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A brief trip report, finally.

Easily the best family trip we’ve ever had. The kids were great, we were great, and except for a few bumps it was all wonderful. I also checked out of work to the greatest degree yet, and it was so nice.

5756 miles, about 110 hours of driving. That’s a pretty rough estimate; the timer on the car times when the car is on, not when the car is in gear. Driving was in a few big chunks: Home to twin cities (30 hours), there to Crookston (6), Crookston to Rapid City (12), Rapid City to Rexburg (15), Rexburg to Vegas (9), Vegas to Home (9).

Things we saw, did, or ate:
Some really nice rest stops, Children’s Museum of Minnesota, Happy Joe’s, Blessing for a 2 month old, Birthday for a 78 year old, Dinosaur Park, Bear Country USA, paddle boats, powdered donut holes, First John Philip Sousa Memorial Band, Big Juds, potato ole’s, Menard’s, Big Lots, emergency room, Bald Eagle (in the wild), hundreds of bears (in a park), canoeing, Mediaplay, Old McDonald’s Farm, pig racing, baby chicks, fishing, capsizing, Bellagio Water Show, Arby’s, Hoover Dam, Grand Tetons, Yellowstone, Upper Mesa Falls, Lower Mesa Falls, Henry’s Lake, Mississippi River, Missouri River, Colorado River, Snake River, Storybook Island.

5570 miles

Wish I had brought more Fatboy Slim. I’m jonesin’ for the breezeblock.

5373 miles

Our first encounter with Homeland Security. No busses or trucks are allowed on the dam, and you have to pass through a security checkpoint. The mini-van in front of us had an enclosed carrier on the roof rack and they had to pull aside and have it inspected.

Still haven’t toured the Hoover Dam, damnit.

Wednesday, July 7, 2004 10:27am
5340 miles

Las Vegas is so not my kind of town. Too many people, too much smoke, too much nastiness.

5207 miles

$1.99/gal for gas. Highest price on the trip.

5105 miles

Let me take a few minutes to extol the virtues of my Hiptop Color Sidekick, the little device I’ve been checking in with as we traipsed about the country.

I’ve used it to instant message, check my email. check baseball scores, keep up with lj friends, quartz, look up phone nuimbers, and make a phone call or two.

It’s a remarkable little device that I heartily recommend to anyone who has or wants mobile connectivity. It does what it does fantastically and cheap. The phone was $30 after rebates and costs an extra $20 each month above your normal cell phone bill.

The biggest drawback is that it’s a really lousy cell phone. The reception is horrible and it takes two hands to use for the most part. And this is probably a function of GPRS, the underlying technology, but there are annoying coverage holes where there shouldn’t be, like in a basement. Something’s wrong if I can use it from the middle of Utah but not my desk at work.

Probably the biggest piece of missing functionality is lack of syncing to any other tools.

There are many little useability things that are a nice surprise. The biggest is the keyboard which is really a great size for typing on. And a lot of though went into the layout of additonal symbol keys. Most punctuation is addressed through an alt-letter combo, but period comma and at are floating on there own. Overall it’s a pretty natural and comfortable typing experience.

5043 miles

Back in the land of the brown. Brown ranch land all around. Already miss the green. I wonder what makes green so intrinsically pleasing in nature? If you took Ireland and make it brown would it still be appealing at all?

4945 miles

The sameness of western cities is striking.

4685 miles

Getting set up at 4:30 for a 9p fireworks show. It’s evidently the biggest one west of the Mississippi. As we drove around town there were hundreds of people already sitting out.