The Wefel's Epic Adventure West (or bust)
This is a monumental occasion. Not only is it our first long distance road trip as a family (We did a longer Epic trip with another family 9 years ago but that is a story for a different Blog), but this is the first time I have ever Blogged anything. It is going to be very N00bish.The challenge:
Travel to the West Coast and perhaps back, camping all the way.
First Stop: Mahoney State Park, NE
Stay for a day, hit the water park, horseback riding, trails
Second Stop: Vedauwoo National Forest, WY
Do some hiking, see the towns of Cheyenne and Laramie before heading to the lodges
Wedding activities at Snowy Mountain Lodge
Third Stop: Somewhere in the Tetons
The planning gets a little sketchy from here on
Fourth Stop: Somewhere in Yellowstone
Fifth Stop: Ranier or Mt. Saint Helens
Sixth Stop: Discovery Bay
T-minus 14 hours until departure. Challenges we are facing:
- Coffee crisis - how to make a cup of coffee every morning with minimal equipment.
- Solution: old teakettle and coleman single burner
- Reality: Not very compact
- Interfacing the digital world to our analog car
- Solution: circa 2000 modded xbox running xbmc4xbox 3.2.1
- Reality: Will be surprised if it survives the trip.
- Fitting 5 peoples worth of stuff into the car
- Solution: car top carrier and lose a seat in the van
- Reality: Still not enough space. Gonna have to lose a kid.
- Tent indecision - Bring the big tent or the medium tent?
- Solution: Bring them both
- Reality: See needing to lose a kid above - two tents are one tent too many imo.
We would like to thank the Unofficial Sponsors of the trip:
- Shaffer/Bakers: provided us with the Yakima RocketBox which now holds 5 sleeping bags and pads, camp chairs and tarps.
- Fixitrepairparts: replacement screen for broken ipod4. Would have had a distressed 10year old. I still can't believe you can get the LCD screen, glass, and digitizer for $20.
- GTACarKits: enables the ipod through an eleven year old car radio
- REI: sleeping bags, shoes, misc gear
- P.N.: Neighbor. Trip wouldn't happen if she wasn't watching the house and cats
- ProTech Motors: auto repair shop - replaced the brakes. What goes up must come down.
- New guy Matt@work: lent us the ZAGG keyboard that is making this typing on an ipad bearable.
- Autozone: replacement battery for the Odyssey. Luckily the old one chose to die a week before we left. They even "fixed" their byzantine policy on warranty replacement requiring a separate core.
- NCSA: Allowing me to use my hard-saved vacation time in one large chunk.
