Almost Paradise

So here I am on Martha's Vineyard, waiting for Viable Paradise to officially begin. I met most of our instructors very informally last night, at an ostensible birthday party for staff member Kate's husband Ernie. I missed the guitar- and harmonica-playing because I was out on a grocery run (no Coke==cranky me), but I did later sit on the balcony and listen to the pros swap stories until after midnight.

I've still got four hours until the official meet-and-greet, and I'm debating whether I want to walk out to a beach while the sun's out. There's supposed to be some kind of nighttime jellyfish-viewing outing later in the week, but it might be nice to also see the scenery in daylight.


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Astute readers will note that I'm here by myself, and have left D and the cats in our new apartment a mere three days after moving in. (VP did graciously invite them along--and others have brought their families to the island--but we weren't about to schlep the cats across the country again, and we couldn't leave them all alone so soon after moving in.) She's always been very supportive of my crazy ideas.

If you thought she was cool for mocking up our new apartment in The Sims, check out the menu and shopping list she created for my VP trip. I love my wife.

~CKL

End of the Road

Well, here we are, in Portland. (Actually Vancouver, Washington, but close enough.) Our first day of apartment-hunting went pretty well; we found two good places near the local Trader Joe's, which is one of our main criteria. They're not perfect, but we're not expecting that anyway. When you can get a 2-bedroom, 2-bath apartment in a nice part of town for less than $900 a month, how much can you really complain?

Tomorrow, we're going to run down some more of the listings we found on craigslist, and then see if we can find other sources that list places near downtown Vancouver. We will, at some point, actually make it to Portland proper, but so far it's looking like we can find bigger apartments at lower prices here in Vancouver--which is also in the state without income tax.


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We'd like to make a decision quickly, but not hastily. In the ideal situation, we would find a place that meets all our needs and most of our wants within the next few days, and get all our stuff moved in before I leave for Viable Paradise, so D and the cats can unpack at their leisure while I'm off writing and learning.

The more likely scenario is that we'll spend the next week gathering data, then make a decision after I get back from VP and be moved in by mid-October. That'll be good too. Sooner is better, because rent is cheaper than hotel, and we want to be well settled in our new home before the holidays.

~CKL

Seattle Bound

Today, we continue north:


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The main attractions there are PAX and our friends Karin and Bryan, but I've also been wanting to see Gas Works Park ever since I first read about it in 2006. There's the Science Fiction Museum, of course, and our Bank of America credit card will get us into a few other museums for free the first weekend in September.

This will be the final leg of our road trip, so I feel like we should make the most of it by also visiting some of the local NPS sites, but laziness will probably prevail and wind us down. That's okay--I'm going to need to catch up on my sleep before heading off to Viable Paradise in three weeks.

~CKL

No Country for Sales Tax

That would be the great state of Oregon, thank you very much:


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We stopped here mainly to see some plays at the Ashland Shakespeare Festival. Yesterday we saw Othello and Arthur Miller's A View from the Bridge. Tomorrow night we're seeing The Clay Cart, which should be somewhat less depressing. (You say tragic, we say tomato.)

The stages were dark today, so we drove up and down I-5 shopping for cheese, chocolate, and wine. We also picked up a huge pot of cat grass for $1.98 at Harry & David. Who knew?

~CKL

Today's High, 107

Yeah man, but it's a dry heat:


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Since we've already tortured ourselves with a 12-hour drive to get here, we're going to continue the masochism by getting up at oh-dark-thirty, twice, to visit Red Rock Canyon and Hoover Dam before the daytime heat becomes too oppressive. And yes, we do plan to spend one entire day at Star Trek: The Experience.

~CKL

The Mile High Club

We've just arrived in Westminster, Colorado--altitude 5,300 feet--where it's been in the high 90s with a chance of thunderstorm all week. (We saw many clouds on our way in.) Our hotel is a few miles north of downtown Denver, where we'll be attending Worldcon starting on Wednesday:


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We're here primarily for the con, though we do have a couple of days to do some sightseeing. Figure that out tomorrow.

~CKL

Together, This Is What We'll Do

In and around Rapid City, South Dakota:


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We haven't worked out which sights we're going to see first, but we've got tomorrow to decide all that. It's going to be a lot of driving, wherever we go.

BTW, if you want to hear the song that made D laugh out loud on the way here, skip to the end of Coverville 483. Quite amusing and appropriate, given our direction of travel.

We gained an hour by going from Central to Mountain Time, and the time change is also going to help us in a couple of weeks when we schlep from Denver all the way to Las Vegas. Not looking forward to that day.

~CKL

Grammar Girl

We had a shorter drive than usual today, and arrived at the hotel around 5pm. Even after having to change rooms (due to a leaky ceiling and broken light fixture), we were unpacked and the cats were settled in by 6:30pm. That gave us plenty of time to make it into uptown Minneapolis for the Grammar Girl reading and book signing.

The reading itself was mostly Q&A, which is my favorite kind of author event. Not all authors are great public speakers, but they're all interesting people in some way, and interacting with an audience is usually the best way to draw them out. Many of the questions tonight gravitated toward etiquette--e.g., if and when to point out another person's errors. I guess grammar sticklers tend to like rules in general.

After the signing, D and I had a very nice dinner at Chiang Mai Thai (open until 1am every night! Why can't more restaurants be like that?). Here's how we plan to spend the rest of our time in the Twin Cities:


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~CKL

Forward to Wisconsin

We're now in Middleton, ten miles from downtown Madison:


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Sights to see here include the House on the Rock, a real place featured in Neil Gaiman's American Gods (which audio book we listened to earlier on the road trip), and the Tommy Bartlett Exploratory, where an actual Mir space station core module (one of three manufactured, identical to the one which went into orbit) is on display--thanks to Ammy for recommending the latter! We probably wouldn't have known about it otherwise.

~CKL

Why Ohio?

We're here for Cedar Point (green star on map below), "the roller coaster capital of the world" and recommended by our friend Michelle:


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This is also the first of three "bonus" stops on our way to Mount Rushmore. The other two are in Wisconsin and Minnesota. Nothing in this region was on either of our top ten lists when we started planning this road trip, but we've found some pretty cool stuff just because we had to stop near it on the way to somewhere else.

~CKL

Overheard in Buffalo

On the drive up to Niagara Falls this morning (paraphrased):

D: Is that a fire up ahead?
CKL: Looks more like steam than smoke.
D: But it's gray.
CKL: No... that's the falls.



We were, in fact, seeing the huge plume of mist from Horseshoe Falls, which rose up to several hundred feet in the air while we watched it later--at one point, almost as high as the Skylon tower. Which is, incidentally, where we're headed tomorrow night for a fancy dinner and to watch the fireworks.

Our whereabouts for the next few days:


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~CKL

Sixty Days and Counting

(with apologies to Kim Stanley Robinson)

Actually, it's been about sixty-two days since the start of our road trip, and we're still having a great time. We just finished our stay in the Outer Banks of North Carolina--photos coming soon!

Speaking of photos... I'm going to be uploading a huge backlog to PicasaWeb over the next few days, starting with our Grand Canyon panoramas. And from now on, I'm going to make a greater effort to stay on top of posting our new photos every day. If nothing else, it'll give me something to blog about.

Here's where we are now:


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Not everything is on that map; we also plan to wake up really freakin' early one day to drive out to Monticello. Stay tuned, sports fans!

~CKL

The Locals Call It "OBX"

We've only got three days here (including today, which is supposed to be Putter Day), so we probably won't make it to all these places. I suspect we'll skip waking up early in the morning to drive for hours and climb hundreds of stairs in the lighthouse.


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Dinner last night: We ate at the Kill Devil Grill, which is right across the street from our hotel. They look like a 1950s greasy spoon diner, but they make some great fish dishes (seared ahi) and desserts (key lime pie).

~CKL

Sunshine State

Not just the setting for a John Sayles movie or yet another election controversy, Florida is also our current road trip destination:


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The main reason we're here is the Space Shuttle launch on Saturday, but we're also taking the opportunity to visit Universal Studios and Disney World. D and I debated whether we should just skip Disney World, since we're only going to have one day there, but she felt it would be wrong to be in Orlando and not to go at all.

By the way, D's family reunion is not happening. It turns out that the sibling who has the timeshare in Asheville was waiting for his tax relief cheque, which he got, but then decided to spend it on a car and some furniture instead of a family trip out to North Carolina. At least he's doing something to help the economy, I guess.

It's also worth noting that D's Mom has been the one pushing for all these family visits, even though she has the fewest resources to actually make them happen. I suppose I should just be grateful that she's not more Machiavellian in her machinations.

~CKL

The Kids Call It "ATL"

Because I know you all care so much, here's our planning map:


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As usual, we're staying on the outskirts of the metro area--this time, in Norcross, Georgia, about 20 miles from downtown Atlanta. Cheaper lodging, more options for pet-friendly hotels, and we get used to driving everywhere, so a one-hour commute to an out-of-the-way national park site doesn't seem like a burden.

~CKL

The First Seven Weeks

Here's where we've been and where we're going through the first week of June. The addresses are the hotels at which we stayed (except for Houston, because Google Maps wouldn't let me change the title on the motel listing from a business search).

Click through to the larger map to see more detail, including titles indicating what sights we wanted to see in each place:


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And just for fun, I'm going to start posting the local maps we've been putting together for each stop, showing the attractions we might want to visit and why. I'm sure you can't wait.

~CKL