Marty and Vicky's Trip West

Marty and Vicky start out We're off! We hit the road on Monday, heading to Cincinnati to visit our daughter Christina at her new digs. She just relocated there from DC in May as part of a job change. The travel weather was nice: cool and a bit overcast most of the way. Traffic was remarkably light on I-80. We didn't really run into anything significant until we got near Akron, Ohio.  Not too many snarls anywhere along the way, even around Ohio's largest city, Columbus. We made it, all 432 miles,  in pretty much exactly 8 hours. Our biggest delay was the incredibly slow service at a place we stopped for lunch in suburban Columbus.  Christina lives in a very nice apartment complex in an upper-middle class suburb about 20 miles northeast of downtown Cincinnati. Nice amenities (pool, gym, clubhouse) at the complex, which is nestled among suburban homes, a gated community, golf courses, parks, and shopping and restaurants along the main drags. Christina works from home ha...

The Rig: Chrysler minivan with Thule car top carrier. Before you start getting trip updates from Vicky and me (we haven't left yet!), I'll tell you bit about our road accommodations, which I call The Rig. First, let me tell you what we didn't do. We started thinking about how we would take long road trips a few years ago. We looked at many options. Rejected right away were options that required us to buy a powerful new vehicle to tow our home on the road. We looked at medium sized trailers and pop-ups. We looked at buying an RV, renting an RV, converting a van, and doing a sophisticated minivan conversion. We stacked up the pros and cons of each, from cost to convenience. We looked at it from the point of view of how we thought we'd like to travel: in a medium sized vehicle, without a tow, with road accommodations that were comfortable and easy to set up. We also took our age into account. We decided on doing a low-cost minivan conversion. Something we could easily put ...

I'm starting this blog off a few days before Vicky and I embark on a long trip together "out West".  Vicky and I will be posting photos and reports on our adventure. We'll be gone a month, the longest trip we've ever taken together and the longest I've take since my family went from Buffalo to California and back over the course of almost six weeks back in 1969. (We got back just in time to watch the moon landing on TV.) The trip itinerary includes stops in Cincinnati (to visit Christina), Madison, Wisconsin (to visit Andy), the Badlands in South Dakota, the Black Hills (including Mt. Rushmore and the Crazy Horse monument), Devil's Tower in Wyoming, the Grand Tetons, Yellowstone (fingers crossed here), Glacier National Park, Banff (I hope that's enough 'f's), Edmonton, Calgary for a few days at the Calgary Stampede, a pilgrimage to the little prairie town in Saskatchewan where the great Canadian sitcom Corner Gas was shot, then booking across t...