaining campsites. We left some things at the site, registered, then went to take a peak at the canyon.

The most difficult thing about camping and riding with everything in the Echo is finding things. We've gotten better at knowing which things need to be in the passenger compartment and which in the trunk (which is essentially inaccessible). Since we make a OCD type sweep of every campsite when we leave to enforce our "no stuff left behind" policy, we ware pretty sure that we didn't lose anything. But there are times when we just can't find something.

An example of this was our at the Bryce visitor's center. I needed something from the "Al's Cold Weather Clothes" bag, and we just couldn't find the bag. We pretty much took everything out of the car, unloaded the bikes, and pulled out our hair until Lena remembered that we left that bag at the campsite to reserve it.

Another example is the ElderTang. It's missing. We have not been able to find it. We know it's around somewhere, but it's been AWOL since Zion day one.

Back to the narrative: there are trails down into the canyon, but for us these will have to wait until tomorrow, since it's getting late.

Here's our wonderful campsite. The wind here was just as strong as in Tehachapi. We camped next to some 80-year-old Norwegian bachelor farmers who were friendly but shy, and fun to talk with.

We're at about 8,000 feet above sea level here, so the temperature started dropping quickly as the afternoon wore on.
I was able to shield the fire with the grate, but the fire was still like a blast furnace. The burgers were charred on the outside but pretty red inside. They were like totally good.

The urge to post the photos grew, and there was no wifi at the lodge, so time for some wardriving -- that is, looking for wifi hotspots. Actually, we think this was a public spot outside the high-plains institute. Here we are taking care of business and uploading the first Zion video:

An indispensible part of our equipment is the inverter that lets us get 110 AC from the car. Thus we can charge up or run the computers, charge batteries for walkie-talkies and flashlights, as well as the cell phone and Gunilla. Everyone has to take turns however, Gunilla one day, computers the next, etc.

The moon is almost full, and here it is shining through the trees at our campsite.

Well, I'm only two days behind on posting -- I'm posting this from the Hot Tomato in Fruita, CO. I'm working on a new way to write the posts offline and upload them all at once. I'll have a little more time to make things more interesting then.

Zion to Zion

2009-05-06T18:38:00.000-07:00

This day included an incredible ride and a bike crash!

Here are the rays of the sun hitting the opposite canyon walls in the morning, and shots of the campsite with our furry caterpillar friends.

We packed up the car and got ready for our ride up Zion canyon.

The start of the ride was on a bike/pedestrian trail. We were going to skip that, figuring that the trail would be clogged with tourists. Not so -- it was deserted.

This is where the "Wow" and "I can't believe it" part started. Every turn had more fantastic, huge cliffs to see. It's hard to convey it in photos, but the video below does a pretty good job.

It was only 8 miles to the Temple of Sinwava at the top end of the canyon, and we then walked on a trail for another mile or so. Note that due to overpopulation, this route is closed to cars. The only way to see it is walking, on bike, or on a shuttle or tour bus.

On the way down we were being passed by a tour bus, and I decided to ride over on the shoulder. However it turned out the shoulder was much softer than I expected. So I watched as my front tire dug in, and the bike and I are rotated around it." I landed pretty well due to dumb luck, and the bike wasn't damaged at all.

I had scrapes and bruises at around eight places on my bod, and the camera (back pocket) was a little damaged. This photo shows both my injuries and the camera's. That is, the little shutter in front of the lens doesn't always open now. But we're both improving and functioning well.

Here's a video on the descent through part of the canyon.

Zion Canyon Video

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We had such a great time here that we decided to do it again the next day. That's why this post is entitled "Zion to Zion."

I'm falling behind on posting, but have some fun things to come: Menonite women playing softball in the hot sun with full length dresses and bonnets, war driving in Bryce, Arches National Park, coconut cream pie

Vegas to Zion

2009-05-06T13:46:00.000-07:00

Here are the rosy fingers of dawn from our hotel room.

We were going to walk somewhere for breakfast, but I realized it would be simpler (and cheaper) to have some granola from the car. So I brought up the cereal and milk, and we had a more nutritious breakfast than is available in Vegas.

I then worked a bit on the blog. Since WiFi is $12.99 at the hotel (in Vegas, it's all about money!), I just worked offline -- writing the text and editing the photos.

I didn't want to, but I figured I should take advantage of the fitness center while we had one. I went up and got some elliptical machine and treadmill in. Then it was time to check out. It took about six trips to get all the stuff and bicycles to the entrance.

I considered having one of these for the road, but we were eager to get out of town.

It was lunch time as we drove off, and I noticed an appealing billboard for a 1 pound NY Strip steak dinner at Terrible's Casino. We dropped in, and split it. A great lunch!

On the menu was an application for the gambler's club, which came with $5 of free slot machine play. You also got a free T-shirt for signing up. "Hey," I thought, "What a perfect graduation gift for Jenny!"

So we signed up and headed to the casino...

...and I plugged in and went to work.
It turned out that I had to add $1 of our own money to start playing, so I bit the bullet and put the money in and made all the maximum bets until the free $5 was used up.

It turns out I have a great talent for the gambling thing, and I turned a 715% profit:

We cashed out and got out of town. I wonder how many gamblers leave Vegas with this kind of windfall?

More praise for Gunilla: We needed a library for Internet access, and an auto parts store for some "Heet" (alcohol that we use for the Pepsi can stove). We just told her what we wanted and she took us there. WiFi at the libe worked OK for Lena but not for me, which was frustrating.

Then it was 75 MPH most of the way to Zion. Great desert driving, with an interesting change at Springfield(?). There appeared to be a wall that the freeway was going to crash into, but at the last minute a small crack in the wall was revealed.

We arrived at Zion National Park at about 6:30 PM and were surprised to find that all the campsites were taken! However, the ranger let us stay in one of the group sites with three other sets of campers. This turned out fine, as there was plenty of room, and we got a dramatic campsite:

Temperature was somewhere between 85 and 95 degrees, which is above the maximum operating temperature for Swedes born in JokkMokk, but it cooled fast, and there was a wonderful breeze.

For dinner, we cooked the freeze-dried chicken stew which has literally been in our closet at home for about 10 years. Coincidentally, it was set to expire on May 9, 2009. It was delicious.

The temperature was now perfect, and we had a wonderful night sleeping from about 10 PM to 7:15 AM. I woke at 3 AM to hear a strong wind and what sounded like rain. In the morning we determined that it was tent catepillars dropping on the tent.

Well fans, I'm burning out on posting to this blog business, so I may summarize a little more. However, we get all these great photos, and it's hard to resist sharing them.

Tehachapi to Vegas

2009-05-04T13:25:00.000-07:00

Day 5 started at about 6 AM with a cold blustery wind shaking the tent. I noticed that I'd tattooed my pants with the chainring while opening the trunk with the bikes loaded (it's possible, but stressful for the trunk).

We did a quick breakdown and pack up and had Gunilla lead us into town.

This coffee shop was the ultimate small-town locals coffee shop. Great service and good food.

The current owners purchased it in 1952, three weeks before it was destroyed by the Tehachapi earthquake. We had one waffle, one egg, toast and coffee. Totally filling.

We had a good tailwind as we headed through the pass.

We were in classic cowboy-style desert at this point,

and were literally counting the miles to the first rest area. No showers for a few days now, and we wanted to do some clean up.

We got there, and it was closed. Lena had a lot to say about this, and it was cute since she's never really gotten the hang of swearing in English. Without going into detail I'll tell you that it her swearing includes the words “fart” and “throw up.”

We stopped in Boron, your prototypical desert micro-town and home to 20-mule-team borax, but there were no public restrooms.

The next rest area was only about 70 miles away, and it was a nice one. They segregate the rest rooms not only by gender, but by bodily function:

More desert driving and Al utilized the napinator

It was now time for lunch, and we wanted to cook up the chicken that couldn't be cooked due to wind the previous evening. We fired up the Pepsi-can stove, shielded it from the wind, and did a stir-fry.

Gunilla held our hands and took us right to the door of the Sahara hotel and casino in Vegas.

Our room was only $24 ($36 will all the mandatory add-on fees and taxes). This hotel does the job, but it's a bit past it's prime. You have to wait in a long line to check in, the service is mediocre, and the rooms are “faded,” but it was great to take a long shower.

I carried the bikes in one at a time using the old “walk with purpose, look like you know what you are doing, don't make eye contact” trick.

It's actually a pretty long trek from four levels up in the garage, down the elevator, then through the casino and lobby, and up 22 levels in the hotel elevator. With the division of stuff into many backpacks, a number of trips were involved.

After our showers, we headed up to the exercise room on the 27th floor. I used the weight machine, and Lena used the treadmill and stationary bike.

We then rinsed off and headed down to the pool for a dip. This was the warmest pool I've ever been in.

We'd planned to pick up some coupon books which essentially allow you to do some gambling with other people's money. For example, you can use a match play coupon to get an additional $10 when you win. So, Lena could play even on the roulette and I could play odd, and we'd almost certainly make $10.

However, we were told that because of traffic, we didn't have time to drive the 10 blocks to the coupon place before 5 PM, and that we couldn't walk there. So we didn't do any gambling.

After another shower, we got dressed up like tourists, and headed down “the strip.” If you picture elegant people walking around town having fun gambling, then you have the wrong channel. Mostly what you see are overweight and obese tourists in shorts sitting in a trance in front of slot machines.

You see some elegant people, but so few that when they appear you say “Wow, look at that!”

However, I did see a few people laughing and clapping as in the gambling ads.

Sorry, we didn't have the camera with us. We had a great dinner at Circus Circus. It was a southwest club sandwich which we split.

We watched a relatively pathetic ten-minute circus act consisting of a girl hanging from and messing around in a hula-hoop. She was very good, but there's only so much you can do hanging from a hula hoop. She was accompanied by a keyboard player and drummer who seemed disappointed with the direction their musical careers had taken. We saw 150 people who wanted us to see all-day presentations on time shares in exchange for a free show.

We probably walked four miles altogether. It was less glamorous and flashy than I'd expected. I'd wanted to be overwhelmed with the waste of electricity of the flashing lights. But Lena enjoyed it a lot, and it fulfilled her need to “see Vegas.”

We headed back to the hotel and promptly fell asleep. Here's the view from our room.

Sequoia to Tehachapi

2009-05-03T12:58:00.000-07:00

This was an interesting day, with a surprise or two.

Writing this blog reminds me of an old cartoon that came out when video cameras were especially popular. The cartoon shows a guy with a video camera at a party and he announces “OK, now we can watch the video from the first half of the party!”

That's how it is on this trip: we do stuff and then write about it. Two other things to note: What we choose to do is influenced by how it will affect the blog (“Gotta camp by the snow 'cause it will make a killer photo for the blog!”). The other thing is that when I wake up at night, I can't get back to sleep because I'm working on composing the entries in my head. These very sentences were composed at 3:17 AM.

Anyway, the day started at Oh-Dark-Hundred.

Remember to click on the photos, because they look better when larger.

The wood was quite damp, and had taken a while to light last night, so I thought I'd just use the Pepsi-can stove for breakfast. But I gave the fire a shot, and it took no time to get a good cooking fire going.

Lena woke refreshed and happy, which is always a good thing.

It was then time to pack up and continue on.

I got better at packing and filled every nook in the trunk:

The route out of King's Canyon and through Sequoia was fantastic.

This photo shows the road winding down from the mountains.

I kept thinking that I should be doing this part on my bike. Finally, about half way down, I couldn't take it anymore, and we pulled over.

We set a meet-up point, Lena drove ahead, and I got seven miles of free downhill riding. I didn't go wild – max speed was only 32 MPH. It was very nice, and when we met up, we'd transitioned from mountain forest to desert.

It was getting towards lunch time, and we passed this cafe.

From our 55 MPH microscan, we decided it had an overly “yuppie from LA” vibe to it, and we continued on, but after a mile or two, changed our minds and drove back. Turned out to be a great place with a wonderful breeze through the over-arching trees. Luckily, the bird poop landed on our table just before our omelet arrived.

After lunch, heading through the orange groves SE of Visalia, we were ready for some showers, so we asked Gunilla for the location of the closest community swimming pool. She found one just a few miles away, and gave us the phone number, but a quick call showed that the pool was closed on Sundays. It seems strange to me to have a pool closed on Sunday, when kids are off from school.

Speaking of Gunilla, here is one of the roads she suggested we take:

She has such a sense of humor. Sometimes she doesn't realize that two roads that are close to one another aren't necessarily connected. Another quirk is that she doesn't like U-turns. If you miss a turnoff, she'll take you a mile out of your way to get back on the route rather than suggest you make a U-turn and go to the best road.

We stocked up on groceries in Bakersfield, and filled up the gas tank. I was disappointed to find that with all the steep mountain driving and the loaded car, we'd only gotten 28 MPG. Normally on a trip we'll get over 40. Hopefully with flatter driving we'll do better.

We checked out another pool in Arvin, CA (a few miles from Bakersfield), but it was also closed. We gave up on pools and made the turn towards St. Louis. It was at this point that we started climbing out of the central valley towards the Tehachapi pass. These transitions are great: one minute your on pancake-flat, arrow-straight roads, and the next your climbing into the foothills, with the loaded Echo straining.

The weather was great with big clouds forming over the mountains. As we came to the exit for the town of Tehachapi, we saw a sign for “Indian Hill Campground,” and took the exit. After some searching, and a stop to get a phone book, we called and found out what I knew but had forgotten: “Campground” no longer means “campground.” It now means “RV Park.” As in “no tents allowed.”

So it was back to freeway where we discovered a sign that said “Entrance ramp closed.” It was indeed coned off. This was a surprise, and there was no explanation or suggested alternate route. This is an area where it may be 20 miles between entrance ramps. But our road atlas showed another ramp three miles to the east, and we headed to that one.

To set the scene, I'll note that the wind was screaming. I'd guess the windspeed was a steady 55 MPH from the west, with higher gusts.

We get down to the next entrance, and find that it is also closed. We also notice that there are no cars on the freeway – something's going on. We found out later that one of the wind turbines blew over onto the freeway. That gives you an idea of how hard it was blowing.

So we follow the traffic along a detour route through the hills. It's about 4 PM at this point, and Lena's keen eye picks out a sign for a Kern County campground. After eight miles of driving up some very small and steep roads, we came to this place:

We decided to stay despite not being able to cut on trees. Much of it was closed, but the rest was deserted, and we pulled into this great spot.

The wind was still howling, and much gustier here. There was no way to have any kind of cooking fire, so our dinner consisted of Goober PBJ sandwiches and raw vegetables with spray on salad dressing.

If you've seen video of tents pitched on Everest, that's what our tent looked like. This was one of the only times I've actually staked down the tent. Being inside, it felt as though a giant periodically grabbed it and shook it. It was cold also – colder than the site next to the snow.

The airbed has been terrific. We sleep in total comfort. This photo shows how cozy the tent is:

It inflates in a minute or two with the four-D-cell pump. The pump ran so much faster with the rechargeable NiMH AA batteries in D-cell converters than with the batteries that were in it (when we got it at the garage sale) that I worried that I was stressing the motor. So I'd purchased some new alkaline D-cells, and found that it runs just as fast.

Because the pump is so important (not inflatable by mouth), we treat it like the holy hand grenade (Monty Python). It has it's own box with ample protective padding.

The winds died down at 3 AM, but picked up again by 4:30.

Bay Area to Sequoia

2009-05-02T15:25:00.000-07:00

Fun day today. We left the Bay Area around 7 AM, and it was an easy five-hour drive to King's Canyon/Sequoia National Parks.

Lena is able to do complicated sock knitting without getting car sick (good news for the sock recipients).

Al's talent is peanut popping:

We passed a bunch of these things. Anyone know what's inside?

Ominous storm clouds gathered as we approached the foothills, but we've only had a few sprinkles so far.

And here's our wonderful campsite in the Azalea campground of the King's Canyon National Park:

And I want you all to see how much trouble I go through to get these pictures uploaded and posted for you!

Lena allowed me to choose this campsite only after I assured her that it wouldn't be colder to be right next to the snow.

We're about 6,500 feet above sea level. The air bed inflated without problems and we have three sleeping bags for the two of us. Should be warm and cozy.

The pine cones here are much larger than those of the redwoods at home.

We had a nice BLT and soup lunch at the visitor's center.

Actually, I have to confess that we are doing our picture uploading and blog posting in the POSH John Muir lodge here at King's Canyon National Park (also we didn't really go to a rave). We hiked over from the campsite carrying our laptop cases like a couple of business persons. Both the campground and lodge are quite deserted.

Let me take a moment to tell you how much I like Gunilla, our GPS device. She's a little quirky sometimes, but she gets the job done.

I considered going for a bike ride, but there are no showers around, and the shoulders of the roads are narrow.

After the lodge we headed back and cooked up a healthful meal of macaroni and cheese with hot dogs.

Because the meal is so unhealthful, we supplemented it with ElderTang (i.e. oange-flavored Metamucil).

Then we sat in front of the fire inhaling smoke and reading. This actually was one of the worst fires I've seen in terms of the smoke moving towards you each time you move the chairs.

The light you see below is a good solution to the reading in the tent problem. I've tried headlamps and flashlights, but these “Mighty bright Xtraflex 2” book lamps work very well. Bright LED light that fills a page.

Also, they can be clipped to the ceiling of the tent for general illumination.

Bay Area Visit

2009-05-01T14:43:00.000-07:00

Day 2 began in Tom and Berit's rec room on their air bed.

As soon as Berit got her coffee infusion, she and I headed off for a 30 mile ride to skyline drive, on the ridge above Berkeley and Oakland. We had planned to ride up Mount Diablo (she rides up the mountain once a week), but there was rain in the forecast so we settled for this ride instead.

Berit is an animal, and dropped me on all the hills.

I'd forgotten to take my camera so the above photos were taken with Berit's cell phone. This meant that when we got back she had to figure out how to get the pictures from her phone to me:

Berit is the head honcho at the emergency room at a big hospital, so she's now dealing with all the crazies who come in wanting to be tested for swine flu.

A few random shots: keeping up with my piano practice:

Lena and Berit having a laugh:

This is their dog Sophie. She's nice but has some neuroses. For example, she has a doggie door that she knows how to use, and can use without assistance. However, when she wants to go out or in she won't use it until someone comes into the room and says "OK!" She will pee in the house rather than go through the door without the OK.

Departure

2009-04-30T13:24:00.000-07:00

Sorry, no major mishaps yet.

Packing was a real bear. One month of stuff for two people, plus bikes and gear, all crammed into a Toyota Echo. We pretty much spent all of yesterday packing.

Here are the final checklists, all completed:

It all fit, and and off we went.

An uneventful eight hours later we arrived in the Bay Area. The most important thing was that the napinator worked great. I'd patent it, but then I'd have to deal with the whiplash liability claims.

We arrived at our good friends' house (Tom, Berit, Nathaniel, Sam, and Sven), and Berit cooked a fantastic dinner. Then we went to a rave.

Napinator

2009-04-26T07:24:00.000-07:00

We don't want this trip to interfere with our afternoon naps, so it's time for one of Al's wacky inventions: The Napinator.

The Napinator will keep our respective heads from rolling from side to side while sleeping in the car. Slip out the normal headrest, and slip in this torture-device, and it's nap time.

Shakedown Cruise

2009-04-21T12:47:00.000-07:00

To check that we had everything we'd need, and especially to check the air mattress that I'd gotten for $4 at a garage sale, we went on a quick one-night camping trip.

(Note that we won't take the truck across the country -- we used it for this trip because the route to the campsite includes several miles of dirt road.)

The mattress is in like-new condition (it's just like this one). It's as comfortable as our mattress at home and fits perfectly in the tent. The pump inflates it or deflates it in about one minute using four rechargeable AA cells (in D cell adapters).

By 3:30 AM it had deflated completely, and we were on the ground. Since it fit perfectly in the tent, we pretty much had to get out of the tent to blow it up again. I've since found the leak and repaired it with PVC cement and duct tape.

But we had a good time in general, and a great breakfast.

Introduction

2009-04-12T12:44:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Al and Lena's blog for our car/bike trip from California to St. Louis and back. I'll warn you that this is going to be deadly boring and annoying to read unless we have some major mishaps. So keep your fingers crossed!

We have of course planned the trip in minute detail. I have written down this plan, and here it is:

Drive to St. Louis
Attend Jenny's Graduation Ceremony
Drive back

The plan also includes numerous charts and maps. Well, one map:

Note that due to a computer malfunction, it appears that we are headed for Cincinnati, but trust me, we're going to stop in St. Louis.

Before we begin I'd like to thank Bob and Marilyn and their 100% housebroken dog for housesitting while we're gone. Here's a picture of us handing over the keys, which will be done in the sky: