The End

Well, we've reached the end of the year, and now that we've had our first guest stay over (Karin, right after Christmas), I guess we're officially moved into our new home. So we're closing down this road trip blog.

You can continue to read occasional blog posts by Bayla, Jasper, and DeeAnn over at CKL's HotSheet. D has already posted about the snow which gave Portland its first "white Christmas" since 1937. I don't know what the cats will write about, but I'm sure it will be entertaining.

Here are some statistics from the road trip, which we compiled for our first annual holiday newsletter:

Days spent traveling with cats: 153
Number of locations visited: 25
Miles driven: 16,833
Average fuel efficiency of our Prius: 45 MPG
Number of Marriott Rewards Points earned: 120,181
Average amount spent per day: $234.83
Total posts to road trip blog: 164 166
Blog posts written by cats: 42

And here's an index to help you find your way around the blog posts for each destination we visited this summer, in chronological order:

1. San Diego, CA
2. Grand Canyon, etc.
3. Carlsbad Caverns
4. Fort Worth, TX
5. Space Center Houston
6. New Orleans, LA
7. Chicago, IL (Kendra's graduation, with stopover)
8. St. Louis, MO
9. Atlanta, GA
10. Orlando, FL (Space Shuttle launch)
11. Charlotte, NC
12. Altoona, PA (Sole family reunion)
13. Outer Banks, NC
14. Colonial Williamsburg, VA
15. Washington, DC
16. Niagara Falls
17. Cedar Point (roller coaster capital of the world)
18. Madison, WI
19. Minneapolis, MN
20. Rapid City, SD (Mount Rushmore, Badlands, Wall Drug, and more)
21. Denver, CO (Worldcon)
22. Las Vegas, NV
23. SF bay area (old home week)
24. Ashland, OR
25. Seattle, WA
26. Portland, OR--our new home!

Plus some non-location-specific topics:

• Posts by cats!
• D's Food & Cooking
• Viable Paradise XII (CKL)
• Maps
• Photos
• Videos (more coming soon to YouTube)
• Packing
• Planning
• stuff for sale
• The Postal Service, and I don't mean the band

Thanks for reading, everyone, and we hope to see you over at Snout.org.

~CKL

The Merch

D and I spent some time earlier this month picking our favorite photos from the road trip (or, sometimes, the ones that would fit) and putting them into a photobook for our families. It took a long time, and the layout software left much to be desired, but it was fun to reminisce about all the places we'd been.

Here's a preview of the interior:



We're pretty happy with the finshed product. You can flip through a tiny Flash version of the whole book over at mypublisher.com.

~CKL

Movin' On Up

If you tried to visit SNOUT.ORG today, you may have noticed that it was throttled for a few hours. That's because I exceeded the 300 MB/day bandwidth limit on my account. I suppose it was bound to happen sooner or later.

Not to worry, though; I was already in the process of moving to a new hosting plan which will cost me less per month and give me more storage space and no transfer limits. Once I've finished backing up all my files to my home computer, I'll contact my ISP and tell them to pull the trigger on the upgrade. Mail delivery and some web pages may be briefly broken for the next few days, but I expect the transition to go smoothly otherwise. (This blog and 512 Words or Fewer will not be affected.)

~CKL