Month: May 2009 Page 2 of 3

Well, I really enjoyed sleeping in a nice king size bed, in doors. I slept in good and feel nice and refreshed. Today’s plan is to go to the top of the Sears Tower, formerly the tallest building in the world. Then Milwaukee and finally Madison for the night.

Chicago rush hour traffic should be dying down soon so I’m going to get ready to roll out of here. I forgot to update the google maps “tracker” so I’ll do that now… Here’s where I’ve been:

View Larger Map

Well, it’s already nearly 1am here. But I had an awesome night hanging out with a long time online friend. We hung out and went out for an awesome steak dinner and then some beers. He showed me around the area of billionaires and Lake Michigan. I’m currently at the Best Western in Evanston and this is by far the nicest accommodations I’ve had since the start of the trip. Nothing much exciting happened on the over 7 hour drive here from Geneva. I saw a lot of people pulled over. Not me though. I had the cruise control on almost the entire way.

Anyway, I’m really tired, but I’m almost finished uploading all the pics. I haven’t done anything with the video. It has been a long day. Anyway I figure the pics are good enough for now. I’ll try to add captions probably when I get back.

Tomorrow’s plan: Sleep in until almost 10am so the rush hour traffic dies down. Then, drive to the Sears Tower and go to the top of it. After that, drive to Milwaukee, have a beer or two there, then drive to Madison where I plan on staying the night. Looks like the hotels there are $100/night too, but I think I’d rather stay in the city and hit up some college bars or something. I’ll have plenty of more camping to look forward to so I’ll take another night in a hotel.

So the awesome pics should be finished uploading soon. I’ve got all 3 days uploaded now. Check them out: http://gallery.james2009roadtrip.com! (For the record I don’t endorse taking pictures while driving… but I’m going to do it anyway.)

I might have decent internet access tomorrow, but chances are I may not even get on the computer. We’ll see how the night goes. After that I’ll be in the middle of nowhere for awhile until May 24 when I get to Denver. Chances are I won’t be updating much for the next few days, but when I get a chance I’ll upload a bunch more pics. I plan on doing some hiking in the Badlands. I’m sure the pics of that will be awesome too.

Enjoy the pics!

As I sit here huddled in my tent in sub-40F temperatures, I am happy I got this new sleeping bag. It worked well and I was warm and toasty all night. And to top it off I got a really good night sleep. Almost 9 hours!

Well I have pack up my stuff here and then I’m going to check out the Lake Erie beach front here at the Geneva State Park before hitting the road again. I don’t think I will cook breakfast this morning. It’s too damn cold. I will just have some cereal bar and a bagel. Today will be the longest drive yet. I might stop for a minute in Cleveland just to say I’ve been, but I have no real interest in seeing much of anything in Ohio.

Tonight I’m staying at a hotel in Evanston, IL. A real bed! High speed internet! I’m looking forward to it. Time to get a move on.

After leaving the Tumble Hill campground I needed gas. I had already had breakfast but when I saw a Dunkin Donuts right across the street from the gas station… I didn’t hesitate to hit that up.

Anyway after about 2.5 hours of driving I got to Niagara Falls. I walked for miles and took tons of pics. Can’t show you any yet, but tomorrow I’ll have high speed internet and I’ll upload them all.

I went to all the main points of interest on the US side of the falls and took a lot of pictures and video. Then I walked over the Rainbow Bridge over to Canada so I could take a look at them from the other side. No matter which country you view the Falls from, it is awesome.

Then after that I started heading west. Along the way I hit up a Walmart and got a new 20F rated sleeping bag that’s also taller. And I got a pillow. So, I’m totally set for a good night sleep. Camping tonight in Geneva State Park right beside Lake Erie. Fortunately it isn’t windy at all, but it is cold. There’s a frost warning in effect. I figured, I had to camp in higher elevations out west, it’ll be cold there too. So might as well make sure that problem is delt with now and camp tonight safely, instead of wimp out for a hotel. 🙂

Chicago, tons of pics and video will be tomorrow.

Well, night 1 of camping was successfully completed. I didn’t get a very good night sleep though. I don’t know how much sleep I got, but it was very little. I think the main issue with sleeping was my brain wouldn’t shut up. It does that sometimes. The other factor was it poured off and on and got quite windy at times. This of course made a lot of noise which didn’t help me get to sleep. And finally there’s a bunch of wind turbines around here which are quite noisy. Anyway, I stayed dry and warm enough. I really like my tent. It was 42F when I got up.

I woke up, got a fire going, and then fixed me some breakfast. I had coffee, oatmeal and I toasted a bagel over my campfire. Not bad for a camp breakfast. Then I took the tent down and packed everything up and hit the shower. The shower at this place is similar to a dorm. Nothing fancy, but it did the job. At least the water was hot!

So in a minute I will be leaving here and going to Niagara Falls. Since I don’t have my bike, instead of biking over to Canada, I’ll walk. With all the stuff in my car and since I wont be over there long, I figure it’s simpler to just walk over rather than drive. Hopefully I can meet an online friend up there, but he might not be able to make it early. I’ll call him up in a minute.

I have campground reservations in Geneva, OH tonight, but it looks like it will be getting windy and in the low 30’s there. I’m trying to decide if I should try to cancel (and possibly forfeit my entire $35) and get a hotel, or get some more equipment for cold weather. I didn’t plan on sleeping in 30 degree temps with 25mph winds. I’ve got plenty of time to think about it while I drive.

Off to Niagara Falls…

Well, I made it to Cohocton. It thunderstormed a bunch but now that I’m here it looks like everything is done. My internet connection here is extremely slow so no pictures will be uploaded. Got the tent set up and I’m about to cook dinner.

The drive was pretty uneventful with the exception of the thunderstorms. The only bad thing to happen so far, is my in-dash CD changer is messed up somehow. It doesn’t work, period. It ate a CD and that was it. Fortunately I still have XM and my iPod.

Pennsylvania has some nice landscape driving up 83 and 81. My main complaint with PA is their drivers suck. I saw way too many idiots driving in PA. Oh well, I made it.

So, I’m going to get the grill out and make some dinner. It’ll be dark soon and I’ll probably turn in relatively early. Tomorrow: Niagara Falls and Canada!

When I get some fast internets I’ll upload some pictures and videos.

Well, everything is packed up (except my laptop obviously). I’m ready to go! Next stop: Tumble Hill Campground in Cohocton, NY.

The weather looks like it wont be nice. Lots of rain and then… COLD?! Oh well. There’s no turning back now.

I will definitely be missing Maryland. Most of all I’ll miss Nancy and my mom and hanging out with my friends. But this adventure has been a long time dream and now it’s finally going to become a reality.

Sadly I can’t bring my bike. Below are the pics of the car fully packed. There’s no room for even a kid’s bike. Since I definitely don’t want to deal with driving across country with a rack and getting my bike wet and grimy from road dirt, I will just pass on the bike. It is one less thing to deal with anyway.

Here’s my car all packed up:

Here’s the route for today:

View Larger Map

Well the rain isn’t going to wait, so I should get the heck on the road! Let the journey begin!

So far, everything is a go. I got my oil change done and car looked over. Everything is green across the board. I stopped to pick up some final items at Bass Pro. I have a nice new backpack that is geared for trail use, a camelback hydration system to put in it, some camp cookware, and propane for the stove.

So now it’s time to pack it up. The weather is looking very iffy tomorrow and Sunday. There will be chances of rain showers and thunderstorms as the cold front moves in and then near-freezing temperatures where I’ll be camping by Sunday morning. I figure it wont get much worse than that on this trip, but who knows?

Let the packing begin!

Finally! The final is out of the way. It was really tough. But, forget about that because now it’s time to focus exclusively on the road trip!

Some new developments have happened with the planning since I last updated. First and foremost I now have my good friend Brian Cook confirmed to be joining me for probably the best part of the whole trip. He’ll be flying into Denver on May 24 and we will see Rocky Mountain National Park, Dinosaur National Monument, Grand Teton National Park, Yellowstone National Park, and Glacier National Park. He will fly out of Spokane on June 3.

The other update to the trip plans is I do not intend to see Minneapolis now. Two people I know near the area suggested to stay away unless I had a specific reason to go there. Since I don’t really know of anything in particular I want to see there, I decided to spend some more time in Wisconsin. They gave me some suggestions for places to see there. And the final update to the plans is that I have reserved my first camp spot in Cohocton, NY and I also booked the hotel I will be staying at in Chicago (Evanston). One potentially new development is another friend might attempt to join me. If you can make it out there Matus, it would be awesome. 🙂

I got a chance to test out my new tent. It seems to be solid and hopefully it will be reliable. Now I wont have to fumble around figuring everything out the first night I’m trying to camp. I still need to get a few more things and start packing. I also should get my car’s oil changed before the trip. I guess ALL of that has to happen tomorrow. So it’s going to be one busy day tomorrow. I really should get started right now.

Anyway I’m burnt out from Calculus right now so I’m going to chill out and try to relax some tonight. I’ll start packing tonight so I don’t have to get everything done at the last minute.

Finally… the adventures can begin!

Updates have been few due to the fact that I have been busy getting ready for this trip. But now I have a few things to write about.

As mentioned in my last post I planned on picking up a bunch of things at Bass Pro shops to start gearing up for my trip. I did that, and also got some new hiking shoes, and some new clothes as well. All in all I’ve spent about $600 gearing up for this trip so far, but I have more things I need to get. I will give more information on the things I am bringing later after I have finished getting them.

One cool thing I will have is a handheld high-definition video camcorder. This will be awesome for taking videos of Niagara Falls and other amazing sites I’ll be seeing. I also have got a very good 10 megapixel Canon camera that should be able to get some really nice photos. Nancy is letting me borrow her digital camera and she bought the HD camcorder for me. I have setup a photo gallery for all my trip pictures. The link is: http://gallery.james2009roadtrip.com. Most likely I wont be able to upload pictures on a daily basis. Much of the time I will be in the middle of nowhere without access to the internet. But I plan on uploading pictures organized by date so pictures can be cross-referenced with blog entries for that day. Of course, there is nothing there… yet. As for the videos, I will upload them to YouTube since there’s no way I can host videos too (yet).

The planning phase has been coming along. I have spent many hours in front of a AAA road atlas, campground books, a large foldable map of the U.S. and Google Maps. So far, here’s a basic outline of what I have planned to this point:

1. May 16 – Drive to a campground in Cohocton, NY and camp there for the night.
2. May 17 – Niagara Falls. Meet up with an online friend on the Canadian side of the falls. Try to get a good way toward Chicago that evening and camp at some location yet to be determined in Ohio.
3. May 18 – Chicago – Evanston, IL. Meet up with another online friend and check out Chicago. Probably drive through downtown at least. I will look up some tourist attractions. I will be staying in a hotel in Evanston this night. I don’t really intend to explore Chicago too much, but I’d be interested in seeing a couple of things. Maybe do some biking as well. I might check out a baseball game, depending on the circumstances.
4. May 19 – Leave Chicago area, and travel through Milwaukee and Madison, WI. I would like to see the Brewers Stadium and also the Wisconsin State Capitol. I also hear Madison is quite a nice college town, so I’m interested to see what it is like. I might do some biking around Madison. Depending on how things go this day, I will either camp or find a cheap hotel.
5. May 20 – Depending on circumstances I might check out the Wisconsin Dells, primarily the Cave of the Mounds. Then, drive to Minneapolis, MN. A possible meet-up place for one of my MD friends, Brian. If he makes it in that city or not, I still want to check out the city for an evening and see what’s up at the baseball stadium. Most likely stay in a hotel in the area, but this is not decided.
6. May 21 – Primarily a travel day. I want to get to Chamberlain, SD and setup camp around the area to setup the next day’s adventures in The Badlands National Park.
7. May 22 – The Badlands National Park. Drive around the park and possibly do some biking. I will try to camp in the park that night at a primitive campground. It wont have running water or toilets, but it’s free!
8. May 23 – Visit Mount Rushmore and drive through Rapid City, SD. I’m not that pressed to see Mount Rushmore, but I’ll be in the area so why not? I will try to camp somewhere in Wyoming that night, or possibly a cheap hotel.
9. May 24 – Drive to Denver, CO. This is another possible meeting spot for my friend Brian. Spend the night somewhere in Denver.
10. May 25 – Rocky Mountain National Park. Do some hiking and sightseeing. Camp in the park that night.
11. May 26 – Probably hike another trail early in the day in Rocky Mountain National Park then drive toward Utah and Dinosaur National Monument. Camp that night.
12. May 27 – Dinosaur National Monument. Spend a couple hours checking out some dinosaur fossils and seeing good ole evolution at work. After that, head straight for Jackson, WY. Most likely camp that night somewhere in Wyoming.
13. May 28 – Jackson, WY, Yellowstone National Park.
14. May 29 – Yellowstone National Park
15. May 30 – Yellowstone National Park, Grand Teton National Park

That is as far as I have managed to get in the planning phase of this. I don’t anticipate that I will plan out any further in advance before I leave. A lot of things can happen in the two weeks I have outlined above that could drastically change the schedule. But, for now, my plan is to do what I’ve outlined above.

So, now that I’ve got a pretty good plan, I still need to finish getting everything together for the trip, figuring out when Brian will be able to join me, and MOST importantly, study for my Calculus 3 final which is Thursday. Wish me luck.