Author: kevin

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Uncategorized

Sexy Internet Access

Well it’s been a few days since the last blog post but here is an update. I must warn you that I’m typing this on the iPod Touch in the car so my punctuation and grammar and spelling and wording may be less that OK.

Anyway, we left yesterday morning around 11 AM for our trip out west. Goodbyes were sad as always but once we got on the road I think we were all pretty excited to be heading. Our plan is to extend the ~2300 mile trip to a wopping ~4000 mile trip, which we’ll be driving in a 7
day 6 night period. The reason for the extension is that we wanted to hit up a few of the more awesome national parks/memorial: Mount Rushmoore, Yellowstone, Glacier, Olympic, and Redwood. We’re not sure if we’ll make it to Olympic but we’ll see. Another huge highlight is that we’ll be stopping in Portland to see aunt Kim and Justin. I’m personally very excited to see the fam in Portland.

Anyway, so far we’ve made it around 1000 miles. Yesterday we drove to Sioux Falls South Dakota which was not too bad for a first hunk of road.

A few good things happened yesterday happened and one particularly frustrating things. Good (awesome actually): we took a bit of a side trip to Lake Dalton in the Wisconsin Dells. Google lake Dalton Dells if you want more info, but basically its a huge lake that burst open during a rain storm and totally drained out. We walked into the middle of the lake and it was pretty cool to look around.

that’s the lake behind us…as you can see, it’s very…lake like….

Bad: I left the two most important things for our trip in jenison: my money belt with passport, credit cards, and 1700 baht. Frankly it made me a bit sick and I still feel pretty stressed knowing I don’t have my passport and credit cards. Oh, I also forgot my GPS in my hotel room last night and we had to drive 15 minutes back to get it. So that wasn’t great. Here’s a picture Lindz took of me scouring the car looking for my passport.

Anyway now things are going great and as I type this we’re about 207 miles from Mount Rushmoore – its ~12:15 central.

Ttyl!

P.s. We saw an adult store that in big letters said, “sexy Internet access”

cool, eh?

Categories
road trip

Leaving today

Today, in about 9 and a half hours, we’re leaving on our trip. Nick is going to pick us up at 10:30 and we’re heading out. The plan is to take an ridiculously long road trip, traveling 4000 miles instead of the ~2300 miles we should be traveling. The route should look something like this HERE but we’ll see what actually happens. I’m planning on keeping pretty good track of our progress via GPS. We’ll see.

We’ll miss our families!

It’s strange to be without a phone now, and I know that once I submit this post I will basically be without a laptop for quite a while.
<3>

Update: Pictures of day one….2 hours into the trip…and Lindz is already sleeping…

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Uncategorized

Packing

I’ve been spending a fair amount of time packing and buying stuff to pack as of late, and it’s been a bit annoying. I say annoying because I’m a nerd and want to be prepared, but don’t really have a great idea of what I’ll really need/want. Adding to the annoyance of the whole thing is the fact that I know from personal experience then bring little is better to bringing lots and so my desire to be prepared in a nerdy sort of ways normally conflicts with what I know to be best.

I’ve spent around 200$ bucks on stuff that I’m bringing, around $120 of that I’ve spent on clothes that, sadly, people who’ve actually traveled extensively think are not great to bring. 100% Nylon long sleeve shirts in particular, which perhaps are gimmicky. For instance I bought one of these. I wore the shirt around for a while and it feels great, but they tell me that a 100% cotton shirt is better for the weather. We’ll see.

I’ve also bought a $20 film camera (Rebel X), a $30 8GB flash drive, a $15 dollar USB to USB transfer gadget, some $1.50 foam to protect my stuff, and a bunch of other stuff like travel shampoo, a tooth brush for $1.79, a waterproof bag for $7 bucks or something, a towel meant to dry cars but that will dry me, and that’s about all I can think of at the moment. Wait, no I also purchased a Let’s Go! guide to Thailand, and a spare 20D camera battery that has yet to come in yet. I’m a bit worried that it won’t come in.

I have a lot more to say on this subject, so look forward to a thrilling “Packing – 2” post coming soon! Maybe if we get lucky Lindsay will chime in with some thoughts as well!

Categories
family road trip

9 days

Well it’s the 24th of June (note to self: I think I left my watch outside on the hot tub) which means that there are 9 days until my dear friend Nick will pull up in his significantly underpowered car to pick Lindsay and I up. From there we’ll be heading across the United States of America (one nation under god) to sunny California. Along the way we’ll most likely stop at ________, ________, and _________ which I’m really excited about. I don’t actually know where we’ll be stopping. According to google maps the best route for us to follow would take us across Idaho, Colorado, the top of Texas, Nevada, and into Cali. This could be fun, though to be honest those aren’t the most exciting states. We’ll see.

Of course once we get to California we’ll be heading to Bangkok Thailand for the first leg of our five month (FIVE MONTHS!!) backpacking trip around SE Asia. Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Indonesia are our destinations.

Anyway, I’m personally starting to feel a bit nervous and a bit sad about leaving the ol’ family. It always is a bit sad to leave, though it’s nice to know that when I come back I’ll be living with them (or at least near to them) again. It feels better than going to college, because when I go to college I knew that I might only be home again for a very short period of time, with this trip it’s indefinite family time when I get home!

ta ta for now.