By now we were pretty good at the morning routine: wake up, get dressed, pack, check out of the hotel, load the car, grab breakfast, and hit the road. Today was going to be a long driving day, all the way to St. Louis, so we planned to break it up with fun little side trips.
travel
Road Trip 2010: Day 6
As was our new routine, we got up early, grabbed a quick breakfast at the hotel, and then hit the road continuing West through the prairies on I-90.
Road Trip 2010: Day 5
We slept in again today which was nice and had breakfast in the hotel. While waiting for our laundry to dry my daughter and I went out to the basketball court and shot hoops for a bit. I also took my disposable camera from the caving trip over to Walgreen’s to have it developed before we left the area. Later that morning we went back to the mall to finish shopping (picking up some things we had seen yesterday).
Road Trip 2010: Day 4
Ah, a day without (major) driving!
We slept in after our late (early!) arrival yesterday (this morning!) which was fine since the mall didn’t open until 10am. My daughter and I took a dip in the hotel pool and then cleaned up and joined my wife for breakfast. Then it was off to the largest indoor mall in the country: the Mall of America (or MoA).
Road Trip 2010: Day 3
Today was our longest driving day, just over 800 miles from Mammoth Cave, KY to Bloomington, MN (about 14 hours in the car). We got up early with the other family in our cabin, packed up, checked out, loaded the car, said our goodbyes, and hit the road.
Road Trip 2010: Day 2
We got up early this morning thanks to a particularly loud chirping bird in the woods outside of out cabin. Ah, nature!
Road Trip 2010: Day 1
We hit the road early this morning, grabbing breakfast from the free spread at the hotel and eating it in the car.
Road Trip 2010: Day 0
We’re on the road … Road Trip 2010 has begun!
Road Trip 2010 prep: loading up the GPS
We’re getting ready for our big summer vacation road trip starting next weekend: over 4,000 miles in 9 days through 12 states. As we finalize our plans, finish packing, and prepping the car, I took some time this weekend to get my Garmin nüvi GPS ready for the trip, the first step which was to purchase the latest map update.
Spring Training 2010: Recap
6:48am (MST): I’m at my gate in the Phoenix Sky Harbor airport waiting for my flight to Houston. My brother just boarded his flight back to Cleveland. We got to the airport a little later than planned thanks to overnight construction on I-10 that required us to take a detour. Then when we got into the Hertz car return lot, the attendants decided to check in everyone who came in before us first. But even with the long bus ride from the rental car center to the terminal, we made it through security and to the gates on time. The sun is just starting to come up, so I’ve got my last view of the mountains.
10:57am (CDT): I’ve arrived at the George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston. The flight here was uneventful and I made some more serious headway on “Anathem.”
11:35am (CDT): boarding of my flight to Tampa has been delayed due to a “regurgitation situation” (the gate agent’s words) on the plane from the previous flight (“too much information!” mumbles the guy sitting next to me in the waiting area). Apparently the haz-mat team has to clean the area … I hope I don’t get that seat! Although, on the other hand, that would now be the cleanest seat on the plane. 🙂
4:27pm (EST): back home in Florida. Another smooth flight, and this time the middle seat was open so I had a bit more room to relax and stretch out. Another good chunk of “Anathem” is behind me and I’m really starting to get into the meat of the story now (which I should be, given I’m about 400 pages in!). I’m now waiting for my luggage at the bag claim and then I’ll get my car and drive home.
Quick tech recap: I ended up not using the WordPress app on my iPhone to “live” blog these entries. I was just too “busy” during the day to keep making updates (and on Wednesday I accidentally left my phone in the car when we went to the game). Plus, the app is not well-suited to long-form posts with lots of formatting, links, and images. I do like it for moderating comments, though. I didn’t use the geocaching app on my iPhone either. We did fire it up once while we were at Camelback Mountain, but none of the caches were near our route, so we didn’t bother. The MLB and NCAA apps, however, were very useful, allowing us to keep in touch with other scores while out at the ballpark. I was so involved in reading “Anathem” on the plane that I didn’t even watch any of the videos I had copied into my iPhone or EeePC for entertainment purposes.
Thus our second annual Spring Training mini-vacation comes to a close. I already can’t wait for next year!