Pre-Trip preparations

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.