From the Black Hills to the chilly Rockies

It really is hard to comprehend that I'm parked at a picnic table at an elevation of around 8300', surrounded by high peaks and black bears not too far away, while only a few feet away from flush toilets and working online via a portable 4G wireless hotspot. I have mixed feelings about being online right now, since I was really enjoying the limitations imposed by having very restricted access in the Black Hills. Back in South Dakota we were ferrying blog entries to the Internet much like I was carrying water to our campsite. We composed offline, then quickly uploaded from the grocery store parking lot in Hill City. On the other hand, it really is good to catch up with the outside world a little and find out who's leading the Tour de France.

Since I didn't have a chance to blog yesterday, here's a brief Saturday update. We started the day much like we do at home—Gail went running, then I went for a bike ride, while the boys took advantage of their last opportunity to play with their Louisiana friends. I just love how kids are naturally so good at cutting to the chase and playing together like old friends after just meeting for the first time.

My bike ride was far more adventurous than I had expected. I'm trying really hard not to retrace my previous routes, so I followed the sign near the Sheridan Lake campground entrance that directed me toward Rt. 16, the main road that takes you to Rapid City. After 1/4 mile the road (Calumet Rd.) became gravel, and even though I had my road tires on, I decided to press on. The road was hard-packed, and it was more than manageable without switching to my cross tires. Strava suggests that the climb was Cat 3, and descending was a little tricky, since the washouts caused some corrugated sections and potholes that forced me to brake quite a bit. This gravel road with no traffic spilled onto a very busy highway with a crappy shoulder, quite a contrast. I'm quite satisfied with my cycling experience in the Black Hills, and look forward to some challenging climbs here in the Rockies.

We headed out to Jewel Cave for a picnic lunch and an adventurous lantern tour, which required a lot of crawling and ducking into narrow passageways. The boys loved their caving experiences, as did Gail and I. Jewel is a breathing cave, which means that if there's a low pressure system coming, you feel a rush of air entering the cave, and if a high pressure system is coming, air comes rushing out of the cave. A storm was brewing, so we experienced quite an incoming wind throughout our tour, which brought us into some huge chambers.

The rest of the day was consumed with laundry duty and packing for the trip to Colorado the next morning. It was sad to leave the Black Hills, but there's so much more adventure to come! Everyone contributed nicely to the packing efforts, and we were able to hit the road by 7:15 this morning.

The trip between the Black Hills and Rocky Mountain National Park is fascinating. There is so much geographical change, and I loved how we descended into wide open grasslands with giant buttes with no tree in sight, then drove through rolling hills and up to the high plains as we crossed the Wyoming/Colorado border. We stopped for groceries in Fort Collins, and were really taken by the charming downtown and the little bungalow-style houses. It seems like a great city to visit, and it reminded me a little of Minneapolis for some reason.

We climbed up to the park in misty rain, and we were all wowed by the views along the way. I had no idea how big a city Estes Park is, so we have plenty of options if we get rained out during our stay here. Tomorrow we'll be seeking out a fairly ambitious hike, so it's time to retire to the tent and pull on some woolies. Brrrrr!

Staying Connected

Remember back in the day when we didn't blog or use social media, and often went weeks without going online? It really is hard to imagine in this age of living online, and certainly there is great merit in disconnecting completely for a long stretch. On the other hand, I used to always dread having to wade through hundreds of email messages when returning from a long trip. I'm not a big fan of surprises, especially ones that induce stress and anxiety.

After pondering the options for the last few months, I finally decided to take the more connected approach, especially since I wanted to keep close tabs on some friends and family members with health problems. Initially we were going to just activate the 3G service on my iPad, which would have meant having one connected device, but instead, I settled on a Verizon mobile hotspot, a very generous birthday present from my mom. This little device is pretty impressive, connecting to Verizon's 4G or 3G service and transmitting a wifi signal to our two iPods, two iPads and one laptop.

This doesn't mean that we'll be online very much, but it will be most convenient. We won't be streaming much video, since it uses lots of data, but it will be great for occasionally chatting or skyping with family and friends, as well as checking in with Facebook and email, posting blog entries and listening to Pandora on rainy days (if we get any).

Now that we have the technology figured out, we are in the process of list making using the very cool Paperless iPad app. List making is typically Gail's domain—it's one of her specialties, but I'm starting to get into it. I'm realizing that every time I augment a list, the stress level goes down. There's so much to remember between now and July 1st, so the more we write down, the easier it will get.

Now that school is out for all of us, we just have Saturday's bike race at the Watkins Glen speedway, then a solid week of organizing, cleaning, planning and packing. This next week will really go by fast!!

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.

The lightweight blogging plan

In an attempt to not get too bogged down with technology on our trip and save money on mobile broadband fees, I figured out how to manage our blog on our 3G-equipped iPad. We don't have a smartphone, and don't anticipate getting one anytime soon. The cumulative cost seems prohibitive and unnecessary.

We'll be taking photos with both our Panasonic Lumix camera and on occasion the iPad as well. The handy iPad camera connection kit allows us to import photos to iPad, and we'll be using the Blogger app to write blog posts. The app is somewhat primitive, but it should do the trick. It's an iPhone app, but I also have an app called BlogPress that I'll experiment with. Maybe it will give us more formatting options, but either way we have all the tools necessary.

(11/25/12 Note: Ultimately we chose instead to buy a Verizon hot spot, which allowed us to have wireless Internet access all devices, including a laptop, the iPads and the boys' iPods. This was an excellent solution, even though there were lots of locations in National Parks where 3G access was spotty at best. Blogging is so much faster and easier on a laptop than an iPad.)