Less Than 5 Weeks Out...Backyard Camping

With less than five weeks before we head out to points west, the long weekend presented us with the perfect opportunity to take stock of the camping gear and do some backyard camping. After scurrying about, searching high and low for the kids' sleeping bags for about an hour, we were successful and had a pretty nice backyard camping experience. It would have been better had it not been for the nasty neighbor with the choice vocabulary who erupted around 2 am. Oh, and then there was the technical problem of my pillow constantly sliding off of my thermarest pad. I finally realized around 3 am that if I took the pillowcase off and laid it on top, it wouldn't slide off anymore.

Tonight the boys and I will spend a second night in the tent so that we will feel a bit more ready to go on July 1. Gail is retreating back indoors, however. She has more work to do to make her pillow arrangement work better.

Other random notes:

• Now that Toby has his awesome Redline cyclocross bike, he'll be taking that instead of his heavy mountain bike. 
• In addition to the four roof racks for the family bikes, I also acquired two Thule Wheel On rooftop wheel racks. Since one of the racks holds a bike with both wheels on, we now only have to store Leo's small front wheel in the van, which takes care of my growing concerns about space. This also means that I will likely have room for my rugged acoustic guitar, which seems kind of necessary.
• I finally broke down and bought a Garmin Nüvi GPS unit. This will remove a bit of stress from finding hotels and campsites, and they're so cheap these days that it seemed an obvious choice. This will forever change the "are we there yet" mantra. Now they will have a constantly updating ETA!
• Finally, I'm on the verge of buying a Verizon mobile hotspot with month-to-month service. I didn't want to be trapped in a 2-year contract, and it seemed that having only the iPad on 3G was too limiting. This way the boys can have a little screen time and blog from their own devices. They certainly know that they won't be getting much screen time on this trip, but this will make the long drives a little more bearable. I'm guessing that big chunks of our trip will have spotty 3G coverage at best, which doesn't bother me in the slightest.

Bike and hike.

On our trip we will bring are bikes to commute. My brother will bring his mountain bike but me and my dad our bringing our cross bikes. My mom will bring her road bike. We will hike on more dangerous trails than Ithaca trails so we will need preparation.

Route Update

In April Gail and I spent a good chunk of time planning out more details and reserving campsites at national parks. It turns out that you can't reserve these sites too soon, since many choice spots were already taken, and we even had to shift our agenda a little. Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado was to be our first stop, but due to limited campsite availability, the Black Hills and Badlands come first now.

We also decided that it was a bit much to try to reach our first park in three days, so we now have a much more civilized plan:

• Day 1 (July 1): Ithaca to Toledo, OH, 7 1/2 hours
• Day 2: Toledo to Iowa City, IA, 7 1/2 hours
• Day 3: Iowa City to Mitchell, SD (Corn Palace, here we come!), 7 1/2 hours
• Day 4: Mitchell, SD to Black Hills, SD, 5 1/2 hours

Even our motels are reserved for the first three nights. To make up for the fact that we will be putting in long days in the car, we have motels with pools for days 1-3. Day 4 will be our first night of camping,   and we chose the Black Hills rather than the Badlands so that we might get a little more shade and forest.

Lucky Toby got his cyclocross bike yesterday, which means that he'll be having a blast cycling in the national park. Leo is bringing his mountain bike, which should suit him just fine. I have racks for all bikes, as well as a couple of Thule rooftop wheel carriers to keep bulky wheels out of the van.

Our trip is tantalizingly close! It's hard to believe that we're hitting the road in only 1 1/2 months.