Afterthoughts about Goin’ West 2014
This is the map of my 16-day, Goin’ West 2014 trip: This surpassed my previously longest car trip from Grinnell to Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada, by a whole 17 miles!! I stuck pretty closely to my original route, with some new additions–especially Little Bighorn National Park and North Cascades National Highway–and only two major deletions. After the magnificence of Yellowstone, I didn’t feel the need to deviate 250 miles from my westward trip to see Glacier National Park in Montana, although I’d heard many wonderful things about it. I also didn’t cross into Canada to visit Vancouver. The trip included visits to seven national parks: Little Bighorn (Montana), Yellowstone (Wyoming), North Cascade, Olympic, and Mount Rainier (Washington State), Redwood, and Yosemite (California). The parks were fantastic and more than worth the cost of the annual season pass. My favorites were Redwood and Yosemite, but none disappointed. There were other parks…
Readying for the Road (1 Week to Go)
My preparations are well underway. The Red Barron will be serviced on Tuesday, I’m going to clean her trunk out today to lighten the load as much as possible and save some gas. I’m grateful to see the gas prices dropping. As of today, the local price is $3.36/gal, down over 50 cents from its high about a month ago. The last time I went on an extended driving vacation, the prices were near or above $4.00/gal.!! Looking at my gas receipts afterwards, I decided not to total them up because I really didn’t want to cry. Speaking of that July 2008 trip, I put up a Web page about it shortly after it was done. Want to see it? Like the man for whom Grinnell is named, we were Goin’ West. However, we went to see Mount Rushmore–something I’d wanted to do ever since seeing the movie North by…
Readying for the Road (Two Weeks to Go)
Greetings! Still two weeks before I leave, and there seems to be so much to do!! I got my new GPS last Monday and am quickly learning to make it work the way I want it to do. I’ve also gotten both my AAA and AARP memberships up-to-date so that I can take advantage of any travel services the two provide. Last night, I updated my playlists of nearly 8 GBs of R&B, Rock, Jazz and more. That should be enough to keep me musically occupied the entire trip. This week–starting tonight, I need to finally put all of my thoughts about the symposium presentation down on paper and begin gathering any books, scores, equipment and other resources I think I will need to take for that presentation. If I can do this now, perhaps I will have enough time to weed out stuff that isn’t needed and be less…