I've been completely overwhelmed with all the compliments, good lucks, advice, and overall encouragement from those who have learned of our trip. I especially get a kick out of the "deer in headlights" look when I mention we're going to all 48 states in less than a month.

With 2 weeks left until launch, I'm stressing myself out with preparations, and who wouldn't? It'd be amazing for everything to neatly fall into place, but I'll probably end up scrambling the day before, trying to maintain order. It should be all right though, I'm in the process of finalizing inventories and checklists of everything possible. It's possible I might have benefited from Mom's organization genes.

To those of you who have given their priceless advice, I give you a big "muah" (well, in a VERY platonic fashion). All your contributions lend quite an influence on our plans. The exciting part is making "to-do" lists for every state. It's a challenge trying to fulfill everyone's national wishes, and I know if I didn't write them down, I'd drive on through without a second thought.

I'd like to say thanks to the folks on Roadtrip America and Saturnalia for their kudos, encouragement, and great suggestions where to go. I'd also like to give a shout out to Robby & Kristina for donating their poker winnings from our last tournament to the trip. That will at least get me to Vegas if nothing else, haha. You guys rock.

Regularly scheduled updates will increase the next two weeks, turning into a daily episode once launch time comes.

So here we are, less than 2 days away from the crusade. As with anything in life, plans are bound to change, and will be constantly in motion until the moment we pull back into our driveway a month from now. I never expect anything to go as planned, as it's honestly less stressful that way. That doesn't mean there ISN'T any stress, but I think you get my point.

Now that we're this close, I have news to report. Thanks to my buddy Mario and his crew at Avis, it's confirmed that we're commandeering a 2005 Chevrolet Uplander for the trip. This model has a V-6 with built-in DVD as well as automatic sliding doors. It averages 23 on the highway, adequate enough for me. No doubt this vehicle is going to be our saving grace.

And then I find out one of my travel buddies has decided to take his own car.

"Wait, what? HUH?!?!" Yep, I can see all your perplexed expressions. So here's the skinny: A few years prior, Steve bought a red 1984 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am, somewhat mechanically challenged and with 110,000 on it. He mentioned taking it earlier in the year, but I dismissed it as some crazy idea. I didn't really think much more of it, figuring it a pipe dream.

Well unbeknownst to me, in a matter of months the car was completely revamped inside and out, painted black, mechanical parts replaced, and now respectfully resembles KITT from the Knight Rider show (to which he's an über-dedicated fan). It's even got the trailing light bar in the front. I guess there was concern it wouldn't have been completed before the trip, but he somehow managed to pull it off and it's now all nice and shiny. I don't remember how much that cost, but I'm sure it was enough.

"But but but..." you cry, "Two cars mean more spending on gas! More driving for you! No tag-team effort! That car could break down, and then what?? Do you realize how many miles you're driving??"

Oh, if I had a dollar for every time I heard that. Not many have agreed with his decision. (I'm sure I could find a few supporters on the Knight Rider forums but that would probably be it.) I tried convincing him to keep it 3 guys to 1 car, but he's insistent on driving it and showing it off to the 48 states. So there you have it. Oh well, what am I gonna do? I'm not the kind of person to be mean and un-invite him, but even if I did we'd be no worse off than before, since we'd still have 2 people sharing the driving. And it's too late to find a 4th person to commit an entire month and join in.

At this point, he's more or less just tagging along now. Neither Tom or myself plan on driving his car, which means he will likely drive the entire 12,500 himself. I don't think he realizes how much that is. Hell even I don't realize how much that is. At least I can split it up with Tom. We're already going to get our arse kicked by the extended driving, but I can't imagine doing all that myself.

I will say this though: If anything happens to his car, I can't let that interfere with my schedule. Our timeline is too tight, and increased risk of delay means endangering the primary goal of all 48 states. I've dedicated way too much time and energy into this trip to fall short. The engine, transmission, and head gaskets are still original, despite all the other renovations. Should his car overheat, bust a head, or whatever else, and it takes more than 24 hours to fix, I can't wait around for that. He would either have to abandon his car and ride with us the remainder of the trip (unlikely), or he'd be on his own. I've been clear about this to Steve, so he's aware and says he'll "catch up" should anything happen.

All right then...

Isn't this great? So that's the situation. Don't bother chiming in with "WTF Steve?" comments. I've heard it all way too much, so it's time to move forward and let things play out as they are. We all have our cell phones and I bought walkie-talkies for us to keep in contact.

In other events, anybody want to start a pool for if Steve makes it back? (Or even half-way?)

All right. The Uplander is packed and we are ready to go. Man, the anticipation is nothing short of thrilling. So many emotions, all over a simple trip. OK, well not so simple.

I wanted to give thanks to everyone who helped make this possible. A big shout out to everyone at Palisades United Methodist Church for their prayers and extremely generous donations, especially from the Choir and Praise Team. I love you guys. (Man, someone get me a violin.)

Another shout out to the family for their donations in gas cards and birthday trip money. And of course, friends and neighbors who have contributed to our funding. You help untighten the noose and relieve financial stress. Thank you much!

The launch time grows near. I will attempt daily updates, but of course that depends on internet connections. With 5 possible methods of signing online, I'll do as I'm able. But if I fall into a remote area, we'll be out of luck until the next town.

We're on the road very soon. ::faints::

What a great start! Our launch time was scheduled for high noon, but at 2:30pm PDT found myself still waiting for Tom to show up, since it appears he missed his alarm, and his cell phone temporarily disconnected (of all days). So he didn't even get up until 11:00am PDT, much less ready to go.

Yeah, I'm going to attempt my best from terrifically altering the PG content rating of these journals.

The launch was pushed back 4 hours, which meant less time for Vegas evening activities. But it would at least be cooler, as the high was touching 112 today. Icky poo. I like heat and all but limits need to be set around here. Even in the dead of night it's been reaching north of 100. (Wheeee!)

We actually left right at 4:00pm PDT on the dot, after delays with the family and final packing and whatnot. We're only as fast as the slowest person in our group.

We met Steve (and KITT) in Anaheim Hills, and off we went from there. I can't believe it. We're finally on the road after all this time. We departed Orange County heading east on I-15, and seemed to be going pretty smoothly. We made sure to use the walkie talkies to monitor each other's status.

And here it comes...

About an hour into the drive, right outside of Victorville, CA, I notice Steve slowing down and radioed to us something was vibrating. Next thing you know, he said he had to pull over.

Dang, couldn't even make it out of California without a problem. It sounded like he just wanted to inspect the car and he'd be back on the road momentarily, so Tom and I decided to stop in the next town over to wait for him.

We arrived in Barstow, CA and had Del Taco for dinner (more expensive here but MUCH bigger portions), and then went to check out the train yard as Barstow is a massive hub for the rail lines (we're all train nerds here, you might want to get used to that). We stay in contact with Steve, who says there's definitely a problem but not yet sure what it is, so he limped to the nearest mechanic to have it looked at. We remain hopeful that he can rejoin us so we continue a little further up to Baker, CA where the world's tallest thermometer is. We connect with Steve again who informs us that one of the rear tires ended up crapping out. He has put on the spare and will limp to Las Vegas.

Good to know. At least we don't have to go back and get him (although I doubt he would have abandoned his car). We finish up the last leg to Vegas and check in at the Stratosphere. While waiting for Steve to arrive, Tom and I walk about 2 of the strip. Haven't been here since I turned 18, so some of it was a refresher, while other things were brand new. The Wynn was the main feature for us.

As we return around midnight, guess who finally caught up with us? We're back to a trio.

Steve had apparently installed used tires on the car, and one of them decided to bow out early for the trip. We regathered our bearings so the current plan is for Steve to head over to the tire shop and replace them all with brand new ones here in Vegas. If time allows, Tom and I would continue to the Hoover Dam and do the tour thing while he catches up. Then we can all head off to Flagstaff, AZ from there.

Can anyone out there sense a lot of "catching up" on this trip?

Man, I've forgotten what it was like to bask in 110 weather when you're outdoors. It's great to give the 'ol skin pores a workout.

After successfully engaging in 3 hours of sleep in the hotel, I showered and did the morning routine on the laptop. (Can't get away from being a computer nerd, no matter how far away from home you take me.) Tom and Steve's biological clocks are calibrated a little differently, waking up 4 hours later. I'm so terribly stringent about making time for the itinerary, but instead I'm quickly realizing the pace may have to be reduced. That's enough to make me bang my head against a dromedary.

After we all cleaned up and left the room, Steve went to the local tire store (on his almost-flat spare) to ditch the used tires. Meanwhile Tom and I got our free tickets to head up to the very top of the Stratosphere. This is something I wanted to do last time but didn't get the chance.

Freakin' scary. A fan of heights I am not. So looking straight down, straight out, or just straight up gave me the hibblie-jibblies. Have to admit I was probably better off than the people on the thrill rides up there. Some of them dangle you over the edge. Uh yeah no.

We headed back down and met up with Steve while his car was still being "re-tired" (pray I further dispense with bad puns). I attained the state's magnet and postcard at the gift shop (something to repeat 47 more times), and restocked on some supplies. I blew the leading US$50 gas gift card on the first fuel refill. Yikes indeed. Not used to a 20 tank.

Once Steve's car was done, we finally left Vegas, and started our trek to Arizona. Due to the leisurely pace of my companions, we left around 2:30pm, nuking the chance of any Hoover Dam tours.

::strangles them by the neck::

I wanted to at least stop at the dam for just a few minutes but the nuisance of paying to park turned me off that idea.

Beyond Hoover Dam was unknown territory for me, so it was an added cheap thrill being a new Arizona driver. We took highway 93 down to Kingsman, where a 5-minute breather was necessary, and then ramped on Interstate 40 east to Flagstaff. Love how the landscape, elevation, and weather can change so dramatically within a few hundred miles. A 110 desert unfolded into a more-tolerable 88 forest. It wasn't too long after passing the forest borders it started raining. Being California natives who only see rain during winter months, it was a welcome sight for us.

Williams, AZ turned out as a bit of a pit stop for us. Interstate 40 has major railroad lines running parallel, so Tom, being the train freak he is, convinced me to stop for 20 minutes. Fine. Sheez. He got pictures of some rare engines so he was quite happy. Train nerd. Nerd. NERRRRD!

We make it to our destination at 7:00pm. We're staying with good family friends of mine and happened to move here from CA just 5 weeks prior. Great timing. I appreciate their hospitality (and the computer/internet connection I'm currently using to write this).

This wraps up another edition. Going to attempt more than 3 hours of sleep tonight. Tomorrow's a long day. Pssh, actually the next 26 days will be LONG in some respect, so that's a useless thing to say. We're camping tomorrow night in Mancos, CO, so it may be a question of when my next set of pics and blogs will be. I'll do my best!

Grand Canyon and Four Corners awaits.

Sorry for the extended absence folks. It appears once you head north from Flagstaff, AZ, cell phone coverage becomes pretty much non-existent for the entire route along Hwy 180 and 160, so not only was I without internet access, the roadtrip map couldn't even be updated from my phone. So looks like you're dealing with a tardy update. Oh the horror of it all. I know the suspense has been killing you.

Believe it or not, we actually kept to our schedule for much of the third day. We only dealt with a 90-minute delay this time, a nice improvement over prior days. We might even catch up to a timely schedule, perish the thought.

We left Flagstaff at 10:00am MST and headed off through the downtown area and on to the Grand Canyon. Once we get there, the park entrance is backed up almost a mile. What's THAT all about? It's Tuesday morning for crying out loud! Shouldn't these people be working or something instead of taking a month off from their job? Jeez. What is this world coming to?

(Yeah, that was supposed to be funny and ironic. Please laugh. Please?)

Once through the gate, we head to the first viewable area called Mather point. Of course, I can imagine that anyone's first time here will no doubt be nothing short of amazing, and I was no exception. For those who haven't seen it, that's a DEEP hole, my friends. It's a great example of showing how small you really are.

Unfortunately due to recent nearby fires, the canyon was layered thick with haze, so not as spectacular as it could have been. Still, looking down over the edge gave me that wondrous hibblie-jibblie feeling again, just like the Stratosphere in Vegas, only this was a "natural" hibblie-jibblie.

Being on a tight schedule we moved on to Grandview Point, another perspective of the canyon, and then one more glance at the Desert View Point on the east side of the South Rim. A lookout tower and some shops were stationed here. As we walked over, thunderclaps began rearing their ugly (read: beautiful) head. Of course, being a weather nerd (yes, I'm a whole bunch of nerds nicely packed into one) I'm starting to gaze at the sky instead of the canyon, obsessively scouting for any signs lightning. Alas, just veiled cloud-to-cloud strikes were all it had to offer.

We quickly departed from here, ending our 2½ hours at the Grand Canyon. The next destination was almost 200 away and I wanted to be sure to get there before it closed, so along we raced using Hwy 160. There are some great stretches of scenery along this route. At one point while we were descending, the monsoon rains came out of nowhere and started pounding on us, and at one point even started producing some hail. Rock on. This is great stuff.

It was nice and clear when we get to one of my most anticipated stops, the Four Corners monument, at 7:00pm MDT. We had one hour until closing, so we spent that time taking plenty of pictures and perusing the sparse booths looking for souvenirs. High prices and lack of choice kept me from buying anything here. The marker itself is a nice setup and had quite a few people huddled around it. Apparently I'm not the only one to get a kick out of standing in four states at once. Some were just as nerdy about it as I was. I'm just better at hiding it.

Since the marker was surrounded by asphalt, we circled it with our cars on the way out, making sure our vehicles stake their claim in each territory and effectively doubling the number of visited states in one day. Highway 160 led into southwest Colorado, all the while offering more of the fascinating landscapes we had seen on our way to Four Corners.

We arrive in the town of Mancos by 9:00pm MDT, and still had daylight left, thanks to our adjustment of the Mountain Time Zone. I have some friends who owned a getaway home up here. It was occupied by tenants, and obviously we weren't going to barge in on people that didn't know us, but they were expecting us and were generous enough to let us camp out in front.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen. My first night ever of camping. Cigars for everyone.

The sleeping tent went up first, a cheap thrill for me. Afterwards Tom busted out his gas stove and we cooked hot dogs for dinner. There are plenty of bugs out here, so due diligence kept lights minimal and critters out of the tent.

Everything was going pretty smoothly until Tom noticed that our parked minivan was angled kind of funny. He takes a closer look and realizes that the rear passenger tire went flat.

&#@%^$!!!!!!!

Stupid dirt roads. We had to take a short one to get to this house, and probably ran over something. It was too late to deal with it so we waited until morning. That makes 2 tire incidents (one for each car) on this trip. What next? Do we get stranded and have to live off locust wings and beetles for the rest of our days? Stay tuned for Day 4.

Well this has turned pretty interesting. It seems the flat tire I earned is going to be more of a nuisance than I thought.

Apparently the bad tire is unrepairable, and to make matters worse, NOBODY carries that type of tire suitable for the 2005 Uplander because it's too new. This tire must come from BFE since we've wasted 5 hours trying to find a place that carries it.

Our last attempt was a Chevy dealership in Durango, CO, with no luck. Our last line of defense is finding the nearest Avis and changing out the entire vehicle, a big pain in the ass, but that idea was nixed since no other Avis had an Uplander to swap. (I won't give this baby up that easily.)

So we're going to limp to Pueblo on the spare and get it repaired tomorrow. That seems to be the only place to carry this elusive tire. What does this mean for the trip? Hopefully only a slight delay. Anyone expecting us from Oklahoma City and onward will need to put our ETA back by 24 hours.

I really don't like tires right now. Especially flat ones.

Well now. THAT day didn't exactly go the way I wanted to. From my last post, you might have detected the slight panic. A simple flat tire turns out to be a grueling nightmare trying to find the existence of a replacement. I mean come on, this Uplander didn't exactly come off the line yesterday. Some places SHOULD have the tire we needed, but no, they decided to add to the matrix of inconvenience and delays.

What ended up happening is that a Goodyear dealer called in to overnight a new tire into the city of Pueblo, Colorado. (Yes, that means we limped 316 on a donut. Yes, we drove less than 55. No, don't yell at me.)

The tire should come mid-afternoon 2:00pm tomorrow, where a quick install will put us on our merry way. Unfortunately that means pushing all rendezvous points with family and friends back by a day. Hoping that works. There's really only 4 scheduled stops so it's not that critical of an impact. This is, of course, exactly why I cushioned the trip with 48 extra hours to deal with this kind of crap. We just burned about 18 of those precious backup hours, with only 10% of the trip complete.

As far as highlights, we did manage to pass through the mountains of Colorado on Hwy 160 and get some great pics. We also crossed the Continental Divide, where the melting water flows either to the west or east of that point.

Tomorrow is (hopefully) booking it through the rest of Colorado, and just maybe all 500 of Kansas. On our way to Pueblo, we noticed some mean-looking storms to the East, producing some spectacular lightning every 5-10 seconds. Yeah, driving out there as fast as possible...

As far as destination adjustments, we're backtracking my original goal of Oklahoma City, OK to Joplin, MO. There's some strings to tie with my rendezvous points before I can feel better about the trip again. Let's hope for no more flat tires.

::deep breath::

SO....

You ever had one of those days where Murphy's Law just looms over your head and laughs at your repeated bouts of misery? Where things couldn't possibly get worse but do? Oh man, those are good days. REAL good days.

So get this. After unwillingly spending the night in Pueblo, we force ourselves to wait until 12:00pm MDT lugging our van to the Goodyear for a fix on this blasted flat tire. I called ahead and verified that the order was fulfilled and on its way. Steve takes his car in for minor maintenance, and we take ours to the Goodyear where our tire was being delivered. The owner dude hates car rental repairs with a passion because he claimed he was always getting screwed by such affairs. So I had to engage in an all out bloody knuckle hair-raising battle with him (and won). Actually I had to call my Avis buddy back home for some crucial information so he'd fix the tire and not have to charge me. He said the tire would arrive in the next hour or two.

Fine. After all that was settled, we left the van there, and Tom and I went across to the Wendy's for lunch, assuming the tire would be fixed when we came back.

Ha.

Ha ha.

BWA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!!!!!

OK sorry. At 2:30pm I saw the van still sitting there with its overused donut spare, so I went in to find out the status. The guy comes to tell me that apparently the truck carrying my replacement tire overheated and broke down somewhere in the middle of the desert, and the tire wouldn't get here until tomorrow.

(Multiple expletives of your choice go here)!!!!!!!

Before I had a chance to completely blow my top, however, he proceeds to tell me that he got a hold of another Goodyear store, who for sure had my tire in stock, and could replace it and be on my way. He gives me all the information we obtained through Avis, and I left.

For bloody Colorado Springs.

Another 40 jaunt north on Interstate 25 takes me to the city that had actually been an original destination. Unfortunately the Pueblo Goodyear owner didn't know where this other store was and told us just to exit on Academy. What he didn't tell us, is that the freeway exit brings you to the top of N. Academy. The Goodyear store happened to be near the bottom of S. Academy. So we ended up backtracking ALL the way through town, wasting another 30 minutes. I'll just say I know the entire street of Academy quite well.

Once there, the process was virtually painless. I gave Ron, the guy at the desk, all the paperwork and he got started on it right away. The repair man Allen did a speedy job on replacing the donut with a brand new P225/60R17 (and yes that model is unfortunately engrained into my head). Thanks to Ron and Allen for their great work!

So at 6:30pm we book it back to Pueblo, eating up another 30 minutes, and then FINALLY start heading east again on Hwy 50. While driving, we all discussed (over walkie-talkies) how far we should go. I was hoping for Wichita, KS but it was a 400 trek. We just decided to go as far as we could.

Determination, friends. Determination. Six hours later, we're in Wichita. At freakin' 2:30am CDT.

Yeah, I said I wouldn't do night driving, but the closer we got to Wichita, the more determined I was to reach it and stay only ONE day behind schedule. I was glad to get there. That driving fatigue really does exist, folks. I did some pretty creative things to stay awake. (Yes, I can hear all of my "moms" shreaking out and fainting.) Hopefully we won't have to do that again.

An Econolodge is where we'll stay for the night. Since we lost yet another hour to the Central Time Zone, we'll probably lose some sleep as well. The next goal is to loop through 3 more states and end up in Oklahoma City. It shouldn't be too bad, but we'll need to get out of here early. Wish us luck. (We need all we can possibly get.)

Groan. Grumble. Three hours of sleep. Sucks to be us.

After being booted by 11:00am check-out, we were preparing to head east and make the "horseshoe" loop to Okie City. Unfortunately (and you knew this was coming) Steve's car was acting up yet again. The A/C compressor was making excessive noise, despite being a brand new unit. He made the decision to remain at the Pep Boys in Wichita, KS and forfeit the 2 states to the east.

This was probably the best time to stay behind for repairs, as our destination was directly south but Tom and I were taking the long way around in order to hit two states to the east. Steve could just cut straight down instead and join us in 3 hours. If that isn't perfect timing, I don't know what is.

Today's driving was just to say we stepped in Missouri and Arkansas. From Wichita, Tom and I headed east, mostly using US Route 400 to arrive in Joplin, MO, which seemed a nice town and all. We didn't dally for too long, only stopping to find a post office so Tom could mail a letter and I could pick up a postcard. From there we headed south on I-49, crossing another state border and eventually into Fort Smith, AR. Quite a contrast from Joplin, this place looked pretty rusty and ghetto, at least on the road we drove. (Great hometown, Nicki...)

After that we headed west using a familiar I-40, over the river and into Oklahoma. At this point I let Tom drive the rest of the way so I could check some e-mail and get in a little nap.

So here we are in Okie City. We met up with one of Tom's friends and went to a bar for some drinks. Fun times. Steve finally pulled in around 10:00pm and all finally seems well with our vehicles again. We are staying with the friend's old roommates tonight.

I'll be visiting a former co-worker in the afternoon, and then booking south to Plano, TX. Short drive on deck!

I think I managed six or seven hours of sleep this time. Plus it was a relatively short driving day to boot. Good times!

After rejuvenating supplies and ice for the cooler, we left about noon to go check out some of Oklahoma City before heading south. We went on the campus grounds of OU in the city of Norman. Nice football stadium. It was also right by the tracks so of course Tom takes videos of the passing freight trains. (OK, I did too. Shhhh...)

We then drove into downtown. I forgot that Oklahoma City was the Capital until I saw the Capitol building. We went over there to take some shots, and spontaneously decided to find the Memorial for the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. The city has a multitude of one way streets so it took some fancy driving to find it. But find it we did.

The atmosphere was serene. Two dark walls on opposite sides of the block overlooked a shallow 1 pool, one wall with the time of 9:01am embedded into it, and the other wall with 9:03am. I probably don't need to point out what happened at 9:02am. There were empty "seats" on one side, indicating the number of victims on each floor of the destroyed building. Many pictures and personal items of the deceased were still clinging to the fence of the 9:03 side. We didn't go into the museum for lack of time, but it was something we felt to pay our respects.

A couple blocks away, I went to visit one of my former co-workers, Scott, who just moved out here a few months prior. He currently lives in a rustic mini-mansion built in 1913, complete with an attic and cellar. His folks have some federal government connections. In fact, Justice O'Connor (who just retired) used this home as an overnighter. There were also plenty of ghost stories associated with the house. No mansion would be complete without one. We visited for about an hour and left.

Back down I-35 we go. A few hours later, we crossed over the Red River and into Texas. The destination today is Plano, TX, where my brother and sister live. Whenever I came here, it was always with my parents and always by plane. This time it was just me and drove here myself. It definitely felt a little more exciting this time. Immediately following our arrival, we headed off for a joint called Ojeda's. There was some great food and a mean jug of Margarita.

VERY mean.

I don't know what, how, or why, but I ended up consuming four glasses. I was too occupied enjoying the sugary part of it, while somehow forgetting it also contained alcohol. Whoops! I don't think I need to mention what followed after that. I'll just say I ended up acting like a total ass, to which I completely blame my brother for it. I might as well blame my sister, too, just for kicks. They definitely were eating it up in any case (at my expense).

We'll be going out for breakfast tomorrow morning and then leaving for New Orleans after lunch. More long driving.

I thank all the lucky stars for my sister-in-law giving me Aspirin the night before I retired, even though I don't remember her doing anything of the sort. Actually there were a lot of things I didn't remember until I watched the videos. (!!!!)

Anyway, I spent a little more time with the fam this morning. We headed off to Denny's for breakfast and filled up on a good meal for the day. So nice to get in a little brother/sister bonding once in a while. I should head back here more often.

At 3:00pm CDT, after goodbyes and pictures, we headed directly south, past Dallas, TX and on to Houston, TX using I-45. There's a little bit of woodlands down this way, which felt odd to think we were still in Texas. I imagine the entire state as farms and fields stretching to the horizon. We refueled in Houston and snuck in some pictures of the skyline, not hanging around for long as it was getting late.

We hooked up to our old familiar I-10 and headed further east. Nearing the Gulf Coast, refineries started cropping up everywhere. This definitely did not feel like Texas. But it wasn't long before we crossed the border into Louisiana at dusk.

Due to the time, we made a little change of plan, stopping over in Baton Rouge because our hotel-of-choice MicroTel was situated there. I figured by 12:00pm CDT we would drive directly into New Orleans, get some lunch, and walk the streets of Bourbon.

I think the "highlight" of the day was Steve deciding we should go out to eat, even though it was midnight and most places were closed by then. He insisted on the Waffle House, which I thought wasnt a bad choice since we don't have them where we live. HOWEVER, the one we hit up in Baton Rouge happened to be one of the most ghetto places imaginable, where the food cooked was either late or wrong, the waitresses/cooks were all screaming at each other (this IS Lousiana, folks), and we even scouted a cockroach here and there, and to top it all off we had to debate the final amount due. Steve's OCD was flaring up to the point he was beside himself and practically pulling us out the door before our meal was even finished. We were laughing hysterically because he was the one who insisted on it, while we were ready to go to bed instead of going out to eat. We didn't need to experience that. (Or maybe we did, we need to bring home a few good stories, right?)

There's supposed to be a heat index warning coming up. Just great. I already feel like I've been in a steam bath since reaching Houston. This is really icky poo. Any fresh shower in the morning will be obliterated the moment I step outside. I can't wait.

Once again, we all got a late start getting out of the hotel. We should win a prize for being the most consistent at not getting our butts out of bed when we're supposed to. 11:00am check-out is both a blessing and a curse.

By noon we aimed for New Orleans, LA via I-10. Steve dropped his car off to get the oil changed, so he joined us in our minivan as we made our way into the heart of the city, past downtown and into the French Quarter and Riverwalk. Unfortunately the heat index was making our sweat pores work overtime. We walked a bit of Bourbon street, because that was the main road to take, trying to find shady spots wherever possible.

What an eclectic town. My only kind of exposure to this kind of stuff was Frontier Land at Disneyland. It's a little odd in some places where you have to walk down the alleys in between buildings in order to get inside said buildings. All the shops were loaded with beads (no comment) and voodoo stuff. There were a bunch of other odds and ends, but I don't need to go spoiling anything for you. If you been there, you know what I'm talking about. If not, then GO already!

A late lunch was enjoyed at the House of Blues (thanks for the tip, Shane) and I made sure to have something in accordance with our surroundings. They had great shrimp and calamari plates so we ate heartily. Afterwards we did our quick souvenir run and got out of there about 4:00pm CDT.

After picking up Steve's car, we hightailed it out of there and continued on I-10 to the last few southern states to the east. After crossing into Mississippi I decided to make our minor stop in the city of Gulfport, MS. Never before had I seen the Gulf of Mexico. It was great to hang by the ocean again, and beaches with sand to boot. We stopped and walked out on the beach with the fine sand and the 80 water. And it was STILL humid. We refilled and moved on.

We crossed yet again another state border two hours later, into the familiar state of Alabama. I've been here many a time on family trips, but in the northern region, never this far south. We stopped on the outskirts of Mobile, AL to get some water and rejuvenate ourselves. The next leg is going to be extremely long.

I'd tell you what's happening tomorrow, but we may be making another spontaneous decision. You won't know what it is until the next blog update. You can sweat that one out, since we survived enough sweating today. It just might be a pleasant surprise for all of us.

For those of you getting up at the butt-crack of dawn to look at our map because you just can't wait to see where we are next, you may have discovered that instead of arriving in Kentucky, we were still hanging in Florida. In fact, we were further south in Florida than we ever intended to go.

So, WHY? Well if you look at the stop on the map (*cough* Cape Canaveral *cough*), and remember what's at that stop (*coughcough* NASA *coughcough*), and then remember what's SUPPOSED to happen at that stop (*hackwheeze* 5-4-3-2-1 *wheezehack*), the old saying of adding 2 + 2 may brighten that light bulb in your head. Or if you're not a space/science nerd, you'd still have no idea what I'm talking about.

Coincidentally, the shuttle launch of Discovery STS-114 happened to be on the day we were in Florida. It was an extra 300 out of the way, but c'mon, it's the SHUTTLE, people. Instead of stopping in the capital of Tallahassee, FL we continued on for another 5 hours south to the coastal town of Titusville, FL where we could catch a glimpse of the launch. This means we unfortunately had to drive ALL night to get there on time. 16 straight hours of driving! (DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME. YOU WILL PROBABLY DIE.) I'm still not sure how we pulled that off, but nevertheless finally arrived on the scene at 7:00am EDT.

Apparently we weren't the only ones. Thousands flocked to this place to watch a launch for the first time in over 2 years, where the last space flight ended in tragedy. Everyone was hopeful for a smooth launch.

Even though we were viewing from 12 away, the sights and sounds of the shuttle launch were absolutely breathtaking. The anticipation, followed by the whoops and hollers of the crowd was enough to really get your adrenaline going. Was it worth the extra drive? Heck yeah, baby. The low rumbles of the shuttle brought chills, at least for me.

Afterwards we hightailed it out of there, up the eastern coast on Hwy 1. We drove through Daytona Beach, which looks a lot like a mirror image of Newport Beach, CA, where the ocean and city are on opposite sides (heading north). After checking out all the fancy hotels, we diverted back to I-95.

Unfortunately our little all-nighter stunt we pulled was taking a toll on Steve, who could hardly keep his eyes open at this point. Luckily one of my pals called, who lives in Jacksonville, FL and always mentioned coming to see him on this trip. He also just happened to look at our website map and discover we were now super close to him, so he invited us over. Since his place was almost in our direct path, we figured why not. We found a place to switch drivers, with Tom driving Steve's car, and Steve rode with me so he could sleep for a bit. When we arrived, our host offered good BBQ and let us crash for the night. What a guy. Thanks to him and his wife (and their adorable kids too!).

But you knew all this excitement would come at a cost. The whole shuttle event put us another full day behind schedule, which means all cushion time has been eliminated. That's kind of alarming, and I'm already brainstorming ways to retrieve at least 24 hours to our disposal again. Perhaps combine two days into one or sacrifice something of the sort... eh we'll figure it out. We're not in trouble, barring another flat tire or whatever else that could go wrong. (Knock on wood).

But I'd do it all over again. Have you turned green with envy yet? Darn right.

Ladies and gentlemen, we're in the hot seat, we've used all our lifelines, and we're only just fudging with the $25,000 question.

No, we're not on the gameshow "Who Wants To Be a Millionaire?" but that's what it feels like right now, having used up our emergency cushion days. My travel companions still struggle to get up early, which in turn ends up with a late start (usually mid-day) arriving at our destinations after midnight, which in turn makes them tired. It's turning into a vicious endless cycle. I wish we had extra time to slow down the pace, but we don't. Not to be a prick, but I gotta start kicking their ass out of bed earlier. They may gripe about early check-out times, but I'm all for it if that makes them get on the move.

(I'm secretly ok with it. While they sleep in, it gives me time to update the blog and pics for all you dedicated viewers out there who tune in daily. But shh, don't tell anybody.)

We left our host about 11:00am EDT, earlier than usual but still late when you've got a 700 drive ahead. We soon crossed into Georgia and hugged the east coast on I-95 until almost reaching Savannah, GA. After another refuel, we then diverted northwest via I-16 to our destination of Atlanta, GA, or rather, one of the outskirt cities (Decatur, GA) to the east. Our primary reason for coming here was a little bar on East Lake Drive called Mulligans. It's a typical bar with the obligatory pool tables, arcades, dining booths, and no sign of cute girls (but in their defense, it was 7:00pm on a weeknight so probably not on the prowl yet).

Why did we go to Mulligans? Ho ho, baby. Steve had heard about one of their killer dishes that they serve. And we could almost use the word "killer" literally. Their famous dish is the "Hamdog" which is comprised of a hot dog wrapped in hamburger meat and cheese, topped with chili, bacon, and a fried egg. Some may call it the "Heart Attack on a Plate." But it was GOOD and the server there was way cool.

By the time we finished it was getting past 8:00pm so we booked it out of there, onward using I-85 north to the South Carolinian town of Greenville. By this time, it was pitch dark and there wasn't much to see, which was a shame because I knew we were into the south portion of the Appalachian Mountains. We stopped long enough to get gas and postcards. On we went to Interstate 26 and North Carolina, where the next stop was Asheville. Again, too dark to see, so another refuel was all we could muster. We went through the downtown area, and MAN it's easy to get lost, especially since you have 263 highway numbers all on one road with arrows resembling a tied shoelace. That's not annoying at all.

Somehow we escaped that mess and hit our final destination of Kingsport, Tennessee. It was 3:00am by the time we got here and into a MicroTel to crash. Kentucky was supposed to be the final destination for the day, but potential overnight connections there fell through, and we couldn't have gone another hour anyway.

We'll have to attempt another "get up early" day and book it to Washington, DC. That is the goal for today. There are no distractions along the way, so we might actually make it by 7:00pm. Here's hoping.

Yep, grunting and groaning, as usual. Leaving at 11:30am, as usual. Are you not surprised? It would take a team of mules to pull these guys out of bed.

Today, Steve separated from us and took a detour to go meet a friend in Glade Hill, VA, which meant him sacrificing another state. Tom and I stayed to our original path, using Hwys 23 and 119 to maneuver north through the states of Kentucky, West Virginia, and Virginia.

I would have liked to visit family in my Dad's hometown of Whitesburg, KY, but we're at the mercy of Father Time instead. We ended up stopping briefly in the town of Pikeville, KY which was more on the route.

I didn't have to be sorry about any mountain scenery missed during the night, because there was PLENTY more to see. West Virginia may not exactly be the biggest state, but we must have chosen the longest route possible. We were in that state for a dang long time.

I let Tom drive the mountainous terrain since he digs that kind of stuff. Lots of curves, lots of fog, lots of beauty in the hills being coated with low clouds. It's something to really lean back and enjoy. We made a brief stop at Seneca Rocks NRA before finally finding ourselves crossing Virginia, and eventually back into civilization.

Tom and I arrived in Arlington about 11:30pm. Steve was returning from his alternate route earlier in the day, attempting to rejoin us at some arbitrary rendezvous point. By the time he found the Interstate, he ended up about 30 minutes behind us. Meanwhile, we're scanning a directory for the nearest MicroTel Suite, which revealed one in Washington. We thought to try our luck and passed over the Potomac River into the nation's capital.

Rolling onto the street of Constitution, the glow of the Washington Monument met our gaze. I had never seen it in the flesh before, and instinctively drove straight to it, forgetting all about the hotel for the moment. We parked and took a few night shots before remembering our primary mission.

Attempting to follow the directions with the directory became somewhat of a fallacy, as we quickly begin to realize that D.C. is a pedestrian town, not a car town. Traffic lights always seemed to change against us and stayed red for minutes while all the invisible cars/pedestrians passed by. I can safely say that Washington D.C. is the WORST to drive because there's nothing but one way streets and all these damn signs telling you what you can't do. Don't turn left here for 3 hours, don't make U-turns, don't park here, don't stand on your head while singing the national anthem in French.

Since it was almost midnight and traffic minimal, Tom gleefully ignored the "No U-turn" signs, but even these rebellious maneuvers didn't seem to help. We would exit a street which magically turned into a highway and began leading us away from D.C., meaning we'd have to find some place to make another (probably illegal) U-turn. That happened more than once. You could almost see the columns of steam rising from Tom's head trying to make sense of it all.

Eventually we managed to come within the remote vicinity of our destination. Between the hotel directions and the map, I was bravely attempting to navigate Tom's every move. I remembered an off-hand tip about staying in the northwest (a.k.a. SAFEST) part of the city, and was doing my best to make it so, but we might have ended up a little farther east than we probably should have been.

And this is where it gets real good.

We're on Vermont heading south (just a few blocks from the White House), stopped at a red light. This girl starts strutting the crosswalk in front of us with a seductive look. I happen to notice her dress is quite low-cut. Extremely low cut, in fact. Then I realize she's... um... not exactly wearing anything underneath said dress. "Wait a minute, is that... is she a... really?" If I wasn't yet convinced of what I was seeing, the giveaway of her glass shoes sealed the deal. OK, we just graduated from "Ruh-roh" to "Holy sh**!"

I'm sitting there in the passenger seat bug-eyed, trying to process this visual, when I looked to my right and saw another one. And another.

When the light turned green, Tom smashed down that accelerator. We sped to the next intersection but it didn't stop there. We spied two more, talking to potential customers. More tire-peeling ensued. Needless to say, we didn't go back to that part of town. That's only the 2nd time in my life I've witnessed that (the first being Las Vegas some years ago).

We never did find the hotel as the directory claimed, and ended up going back over the river to Virginia. The hotels closest to D.C. charge a LOT more than usual, forcing us to backtrack another 20 to a Days Inn with decent prices. We had Steve meet us there and finally crashed at 3:00am. (Curses! Another late-night slumber!)

First thing in the morning we will head into Washington D.C. to do the top 5 things. Plenty of pictures coming for sure. Afterwards we book it north to Tom's grandmother in Coatesville, PA.

Luckily there's minimal driving the next 3 or 4 days, but still a number of things to squeeze in. Trying to complete them without falling behind schedule will be the challenge of the day/month/year/etc. Still looking to make up ground somewhere...

Today was just another travel day and marking states off the list. Things should be more interesting tomorrow. Don't touch that dial. (Not for a full 24 hours. Don't do it. Don't you dare!)

So of course today we don't leave until 11:30am. Again. (How else would we have it?) We drive to Arlington, VA and park at the Ballston center, using their underground access to the Metro, bound for Washington, DC. This is the first time in my life to ever ride a subway. (Thinking about it, there's quite a number of "first-time" events happening, but hey that should be expected on a trip like this.) I found it a cheap thrill with the sudden accelerations and speed of the railway, even with all the other commuters' stoic expressions revealing their indifference to the matter.

We made our exit at the Smithsonian stop, a gateway of sorts which places you in the middle of the big "Mall" with access to all the monuments, memorials, and of course the White House.

Unfortunately, the weather decides to turn nasty and it starts raining at a pretty good pace. Of course none of us are prepared for that so we start getting soaked. We walked to the Washington Monument as a hopeful refuge, but offered little shelter due to its obelisk shape. We decide to head north and check out the White House. As expected, it's heavily guarded and you can't get in unless opting for the tour, which there was no time to fit in. Afterwards we headed west to the Lincoln Memorial and took more shots there. By this time the rain had subsided.

We walked back along the Reflecting Pool, hitting the Vietnam War Memorial and then (one of my favorites) the National World War II memorial, an oval-shaped plaza with fountains and pillars indicating each of the 50 states. It had only been open for a year so good timing all around.

Thanks to one of my co-workers Pam, who used to be a D.C. local, she gave us a rough itinerary I was attempting to follow. Ebbitt's Grill was on that list, providing us a late lunch, as well as the Washington Hotel where you can get a sneak peak of the view and possibly see some snipers on nearby buildings, but we didn't stay there long since we weren't ordering cocktails.

We got on the Red Line and headed for the Union Station so Tom could look at his variety of trains, but unfortunately the security people were being pricks and shooed us away. I'd speak up about this but that would become a WHOLE new discussion.

By 7:00pm we ended up back where we parked and then booked it across the city, into the state of Maryland. I figured by now, traffic should be down to a minimum, right?

Pssh, that's another BAH HA HA for the roadtrip record books, my friends.

The interstates were a freakin' parking lot, almost as bad as home. (Keyword is almost. Nothing beats SoCal traffic.) So we ended up detouring onto Hwy 29, through Baltimore and then up north into the state of Delaware.

We stopped in Wilmington, DE at the Charcoal Pit. Steve and Tom had a late dinner, while I was content with a cherry sundae. The most exciting thing was getting the bill and discovering the state of Delaware has no sales tax! (*sigh* Yes people, these are things I live for.)

Afterwards we traveled a bit longer, across the border to Pennsylvania and landed in Coatesville, PA where Tom's 90-year-old grandmother lives. She's quite sharp with a healthy amount of spirit, and was delighted to have us over.

Tomorrow is a trek through Philadelphia, PA, Newark, NJ and arriving in New York, NY. We'll see how the day unfolds. The next 48 hours should bed quite intriguing. Don't touch that dial. Or click away from the website, rather.

Today wasn't a huge rush, delegating just two hours of driving. We visited with Grandma Frantz as long as we could, then headed off for New York around 4:00pm.

On the way, we thought we'd better stop in Philadelphia to catch some of the quick history highlights there. The only two prominent ones were Independence Hall, closed off to everyone except paying tourists, and the Liberty Bell Center, which closed up early so a personal encounter was out of the question. Dangit, I really wanted to see that bell up close. C'mon Phillies, extend your stupid summer hours!

Even more lousy was the security crawling all over the place and yelling at anyone they found wandering slightly off designated paths. They're not even nice about it. They must get their jollies throwing around their authority like that. Jerks. All of them jerks I tell you! I get the "reason" why but the security pendulum has simply swung too far the other way. That's how you lose tourists and revenue.

We left there and found a place called Leo's that served a mean philly cheesesteak. I mean, you CAN'T come to Philly and not have one of these things. Since I've recently come to love steaks, there was no excuse not to have one. Predictably they were GOOD. Go get one. This instant.

We drove back through (old and new) downtown Philly. We were going to take I-95 straight to New Jersey, but that highway was littered with toll booths. You can't take any major artery without paying a toll. Lame. We ended up taking Hwy 1 all the way up, but I tell you what, using this route takes you through the projects, and seeing some of these places really made me appreciate where I live. (Yikes!) There were stop lights here and there but we got to our destination in a relatively quick 45 minutes. We're staying on the Jersey side and heading to New York in the morning.

I can't wait. Neither can you. I just know it.

I appreciate more and more every day those 11:00am check-out deadlines. That's the only thing keeping these knuckleheads getting up early.

We left our hotel at 11:30am and headed under the Hudson River via the Lincoln Tunnel. The US$6.00 toll seemed a little excessive for a quick pass under a river. No wonder I've been going out of my way to avoid toll roads. I've much appreciated all tollways marked green in my trusty rusty atlas.

We made our way to Penn Station by the Madison Square Gardens and parked there. I could see our first destination was obviously the biggest in town, residing just a few blocks away.

My feet are gonna kill me. Actually, they've been killing me ever since D.C.

We reached the Empire State Building, thinking that you just go up the top and look around. Oh no. They made a whole attraction out of it: buy a ticket, wait in line for 90 minutes, get marketing pitches thrown at your face, you know, the usual tourist traps. One could easily spend US$200 up there depending on gulliblity. We'll just stick with our US$14 observatory, thanks.

All that nonsense dissolved away once our elevator climbed to the 86th floor observatory. Just like the Stratosphere in Vegas, it's a LONG way down. More of the hibblie-jibblie feels. The difference here is a higher elevation, with WAY more to see. All 360° of the deck show off hundreds of landmarks.

After an hour of scoping the views, we descended back down and headed north for the Rockefeller Center. There were only two places here I wanted to check out: the SOHO Apple Store and the Nintendo World store, where they have two stories of everything related to Nintendo. Even though my video game hobby has dwindled over the years, it was a treat to see the layout and design of a video game store, especially an official Nintendo store.

Next, we headed over and down to Times Square. I had seen this place many times, once a year, on a certain day of the year, with a certain celebrity host, but only on the tube. Being there is needless-to-say an entirely different experience. Even though it was not New Year's Eve, the place was still rockin', the news tickers rolling, and multimedia pizazz churning away. A gospel band was playing the center causing a big ruckus.

We used this opportunity to eat at John's Pizzaria. Unfortunately we were trying to get there just as all the broadway shows were letting out so it was a chore to navigate through the crowds. My feet appreciated the sit down restaurant. They ended up being just OK. (Mulligans it ain't!) And no free refills either. (That's garbage, sister!)

The last two things we wanted to see were on the south end of Manhattan. This called for a metro ticket using the subway to the World Trade Center Path. Obviously, the first thing you see when you come out from underground is the footprints of the twin towers. There was the construction fence, with a lot of history of 9/11 and timelines mounted for everyone, a pretty somber environment all around.

We walked around that and down to Battery Park, overlooking the Hudson Bay. Unfortunately we needed to call three days in advance for tickets to Liberty Island, not exactly feasible with the tentative nature of our trip. We had to be content with finding the closest point possible and snapping pictures from about 2 away. The temperature was perfect and it ended up a serene place to just hang out and watch the sunset.

We metro-ed our way back to the car and paid the $31.00 garage parole. We headed straight for the east side of Manhattan and took a northerly turn. On the map it looked like a snap to get out of New York.

I am not a smart man. Another BAH HA HA HA HA HA for the record books.

Man, you miss an exit, or take a wrong turn, it seriously takes you an hour to backtrack to the right path again. This is ESPECIALLY true when trying to avoid tolls. The I-95 had one so we thought we'd be smart and work around it. Of course, the signs don't tell you how to do that. And the exits with highway numbers were for the wrong direction. I know their little game. They do that on purpose to funnel you right to a toll road. Real sneaky New York, real sneaky.

I don't know how, but we managed to get on I-95 again past the toll. But this was just the beginning. There were 3 more state borders to cross tonight. We stopped briefly in New Haven, Connecticut, and Providence, Rhode Island. Unfortunately with the midnight hour you couldn't see squat. That's the price to pay for staying in the city so long.

We found a Comfort Inn at 3:00am and crashed. Tomorrow is Boston. We're only here for a few hours, since a longer driving day awaits. I'll see what drama I can muster up for ya.

Hey hey hey!!! Guess what time we left on this fine morning??

Yep. Same time. (Did you really think it would be any different?)

Out the door we were by 11:30am. Boston was a quick 20 north and we got there in orderly fashion. Unfortunately the Interstate 93 tunnel was a tad shorter than I thought and we overshot the city. Backtracking was another 30-minute nightmare, due to the oh-so-friendly "DO NOT" signs.

One of my dad's horse-racing buddies is a pure Bostonian, and gave me a jingle to round out the inside scoop of what's worth seeing. With all the choices presented, the Freedom Trail seemed the most promising. It's a red brick laden path leading you through the heart of the city with many historical landmarks and information. You know, the kind that you didn't give a damn about in high school, but appreciate more when you're older. We started at the Boston Common, a big park with monuments and a frog wading pool. Through the city we marched, finding the city jewels like Paul Revere's house, churches and burial sites hundreds of years old, and some old ships, including the USS Constitution.

Also mentioned was a fabulous place to eat in South Boston called... well it's not called anything. Everyone refers to it as the No Name Restaurant. Original. They had some great dishes. I had their fried calamari. (Yes, squid. You're salivating right now, aren't you?)

It was going on 8:00pm so we had to book it from the city, as there were 4 more borders to cross. We continued up I-95 to Portland, Maine. This point marks the farthest northeast of our domestic travels. Unfortunately we got there by 9:30pm and most everything was closed, including a lighthouse I wanted to visit.

We refueled in Portland, ME marking our official halfway point of the roadtrip, and began our turn westward (and it will stay westward for more than a week) to the border of New Hampshire.

The best part about this leg is that there were severe thunderstorms going on. Monstrous lightning flashes in four different areas every 4-8 seconds were peaking my excitement. (Hey, Californians never see this crap.) I'm sure the local residents around here would be like "Yeah whatever. Nerd."

Taking small highways allowed us to stop and actually capture pics of the "Welcome To" signs on this route. While the routes looked quite short on the map, in reality they're nowhere near as fast. Most of them are laden with 45 restrictions (which we might or might not have ignored since it was getting late.) We drove through Concord, capital of New Hampshire, and kept haste.

Another hour gives way to Vermont. It was complete pitch black (except for the lightning show) and there wasn't much to see. I could tell we were passing over mountainous terrain. I know I was probably missing some beautiful sights. We come to a roadblock with an officer having to redirect our path due to downed power lines. Isn't that just lovely at 3:00am? It took a little extra time to reach Bennington, VT which seemed like a historical town, but all we could do is drive through.

We got to the New York border pushing 4:00am. This may seem like lunacy to you readers out there, but don't forget we are still lacking cushion days, forcing us to carry on until we arrived in Albany, NY, finding a MicroTel by the airport. By the time we checked in it was 4:30am but the lady was nice enough to offer a discount rate and have our check-out time at noon. Yay MicroTel!

Our only stop for the next day is Niagra Falls, and then on to Ohio. We obviously didn't get (another) full night's rest, so we'll see how we fare.

Oh, and I'm not sure if we hit a college town in Portland or what, but the girls in Maine have so far turned out to be the hottest. So if any Maine girls just happen to be reading this, you need to drop what you're doing and call me.

As much as we appreciated the extra hour for check-out, it just doomed us to start later than preferred. Nobody managed more than 5 hours of sleep. *sigh* What I wouldn't give for just one more day of cushion.

Albany was a memory at 12:30pm EDT as we booked it on the I-90 Expressway west. For those of you that ever need to know, it was US$10.60 to ride the entire New York turnpike. I knew I'd have to eat it this round for toll roads, but it's better than riding through ghetto areas and stop'n'go traffic.

By 5:00pm we crossed the entire swath of New York to Niagara Falls. We parked our cars (for another US$10.00, just sayin'.) and then headed down to the falls.

Thunderheads were looming in the distance, threatening our excursion. We straddled along the river to the falls, and then opted to pay the extra US$1.00 for the observatory deck and elevator. Steve was getting a little miffed at all these fees. (Could've shared some of them if we were all together in one vehicle, but yeah...) I donned a poncho and proceeded to walk to the base stairs of the falls. This is where the water crashes against the rocks and pretty much soaks anyone/anything there.

Somehow the poncho I picked up happened to be a kid's size, only keeping me dry from the belly up. I might as well just jumped in the freakin' river. Luckily my camera and cell phone survived the waist-down baptism, permitting me to take pictures and book it back up the elevator.

When first arriving, we could see the city of Niagara Falls in the neighboring country of Canada. We saw the bridge that connected the two cities, and in turn the pedestrian bridge that ran along side it.

You can probably guess what happens next.

In a spontaneous decision we crossed the bridge, through the customs room and out into Ontario, Canada. Dude, CANADA. Only my 2nd time outside the USA (first being Switzerland 10 years prior). The Canadian side offered much better views of the falls so I let my paparazzi finger fly. We took in the fact that were in Canada for about 30 minutes, then crossed back over. That was a little geographical high if I ever had one.

We left the falls and headed south. We considered stopping in Buffalo, NY for namesake Buffalo Wings, but with a 9:00pm showing on the clock we had too far to travel. I was already predicting a 1:00am EDT arrival for Cleveland, OH.

We decided to stop in Cleveland instead of Toledo. (Nobody here wants to bear another 3:00am check-in time.) Unfortunately this area (and our hotel room) is riddled with harmless but annoying Mayflys. I'll have to be content knowing hundreds of them are hovering above us on the ceiling and that they not suck the life out of us while we sleep.

We're shooting for a pre-11:00am start to Michigan. I surely hope so.

Another day, another mid-day check-out. You know what that means. Blah.

We escaped Cleveland by 12:30pm EDT to continue westward, a tad closer to home. We stopped for lunch in Toledo to meet an online friend of mine (no NOT a girl). This dude Jordan was into the Mega Man video games and music as I used to be some years ago, which we've discussed in general over the years. Being in the area, I figured I'd finally meet this guy.

We agreed to JoJo's Pizzeria. I thought we'd be late with these directions taking us through several closed freeways/roads, each one raising levels of frustration. But when we finally arrived, the place was curiously closed for another half hour. To kill time we search unsuccessfully for a Pep Boys, and made a run to the Post Office. We returned and ordered a pizza while waiting for this guy.

Then he calls me wondering where I am, and confusion ensues. It looks like the one we were SUPPOSED to be at wasn't listed in the directory at all. Poor Jordan was waiting 90 minutes for us at another JoJo's. Whoopsie. He finally coordinated and came over to ours, and made the best of what time we had left, chatting it up while eating pizza. Good times.

From here we turned northwest into the state of Michigan. With so much time wasted during the day, we had to take the disappointing choice of skipping Detroit and the Ford Museum.

At 9:30pm we reached the remote town of Ludington, MI, located right off Lake Michigan. The first thing on the priority list was visiting Tom's other grandmother. We stopped at her nursing home and spent a good hour talking with her. Even though physically disabled, she was still sharp and engaged in some good talkin' times.

Afterwards we located our overnight place with a cousin of Tom's, who had quite the spirited daughter, 6-year-old Kaitlynn, that could outtalk anyone I know. I had noticed lightning flashes far out over the lake, so we all grabbed a McD's meal and went to the beach. There a couple great streaks of lightning but only seldom. We did that for about 20 minutes and left.

Oh, but little did I realize what was in store...

With the shortage of available rooms I had to crash in a bunk bed. I occupied the bottom bunk while Kaitlynn used the top bunk and kept rambling on to me about whatever was on her mind. I guess she enjoyed the company, as sleepy as I was. It wasn't long before I dozed off around 2:00am.

Then I was jarred awake at 5:15am by the loudest thunderclap I ever heard. I glance out the window and it's flash after flash after flash. Apparently a huge thunderstorm cell veered right over Ludington to dump its entire contents on the town. This lightning was seriously striking out once per second, accompanied by a constant parade of thunder. Woooo hooooo!!!!!! Now THIS is what I've been waiting for my whole life. The show took about 20 minutes to pass, but it was oh so sweet. Kaitlynn was freaking out over the whole ordeal, she kept talking to me from her top bunk in an attempt to calm her fears. But I passed out again pretty quickly so I don't remember the last thing she said.

So that was the highlight of the night. I hope I run into more of those on the trip. We'll visit some of Tom's family and then book it to Chicago. Here we go again.

I think the world just came to an end.

Tom and Steve actually got up before I did. That severe thunderstorm must have worn me out because I managed to avoid consciousness until 11:00am EDT. They were already making the bed and putting things away, so for once they had to wait on me to get ready. Man, I slipped up on that one. Somebody fire me.

Luckily there was no check-out time at Tom's cousin's place. After showering and getting a quick breakfast, we made for the nearest Laundromat, as our clothing supply was declared a severe shortage. Tom left his clothes behind with me while he went off to attempt family/landmark visits. Here marks another one of Joey's "first time" endeavors. I've never used a Laundromat before. Ever. Yes, it is true ladies and gentlemen. I learned on this day how machines suck away quarters in exchange for keeping attire from breaching critical radiation levels.

I separated whites/colors and threw each group into those super industrial front-loading washers. It probably cost about US$8.00 altogether, but in the end we were bestowed with a fresh supply of garments. One more day and I would have had to start road tripping in the buff, and that's not a healthy visual. Thanks to mom's tips, everything came out modestly wrinkle-free. (Aren't you proud, mom?)

After finishing up, we took Tom back to his cousin's house so he could shower, while Steve and I snapped up some Caesar pizza after getting the KITT car lubed. I badly needed to track down a Walmart for restocking supplies and withdrawing more cash from the bank, but we ran out of time (as usual). It was 4:30pm by the time I went to pick Tom up.

After doing so, we went to visit Tom's grandmother once more and give our well wishes. From there we finally headed south.

On the way down, we stopped at a cemetery so Tom could catalog and take pictures of his great-grandfamily's markers. A little farther south brought us to Montague, home of the World's Largest Weathervane. I can't believe the thing is that big and actually works correctly! We continued further to the town of Muskagan, finally finding a Walmart to refresh supplies, cash, and fuel. I love the fact that in Michigan you can redeem your empty cans for a dime each. Had I remembered that, I would have saved all the cans from the trip. Blast it all.

We finally made it out of Michigan and the Eastern Time Zone, into Indiana. We found a place in Gary, IN for postcards, magnets, and whatnot. It was dark so no dallying here, and drove on into Illinois. Turning north on I-94 we passed the Chicago skyline, including the defining mark of the Sears Tower. Tall. Very tall.

We will visit the Tower, and then declare another 3 states. It's good to have an extra hour. It only gets better from here.

Well today started out a real bummer. And no, this isn't about getting off to a late start. I'm done used to that by now.

We packed our stuff and got ready to leave at 11:30am CDT when I noticed something wrong sitting in the driver's seat. Apparently the van had been vandalized in the hotel parking lot while we were sleeping. Someone had the audacity to toss a few rocks, creating a huge spider-web shaped crack in the bottom of the passenger side windshield. The rock was sitting there by the wiper blade.

Miraculously, Steve's car adjacent to us was untouched. Of course, he's got a "Viper" alarm that goes off if anyone comes within 17.2 of the car. (Wouldn't YOU be paranoid driving around KITT in Chicago?)

Being on the outskirts of the city, I wasn't too surprised, but still pissed. The windshield crack wasn't enough to hamper visuals, so we'll just have to let it ride. Luckily I'm not liable for the damage. Remember to purchase liability waiver when you rent your cars, kids!

I wasn't going to let that spoil the day, so we headed off to downtown for a trip up to the top of Sears Tower. This line wasn't nearly as long as the Empire State Building observatory. Actually the line to go back down and out was longer. When reaching the top at over 1300, we could see out for 30 and the entire city, as well as Lake Michigan. Being behind glass, it wasn't quite as hibblie-jibblie on this skyscraper. We got our pics and hurried out of the city immediately afterward.

Our original route was first supposed to take us to Milwaukee, Wisconsion, but my priority destination for the day was allegedly closing at 6:00pm, and here we were sitting in Chicago traffic at 3:00pm. Crap. We decided to head to Dyersville, Iowa first in order to make the attraction.

Yeah, this was the one day I opted to gracefully ignore all posted speed limits. I'll spare all the moms a heart attack and fail to mention how fast I was going. Just be relieved I kept it less than triple-digits. And I never passed more than 4 cars at one time on the two-lane highways. See? I'm a good boy.

We arrived at the Field of Dreams baseball field at 5:55pm. Imagine my delight (and pisstivity) when I see a big hand-written "8" slapped over the "6" on the closing time sign. Man, I busted my ass to get here and we still had 2 hours to spare. They need to update the website or something.

For those of you who haven't seen the movie Field of Dreams (1989) it's a good flick. Go watch it. It was a delight to stand on the actual baseball field used in the movie. The house (and porch swing) were all there. Even the bleachers on the side of the field were still intact. There were kids and their dads playing catch and batting on the field. It's as peaceful a place as the movie suggests. I had to buy some souvenirs of course, and got in plenty of pics.

It was 7:30pm and obviously we weren't going to backtrack all the way to Milwaukee, WI. But we had to touch Wisconsin somewhere, thus it was decided to stop in the Mississippi River town of La Crosse, on the western edge. We used SR 18 to cross over the river and fill up the van in Prairie du Chien, WI, and then followed Hwy 35 up to La Crosse, scoping out a Hardee's (Carls Jr. for you westside folk) to dine. By 11:00pm we headed off to our final destination of Minneapolis, MN.

There were three MicroTels in the area. The bad news is that all three were sold out. (What's going on here, a toenail-clipping convention?) The good news is that one of the reservations fell through and it just happened to be a 2-bed non-smoking room. Lucky us. We pulled in at 2:30am CDT (AGAIN).

A long driving day is ahead. The van needs to be lubed in Fargo, North Dakota. Bismark, ND is the goal, but if we have time (which I doubt) we'll go farther if possible. Hopefully we can make up some lost time and get back a day of cushion. We'll see what happens.

Sorry for the delayed updates, folks. We're back in the mountains, which translates to sporadic cell phone signal, and less places to use the internet. I know that kills your morning buzz, but you can deal, I'm sure.

As usual, we utilized every last ounce of available hotel time possible, checking out at 10:59am and actually leaving the room 30 minutes later. Room service must love our procrastination.

Before continuing west, Steve recommended that we check out the famous Mall of America in Minneapolis, MN, one of the biggest, if not THE biggest shopping mall in the nation. As luck would have it, we just had to stop by when the day fell on Saturday, making it the biggest parking headache in the nation. Scores of adults and teenie-boppers were climbing out of their cars to viciously scrounge the stores in need of emptying their pocketbooks.

After trying for 20 minutes to find a spot, I conceded to the fact that coming here on a weekend is not the best idea, so we headed on through downtown Minneapolis and out west into the open country.

Shortly after crossing the border into North Dakota at 5:30pm CDT, we stopped at Fargo, ND to replenish and get the van its badly-needed oil change. Wouldn't you know it, the place I had in mind closed at 2:00pm. Crap. Oh well, there was still a reading of 17% oil life left, so I'll just find the next convenient place that's open. Onward we marched.

I thought North Dakota would be a little more rugged, but the eastern half is just plain flat land like the rest of the Midwest. It seemed like forever to reach the capital Bismark, ND. Here we replenished again.

Now this was supposed to be our overnighter, but being only 8:00pm, we were presented a chance to revive one of those precious cushion days lost near the beginning of the roadtrip.

We passed through more of North Dakota, picking up an extra hour with another time zone change. That was welcome because 1) sunsets at 10:00pm are just weird, and 2) we calculated the extra hour to sleep tomorrow.

We made a turn southward when Hwy 85 came up, and passed through what seemed to be the most desolate highway yet. At 11:00pm MDT there was absolutely NOTHING out there except the stars, shining big and bright compared to the light-polluted skies at home.

The stars were so intriguing, in fact, that we stopped at the North/South Dakota border and star gazed for about 30 minutes. (Yes, we also have the rank of Astronomy Geek tied to our résumé. But you knew that already, right?) A clear view of the Milky Way stretched from horizon to horizon, and all the stars invisible to the west coast were lit up quite nicely. Trained eyes could also see satellites whizzing by and even a meteor or two. We got pics of each of the border signs, as well as some time-exposed shots of the galaxy before moving on.

Now that we're in South Dakota, the ultimate goal is somewhere between here and Rapid City. It wasn't much farther and we believed we'd be in bed before midnight.

(Cue the "BAH HA HA HA" please...)

It seems that today was not our day for timing things perfectly. Once a year in South Dakota there's a huge Motorcycle Rally in the town of Sturgis, and guess what day it started? And do you know what that means? Ridiculously inflated hotel prices! We stopped at a Days Inn in Spearfish and they told us one overnight was US$300. Well screw that! We weren't here for a stupid bike show!

We knew we were in trouble at 1:00am as we became surrounded by all these Harley bikes on the highway, heading in the same direction. In Rapid City, pretty much every hotel flashed their "Welcome Bikers!" signs, which in my head translated to "Welcome everyone! We are going to sap you for only US$500 a night!"

Our only options were to continue south, away from the event-hosting towns. On the map, it looked like Hot Springs might be worth a try, but it was another hour away at least. Approaching Hwy 16 revealed the signs for Mount Rushmore, and I hoped out of some miracle that the higher elevations wouldn't be affected, so we went up there first.

And I'll be an eagle that flies backwards if I didn't see swarms of bikes all throughout the mountains. They were everywhere, in every lodge possible. Admitting defeat, I started grumbling under my breath, decided to hell with it and pulled into a random Super 8 motel in Keystone, SD.

I walked in and expected to find a US$250 room. I talked to the guy and discovered they had a non-smoking 2-bedroom available.

For US$59.99.

I must have made a dent in the counter slamming down my credit card. I asked why they weren't charging enormously for rooms. He said this was the last night at normal rates and tomorrow they would start charging US$240 per night.

Phew. I'm glad someone up there is watching out for us.

The best part is being just 2 from Mount Rushmore, tomorrow's next attraction. Looks like we'll have to watch out for the bikers the next day and avoid scoring any roadkill points. We may possibly get another cushion day if we can book it to Yellowstone. I doubt it, but at least we have one day back on our plate.

Man, we were really hurting in the morning, with less than 4 hours of sleep. I awoke at 7:00am to the deafening motorcycle engines rumbling non-stop. Apparently this motorcycle rally was way bigger than I ever imagined. Thousands of bikers roamed the mountains, despite the event-hosting city being a solid 30 away. I've never seen so many tricked out Harleys in my life, and probably never will again, unless I plan on returning to Sturgis in mid-August sometime in the future. (HA!)

Tom and Steve were forced up reasonably early due to the noise, and quite irritated that they couldn't go back to sleep. Bikers were not our fans today. We all stumbled out of the hotel room at 11:00am MDT and dealt with the fact that it's another night of lost sleep. We're used to it.

Mt. Rushmore was first on the list. Of course, the actual motorcycle event doesn't happen until the next day, so all these biker guys/gals were making a day of it and visiting the landmarks too. Bikes, bikes, everywhere! Ughhh!!!

Everyone says the sculpture isn't as big as people perceive it to be, and I can agree with that. If you walk the trail and get right under it, THEN it looks big. Along the trail were museums of how the mountain was carved. Pretty ingenious inventions for back then, especially the huge air compressors.

We bounced from there and headed a little farther south to the Crazy Horse memorial. This is a relatively new sculpture, in progress over 50 years. And just the head was finished in 1998. Since it's intended to stay privately funded and family-owned, we may not see it finished in our lifetimes. There's a plethora of Indian culture here if that's your thing. Like Rushmore, I found the means and methods of working on this mountain quite fascinating.

All right, we've had enough of mountain sculptures (and Harleys) and booked it out of here. We hopped on Hwy 395/18 and descended southward from the hills. Motorcycle sightings thinned out by the time we reached the Nebraska border.

We turned onto Hwy 26 and headed west to the town of Scottsbluff, NE. Here was one of our restaurant destinations: Runza. It's a fast-food joint, but they're exclusive to this region. They serve burgers, but I got the cheese Runza sandwich. Not too shabby I must say. Definitely filling.

No time to lose. We head farther west into the colossal state of Wyoming. By this time it was dark and we didn't get to Casper, WY until midnight. Off to Yellowstone in the morning after replenishing supplies.

All right, kids. It looks like there could be another skip in blog and pic updates. Yellowstone has no cell phone coverage, and DEFINITELY no internet thanks to camping instead of lodging, so you probably won't hear from me until we're in Idaho. How will you survive?

Get off the computer. Nerds.

Arriving at our next destination even a tad earlier than usual would result in a good start the next day, wouldn't you agree? But it doesn't matter with this group, it's always the same: scrambling just before 11:00am check-out time.

We headed for the nearest Walmart to stock up on camping food and supplies, as well as refilling the tank. Fuel is relatively cheap around here. Of course, their cheapest is 85 octane and I'm not chancing that with the van. We were on our way to Yellowstone by 1:00pm MDT.

Getting there obviously took a long time, since we had to cross 250 of Wyoming first. Closing in on Thermopolis, WY, we were supposed to take Hwy 120, but I was so focused on State Route 20 that we missed the turn. (Please smack me in the head next time.) Fortunately there was a sub Hwy 431 which steered us back on track, so we lost maybe 20 minutes, not too big a deal.

As soon as we reached the town of Cody, WY and turned west towards the park, the landscape began changing immediately. Before we knew it, we were surrounded by towering mountains, with something incredible around every bend. The sights up here were gorgeous, probably the best I've seen on this whole trip. And we weren't even inside the park yet. I was really looking forward to this.

Yes, friends, the keyword is "WAS."

We saw the signs that all lodging was full. No big deal, we intended on camping anyway. At 6:30pm we arrive at the East entrance to show the ranger my Annual Parks Pass. And just as we pull up, he gets the call that ALL campgrounds are now full and we can't stay in the park.

(Insert a lot of expletives here. And I mean a lot. Pick any of your choice. Really.)

*sigh* Remind me to come here again with early risers. All the camping supplies were for naught. Maybe there'll be someplace to camp on the coast between Seattle and San Francisco.

With about 2 hours of daylight left, at this point all I could do was drive through the park and see what there was to see. Of course, we didn't know about the road construction near the East entrance. We came to a standstill and sat there wasting our time for 30 minutes before the crewmen let us through the mountain pass.

Even inside the park, it takes a long time to get to where you want to go. By 7:30pm we were straddling Yellowstone Lake, which was impressive. Any campgrounds we passed displayed those "FULL" markers as if to sneer at us. Right now, the intent is to see Old Faithful, a trademark of Yellowstone. We pull up to that place at 8:30pm.

By this point daylight was quickly fading and none of us were sure when the next billow of steam would go up, so we just hung out and waited. Behind the faint mountain backdrop, an active thunderstorm was brewing from afar, a decent sideshow to make the wait satisfying. It ended up being 9:30pm by the time Old Faithful let loose, with only the flash of cameras and lightning illuminating the steam show.

Little did we realize, that thunderstorm was moving toward us the whole time. Even after the geyser blew, we stayed another 30 minutes, filming the increasing intensity of the lightning. It was time to leave when the thunder started getting loud.

From here we drove north to the Mammoth Springs area. By this time, the thunderstorm moved almost directly over us. Flashes were going off every 5 seconds. Maybe it was an omen that we couldn't camp. When a thunderstorm strikes, it is highly advised you get out of your tent and into a grounded place, such as your vehicle. The rain came pouring down as well. Hmmm... suddenly I didn't feel so bad. I felt more for the poor campers out there enduring the storm.

My anxiety increased while driving through the wide-open fields, uncovered from the safety of the tall trees. I have seen videos of lightning striking vehicles. Even though we were relatively safe, I didn't want to be jarred out of my skin if that happened. Luckily we were spared from such an event.

At one point Steve radioed to us about dashcam videos or something, but it wasn't clear and I assumed he was talking about the lightning. We were so distracted with the storm ourselves, it wasn't until maybe 10-15 minutes later Tom realized Steve was no longer behind us. I slammed on the brakes to a crawl, wondering what happened and hoping he was catching up. With no cell phone coverage and limited walkie-talkie range, this was not the place to get separated. He finally caught up to us some 30 minutes later, wondering why we didn't wait for him. Apparently he stopped to set up his dash cam video for the lightning, but that got lost in translation over the radio. Whoops-a-daisy.

It was almost 11:00pm by the time we made it to the north side of the park. The Mammoth campground was marked "FULL" of course. All I could do was utter more curses and exit the park through the North entrance. I had seen the one thing I wanted to see, so we made way for the state of Montana. I'll have to come back to Yellowstone on a family trip sometime.

Now to find a hotel, with the first attempt in the nearest city of Livingston, MT. Easier said than done. In addition to being summer, local conventions were taking place, marking all hotels as booked. We connected to I-90 west, trying Bozeman, MT and Belgrade, MT, both with the same results. WTF? On a Monday??? Go back to work, people!!

I was sort of frustrated, yet not. We were still on our primary route, so with every hop westward, that meant less driving time the next day. But it was going on 2:00am and I really needed to rest.

We finally find a vacant remote Motel 8 on the outskirts of Butte, MT, by some stroke of luck. We got in at 3:00am MDT and will suffer more lack of sleep.

I'm looking forward to the next day. We go to Coeur d'Alene, Idaho to stay with a dear friend of mine. Barring any more lodging difficulties, these final days of the roadtrip should be great.

Once again, our famous 11:30am MDT departure was bestowed upon us. Today, however, something a little different was happening.

Tom and Steve wanted to go north to Cut Bank, Montana to see the train yards. For all 17 of you that have actually played Microsoft's Train Simulator for PC (I'm not one of them) you'd know that the starting train yards in the game are here.

But it was a 300 detour, on top of the 300 we were already slated to drive, which I didn't think was worth pursuing, so we decided to split up. Tom went with Steve in the KITT, while I headed west solo to Idaho. I suppose that's one advantage of 2 cars, teaming off to engage in side quests that the one grump (yours truly) would rather pass over.

It was rather pleasant to have all that open road to myself and blast away trance music while driving the valleys of Montana. That genre of music may not be for everyone, but it really complements the scenery of fast-moving fields backdropped with slow-crawling mountains. It brought an ample feeling of serenity.

I stopped briefly in Missoula, MT for a gas refill and a Starbucks blended creme before moving on. It was almost 3:30pm when I crossed the border into Idaho (gaining our final hour back into Pacific Time), which happens to be at the crest of the Coeur d'Alene mountains. This range is riddled with steep degrades and sharp curves. It's a wonder I made it out alive. A few hills were burning from recent wildfires. One of the mountains was completely up in smoke. Imagine me driving at 75 taking pictures. Actually, don't.

Lake Coeur d'Alene came into view, which on a map doesn't look like much, but you wouldn't know that while passing it. I turned onto Hwy 95 south, straight for Rockford Bay.

By 4:30pm PDT I arrived at the house of a dear friend of mine. She's of Scottish descent (complete with accent), has a healthy amount of "spirit" and can be quite feisty at times. But she's super cool, fun, and just too adorable. We spent a quiet afternoon talking, eating, looking at roadtrip pics taken so far, and going down to dip our feet in the lake. I savored the quality time, as it was usually all hustle-bustle back in California.

Tom and Steve somehow managed to arrive before 10:00pm, only 3 hours later than planned. Apparently they had run into a hailstorm dumping marble-sized ice balls. With the removable T-tops off. They had their fun. I had mine. After their dinner we pretty much called it a night.

I'll stick around a little longer before hitting the west coast in Washington. Two more states left! Exciting times, indeed.

Ahh, no check-out times to fret over. I achieved a normal 8 hours of sleep for once, same with my comrades. It's probably the last time we'll be able to do so (until we get home, that is).

Our host was rather zealous in making all of us breakfast. I haven't had such a hearty meal in quite a while. Then the real treat came: a walk down to the docks, where a boat was waiting. For the next hour, we cruised around on Coeur d'Alene Lake. It's been quite a few years since riding on a small motor boat in the mountains. I could have stayed out there all day, but I don't think my skin would have agreed with that decision. Upon our return to the docks, Tom took a dip in the lake while the rest of us soaked our feet. The weather couldn't have been better.

We retreated back to the house, where Steve showered, Tom did laundry, and I took an inadvertent nap. I probably needed it to catch up on the 59 hours of sleep lost in the past 3 weeks. By 4:00pm our stuff was packed and ready. We took pics and left.

It was a 300 trek to Seattle. We stopped in Coeur d'Alene for supplies, gas, and money, and took off as fast as we could, hoping to gaze upon the Cascade mountains before sunset.

Umm, that didn't quite work. By the time we reached any peaks the sunlight had retired for the day. Oh well. We made it to Seattle by 11:00pm PDT, but of course had to go through the ordeal of finding a motel, which took a few attempts before finding a vacancy. Dang travelers, get outta here!

We'll stop by the Seattle highlights and make our final turn south through the last state of Oregon. Pray the van doesn't break down 5 from the border. This is the home stretch, y'all!

I thought for sure by finding a hotel well before midnight, this would be the perfect opportunity for all of us to get some decent sleep and wake up early for once.

C'mon Joey, you should know the routine by now. No leaving the hotel before 11:00am!

Tom made the mistake of turning on the TV, and both of them ended up watching late night shows until 2:00am or so. Ugh, I guess it doesn't matter when we show up to a hotel after all. It took me a while to doze off to the blaring TV. But you know me, I'm not telling them what to do.

This all results in leaving the next morning at 11:30am, again. I only have to deal with this two more times, me thinks.

On today's docket is the city of Redmond, WA, home of two famous companies. First is the Nintendo Headquarters, but all they had for visitors is a service center to repair busted consoles, and had some archived displays and merchandise. The entrance was marked with a Pikachu-type Volkswagen bug. ::shudders:: Not a Pokémon fan, as you might guess. I bought some mementos and we took off.

Second was the home of Microsoft. Their real estate is a little bigger than previously thought. They own several acres of Redmond and even had their own soccer field. But this IS Microsoft we're dealing with here, so nobody should be too surprised. There were over 100 buildings belonging to the software giant, but our target was the big kahuna corporate office of "1 Microsoft Way." According to Google Maps it looked easy to find, but it must have been built in a deep underground bunker or something, cause we never did find it. We wanted a picture with Tom wearing his Apple Computer shirt in front of the office, just for irony's sake, but had to make do with a Microsoft visitor parking sign.

After that failed mission, next stop was downtown. Here we found a Goodyear so the van could get its badly-needed oil change. The oil life meter reached 0% while in Montana so I think it was time. Steve got KITT lubed as well. While that was going on, we decided to walk the 3/4 to the Space Needle.

Another structure to conquer, but first you gotta pay US$13.00 to go up this thing. Using elevators that face outward, the view panned out nicely as we flew 520 up the side of the landmark and onto the "O" deck, as they call it. And for good reason: you walk around the entire thing for a full circle glance of Seattle. It wasn't the clearest of days, masking the nearby volcano of Mt. Rainier. But the immediate views of course, were awesome nonetheless.

It was almost 4:30pm when we descended and walked back to the Goodyear. They were running behind so an extra 45 minutes rolled by before everything wrapped up.

Now for those who still can't believe we've gone through this entire roadtrip without any drama, may I now present: a spat.

We hadn't initially planned on grub after the Space Needle, but thought maybe we could squeeze it in if there was time. The Seattle theme was the seafood, so we all saved up our appetites just to be on the safe side. Unfortunately because of the extra wait time at the Goodyear, it was going on 6:00pm, which at this point made it impossible for a sit-down dinner AND be in southern Oregon before midnight, so I made the executive decision to scrap dinner and get moving. We could either snack on stuff or find fast food as an alternative. We were supposed to be camping and cooking food later tonight, and I don't think anybody wants to be pitching a tent at 2:00am.

I'm afraid none of that logical thinking mattered. Steve had his heart set on a seafood meal, and the change of plan put him in a sour mood, enough to vocalize his displeasure about the sustained lack of communication going on and whatnot, which sort of came out of nowhere. It must have been building up for a while; it certainly caught me off guard.

Unfortunately that's just the way it goes sometimes. This whole trip has been one big batch of spontaneity. If we have time for something, great. If not, we gotta move on. That's how it's been since the beginning. I may or may not have been clear about our daily plans, but I have to be fluid with calculating travel times and making decisions accordingly, even if that makes me the a*hole.

Besides which, its hard to have sympathy when we can't start the day earlier than the late morning. I thought I was being quite lenient and forgiving in that department, but like I said before, we can't endanger our schedule if we expect to meet our goals and be back home before time is up. If someone gets sore at me for using this logic, then so be it.

We left Seattle, WA (without getting food) and headed straight for Oregon, our 48th and final state to touch. We arrived in Portland, OR shortly after 8:30pm. Tom had planned on visiting an acquaintance who owned a life-size train engine, but we never did get in contact with him and it was too dark for any searching, so we gave up that plan before it even started.

We replenished and headed further south on I-5, detouring at Eugene, OR onto Hwy 126 with a direct route to the Pacific coastline. Once the ocean prevented forward progress, we turned south to the famous Hwy 101. It only took another 10 before finding a camping spot at the Oregon Dunes. Tom and I pitched the tent (at 12:30am) in damp 51 weather. We ended up not cooking food because of course it was too late, we had no firewood (kinda forgot that little detail) and we were just plain tired. Steve decided it was too cold and just stayed in his car for the night, since it seems he doesn't wish to be within 10 of me.

Now remember, this is all from my perspective. You may soon be reading counter-arguments on a future website www.kinless-sucks.com.

Tomorrow our home state awaits, starting with the 101 to San Francisco. We won't be staying in the city as I've heard it's expensive (like US$200/night expensive). Where we stay depends on if we can make the Golden Gate bridge before sunset. I do NOT plan on trying to see that in the dark, so we'll bunk wherever is strategically optimal for daytime viewing of the bridge.

48 hours left. Will our trio come back together in harmony? Or will we fall apart and tragically end our miserable existence? Come back in 24 hours and I'll tell ya.

I woke up at 8:30am PDT to the sounds of birds twittering their little hearts out. What? Oh yeah, I'm sleeping in a tent, which does NOT block sunlight out. Isn't there such a thing as tent blinds or something?

Tom was snoozing away, so I moseyed on out. Steve was still sleeping in his car. Guess that leaves time for a cold cereal breakfast, packing up my crap and doing some paperwork. Oh, and it was DANG cold. It's gotta have dipped to less than 50. Of course, I can just barely make out the sound of crashing waves from the cold Pacific Ocean so I'm not entirely too surprised. Despite 2 pairs of shirts on, a sweater, and long pants, I still had to crank the heater in the car to warm up.

Eventually Tom woke up and did his preparations. Steve woke up and did his thing. Since we haven't communicated much the last 12 hours, I mentioned of our plans to head south down the 101, and he seemed fine with that. He wanted to see the Redwoods near Crescent City, which I thought was a great idea. That is where one of our beloved Star Wars movies was filmed. (Nope, you couldn't escape one more geek session.) We headed out of the camp just before noon.

We made sure to top off our fuel tanks right before crossing the California border, as we know our home state tends to skew prices higher with petroleum. It was GOOD to finally see the "Welcome to California" sign. It was BAD to see the mileage markers start at 800 and SLOWLY count down along our route. And yes, it was UGLY to see the newly-increased gas prices on the station signs we passed (much higher than before we started this trip).

The 101 up here is all mountainous with an abundance of forests. Even more peculiar is the beach sitting right off the highway. It's a stark contrast just by turning your head 180° from left to right. The rocks bulging out of the ocean were also quite a sight.

We cruised past Crescent City and into the Redwood National Forest, stopping at an information center to get the scoop on these here Redwood trees. They offered us the choice of seeing the tallest (4 hour round trip) or the biggest (15 minutes).

That settled that. Off to the biggun' trees we went. We parked at about 5:00pm and hiked around the looping trail. Here we gazed upon gigantic trees, some dating back over 2000 years, starting their life during the Roman Era. The biggest tree at the start of the trail was called just that: "Big Tree" with a massive 68 diameter trunk. You'd could have placed 10 clones of me end-to-end to reach all the way around the base of this one. And they were quite high, obviously not as high as the other ones we were hearing about, but still nothing to sneeze at. We made our loop and took off.

Down, down, down the state we went. The terrain of mountains never once let up, and neither did the beaches. Not until we passed Eureka did our route pull us further inland. I knew now we wouldn't hit San Francisco before sunset, so we will stay in Santa Rosa. Of course, once again it takes a few tries to find a vacant place, but the Sandman Motel comes to our rescue, which for an off-brand wasn't too bad at all. We will head off in the (probably late) morning. Goals for the next day are crossing the Golden Gate Bridge, and visiting the Apple Store in Cupertino, CA.

If you're still wondering about Steve, I think everything is on good terms again. It's hard to stay mad forever. 'Tis all good again and we aim to finish up the last 700 of the trip in peace.

The final question of arriving home still lingers. If we're really ambitious, we could shoot directly home without any more overnighters. Or we just might camp one more time in the area of Santa Barbara/Ventura. That's a variance between 11:00pm Saturday night and 2:00pm Sunday afternoon. Spontaneous to the end! We will show up when we show up. In any case, our journey is wrapping up with less than 36 hours to go.

I think I'll admit I do miss home. Just a little bit. (Don't tell anyone, OK?)

I got up relatively early and went down to the 104 jacuzzi for a 20-minute stint. That will certainly wake you up. It wakes you up even more rising back into the 60 air. I got my continental breakfast items (grabbing some extra for the guys) and headed back up to the room for a shower and preps to get out of here.

With a midday deadline, and our usual 30-minute-after-checkout cheating, we continued south on the 101 at 12:30pm PDT. An hour later we were crossing the famous Golden Gate Bridge, which I have not crossed for a good 20 years. Had I brought my FasTrak device I could have saved a dollar on the US$5.00 toll. But hey I'll go big today!

We headed into downtown Frisco on the famous Lombard Street. If you don't know the significance, keep driving it until you reach the incline, one of the steepest you'll find anywhere in the world. Once we were about to reach it, we could see going up the hill was a parking lot. No cars were moving at all. Um, NOT worth it. So we detoured and stayed on the 101 through the city. We did stop at a beach to take pictures of the bridge. This may be August, but MAN it was cold/windy here. That was the first time Tom wore his jacket.

Onward we traveled to some of the neighboring cities. One of our stops was Cupertino, CA, where the famous Apple Computer has their headquarters. Unfortunately the batteries in Steve's walkie-talkie went out, and by the time we used the cell phone to tell him our plans he had already missed the freeway change. Whoops.

After we navigated him back on track, I remembered that Sunnyvale, CA was a neighboring city to Cupertino, and I also remembered that Capcom, creator of the Mega Man and Street Fighter video games, was also stationed here. I had to at least get a picture of the Capcom sign to say I was there.

Being a Saturday, the place appeared closed. We pulled into the empty parking lot and waited for Steve to catch up. Like a typical nerd I posed with some Mega Man merchandise in front of the sign. When Steve got there we both got in a few poses. And today, Steve just happened to be wearing his Mega Man shirt, very fitting for the location.

As we were about to leave, two individuals appeared out of nowhere and asked us what we were doing. We told them we were Capcom fans and were taking pictures of the signs. Turns out these two strangers just happened to be employees of Capcom, one of them being Ken, the VP of sales. They saw from our belongings that we were travelers, and they kindly offered us a tour of the building.

For non-gamers, this would likely be a snooze-fest. But these are nerds you're talking about here. I believe Tom, Steve and myself had perfected synchronized eye-widening that day. We were so stunned we couldn't believe it. Apparently several employees were working overtime to meet a deadline for game debugging, and they just happened to see us out there taking pictures, and came out to greet us. I mentioned being a Mega Man fan since 1987. They thought that was pretty hardcore. So in we go.

Holy crap. I mean, like, holy CRAP. Freakin' Capcom. I'm in the Capcom building. CAPCOM. Holy crap.

OK, I'm done nerding. (No, no I'm not.) We go in there and spy all the different rooms each with a variety of video game merchandise, development stations, debugging stations. Employees looked like they were taking a break playing video games, when they were really looking for bugs in this game about to be released. Ken showed us around and let us take a few pictures (which I must keep to the chest, out of NDA respect). They actually gave us "souvenirs" to take home, such as Mega Man T-shirts, display boxes, and replacement manuals. I was floored by their generosity and courteousness and I thank them forever for it. This was definitely a major highlight of the roadtrip, at least for us.

From there we headed down to the Apple Campus. We wouldn't be so lucky this time. Everything was closed, even the merchandise store. We would settle for pictures at the front door, just to prove we were there.

Next was Santa Cruz. We made our way to the boardwalk intending to check out the attractions and shops (and women). But being on a weekend this place was hoppin', so convenient parking was not an option. Strangely enough, railroad tracks running right through the street. Commuter and freight trains actually come through here, causing a big ruckus when they do, since all traffic has to stop or get out of the way. I don't know how they do that. Steve filled up the KITT and we skid-addled.

Back to the 101 once more. It was getting to be almost 8:00pm, and we were pretty sure that we would NOT be camping, which means the decision had automatically been made for the final destination.

HOME.

But wait! We decided on some sort of celebratory meal in Los Angeles, CA somewhere, but by the time we'd get there it would be after 1:00am, when most everything closes. We reached Los Angeles at 1:15am and at least looked for the late-night places. Oh wait, this is a SATURDAY NIGHT. We have the best timing for these things. All restaurants were overflowing with people. Definitely not in the mood for that so I said let's get out of here. We instead drove into our native Orange County and picked up a meal at IHOP in Irvine. Just a slight downgrade, but good enough. We left there at 3:30am. From here, Steve parted from us and went home.

Tom and I pulled into the driveway of my San Juan Capistrano, CA residence at 4:00am PDT, exactly 27 days and 12 hours to the moment we left. We locked the van, went inside and crashed. Hard.

So yes, for all you faithful readers, my journey has come to an end. But please continue on to the finale journal entry. I've got many a thing to wrap up.

Greetings to all friends, family, acquaintances, and strangers who joined us on our wild excursion through the lower 48 United States of America.

I thank all of you for your for your participation, support, well-wishes, prayers, and good-lucks the past month. For me, it has truly been an experience that will be forever stowed away in mind and heart.

Some have asked if our 4 weeks had gone by as fast as it did for them. If this was a 2-week roadtrip, it probably would have indeed felt only that long. But when you double the time to a month, it feels like, ohh, a split second or two?

Now that the trip is over, it definitely feels like the time flew by. During the trip, however, some days on the road felt like they'd never end. Sometimes that was a good thing.

After 12,537, 27½ days on the road, 14 million bug splats, and almost US$1,300 spent in gas, I can evenly summarize our trip up into six parts.

The first part of our journey had a few hiccups, as the overlooked flaws in Steve's car unfolded and the van's flat tire developed into a massive seek-and-destroy mission. But despite vehicular problems, we were able to enjoy the sights of Vegas, the wonders of the Grand Canyon, the geekiness of standing in Four Corners, the majestic views of the Colorado Rockies (the mountains, not the team) and the long stretches of the Midwest plains.

The second part began with a welcome reception from my family in Texas. They didn't disappoint, for sure. :) That was followed by a memorable trip down Bourbon Street in New Orleans, learning how to sweat a few buckets. A last-minute decision was made to travel all night for one of the most memorable events in space history, watching the Discovery shuttle launch in Florida. We topped that off with an amazing piece of cholesterolic piece of art called the Hamdog outside Atlanta.

The third part consisted of jaunting through the eastern mountain ranges to our nation's capital of Washington, D.C., where I learned not to drive the streets at midnight. The sights and wonders of Capitol Hill brought back memories of bad Social Science grades but provided us a perceptive look into our nation's history. Tom was fortunately able to visit his grandmother in Pennsylvania, and we could all enjoy a pure Philly Cheesesteak for once. New York was extremely overwhelming, with all of its skyscrapers and the endless number of places to go and things to see. You just can't fit it all in one day. The wonders of Boston and the women of Maine were also notable in this part of the trip.

The fourth part starts with our route to Niagara Falls, where we briefly conquered the country of Canada for 30 minutes. We passed into Michigan to see Tom's other grandma and his family, where we were all treated to a fantastic lightning show at 5:00am. In Chicago, a broken windshield resulted from an overnight stay, prompting us to leave after visiting the Sears Tower, and of course who can forget the Field of Dreams ball park in Iowa, where "people will come"?

The fifth part took us through the northern plains of the Dakotas and down by Mt. Rushmore, where I have seen far more than my share of Harley motorcycles. After feasting on the famous Runza in Nebraska, we came to Yellowstone, unwillingly driving through thanks to no camping space that evening, but Old Faithful and a lightning show kept the night memorable. This leg ended with a peaceful ride through Montana, and a great day at the lake with my dear friend in Idaho.

The sixth and final part invited us through Seattle and the iconic Space Needle, where marine layers declared a permanent residence, and friendships were tested. We came down through Oregon with another night of camping, and entered back into our home state, finding the wonders of the Redwoods, the fog-drenched bay of San Francisco, and the craziness of a typical Saturday night in Los Angeles.

Question Time

Here were the following questions most asked by others, and their answers:

What were your favorite cities?

It's still a toss up between D.C. and New York, despite both being vehicle-unfriendly. They're magnificent places, and I definitely want to return for an extended visit. The highlights may have whetted the 'ol appetite, but that craving to see the rest will definitely hound you.

Hopefully in 2 or 3 years I can come back to these areas. My other favorite spots include the mountain and desert areas in the western half of the country. Despite what my allergies and chapped lips think, they are places of serenity, peace, and reflection, and I should like to visit them again soon.

Would you do all 48 states again?

Most likely not. The physical goal has been accomplished and there's no need to repeat it. I like to think of it as a preview for future trips, because now I see where it's best to spend more time.

What was the most memorable?

The top two things would easily be the last-minute detour to the Space Shuttle launch and the unexpected tour in the Capcom HQ building. Usually the spontaneous things are really what makes a roadtrip flourish.

What was something you'd rather just forget?

The Waffle House in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Total ghetto.

What's next for you? Any other trips planned?

I plan to finish up the last two states of Hawaii and Alaska. I want to travel to Barrow, at the very top of Alaska, because the sun never sets above the Arctic circle in summer time and I'd like to experience the "Midnight Sun." I also want to see some of the major Alaskan cities such as Juneau, Anchorage, and Fairbanks.

I would also like to visit ALL eight islands of Hawaii (even the two small private ones) and see the clear water, the huge waves, and experience the sight of two-foot bugs. (Um yeah, kidding on that last one.)

Obviously, I won't be using the road to travel to either of these places.

How much did it finally cost you?

Certain individuals pointed out my excessive complaining about certain aspects in the daily journals, one good example being the cost of everything. Guilty as charged. Sometimes you forget that you're living your dream, and you shouldn't care how much it costs. However, I have been raised to be ultra-conservative, and sometimes I let that get in the way. Yeah, I'm a big baby when it comes to high prices. But I was successfully able to stay under budget and only spend US$3,500 total for the trip. That's not too bad when your vehicle rental and gas make up US$2,300 of that. When you live where I live (SoCal) and you're worried about trying to buy a house in the future, you may understand why I had to watch what I spend.

The Comradery

As most of you may have guessed, over the course of this roadtrip I chronicled anything and everything I deemed to be funny, interesting, informative or dramatic. It's part of what brings people back the next day to find out what transpires.

However, it was pointed out that some of these entries may have been a little on the harsh side regarding my roadtrip buddies. It probably wasn't difficult to notice that I was frequently venting my frustrations with our constant late starts and late driving nights. I knew my biological clock was different from theirs, I just underestimated how much it would conflict with our schedule and priorities.

There was no chance of ever getting into the early-to-bed/early-to-rise pattern. I could have made Tom get up and he could continue sleeping while I drive, but that wasn't an option for Steve, as forcing him to drive while tired may have put his safety at risk. Letting them sleep until 10:30am was my best option, but obviously not my favorite.

Losing our cushion days early really put us in a tight squeeze. Several nights we were hurting to stay awake with no choice but to move forward to the next destination. These days were ripe for getting up late the next morning.

But I digress. To put it bluntly, Steve did not appreciate some of the content I posted, thinking I was trying to make my friends look as bad as possible. For those who know me, obviously it's never my intent to write anything slanderous or hurtful. I was spontaneously calling the shots as they were happening. I assumed everyone could read between the lines and see that I was trying (and probably failing) to make a big joke out of it. Sure, there were occasional frustrations between all of us, and I made sure to note them for brevity, but it wasn't for trying to put anybody down. I thought I made fun of myself most of all.

(2022 Update: For those thinking my entries weren't so bad, most of them have been edited for additional clarity and toned down from their original harshness. I couldn't deny sounding like an a-hole in some of them, but explaining the situation in a more mature matter seems better appropriate for today's reading audience, so they've been cleaned up a bit.)

Am I glad they came with me? Absolutely. Despite my friends' peculiar idiosyncrasies, they were my best choices to bring on the trip because they made it immensely fun and it was our way to bond. Would I trip with them again? Probably not. Our discipline of schedules varied too greatly. I pushed them when they didn't want to be pushed.

This has all led to an unfortunate position in dealing with a jeopardized friendship due to my perceived insensitivity in the journals. To me, what I wrote was no big deal, just blowing off steam and trying to make it sound funny in the process. Just about everyone I talked to really enjoyed reading our daily adventures, including Tom. But sometimes I just don't see things the way others see it, and for those with a broader range of sensitivity, I simply came across as a huge jerk.

I would like to genuinely apologize to Steve, Tom, or anyone else out there who considered the content of my journals to be tasteless. To me, it was all in light-hearted fun, and if I thought my comments were truly inappropriate, I wouldn't have posted them. It has not, nor was it ever, an intention to hurt or smear anyone, be it one of my best friends or a stranger, because that is ultimately not the kind of person I would strive to be.

That being said, Tom and Steve are still good guys to have made friends with. We share many "geek" things in common. I pray that continues.

I'm thrilled that Tom and I were able to stand each other in the same van as long as we did. I believe we know a little bit more about each other now (certain things more than we need to) but it was an all around amazing experience for sharing and working together. Great stuff.

This was indeed the trip of a lifetime, and I'm still glad they came with me.

Conclusion

I have returned home and was immediately thrust back to the grind of my day job. I brought back kitchen fridge magnets of every state, plus replicas of almost all the structures or attractions I visited. They are small reminders of what each place meant for me. Fifty years from now I'll tell all those non-existent grandkids about each state and the stories that went with them. And when someone tells me the state they're from, now I can instantly visualize and relate to their origins.

I have come back feeling more experienced and independent, which are good things to have on the path of life. I was never sure I'd enjoy this kind of travel, but there was always a sense of excitement not knowing what was going to happen next. And to share that with your friends, well, that could have been the greatest gift of all.

Thanks for putting up with my rambling. I wish you all well. Hugs.