The plan so far

Intended route 
through mid-June. I reserve the right to disappoint everyone and stop for weeks in any town that has good bagels. That said, I am open to rotating hiking companions if people want to join/unjoin the trip in progress. So far everything I've reserved (Yurt {Utah}, Cabin {WY}, motel) has an extra bed.

Who knows what I might see

Found this place in Sunset Magazine at the library and was thinking of staying a night in a cabin.
"Watch out for wildlife including elk, deer, beer, coyotes, mountain lions, moose and occasional big horn sheep."
Guess those Coors commercials aren't exaggerating about lager flowing right out of the Colorado mountains.

Last look around for a while

 

From Old Mine Trail about a 1/4 mile below Rock Springs on Mt. Tam. My favorite lunch spot on the mountain (even though the Theater is only 5 minutes away)

Travel Tech Talk

So Chris J, who runs a hiking group I frequent, came up with the solution to: how to get pictures from my point-and-shoot onto the interwebs with just a smartphone and no laptop with me. Buy a microSD with an SD card adapter, put that in the point-and-shoot, transfer the microSD card into the smartphone and upload via 3G or Wi-Fi.

It works. Also, it's cheap. With Amazon Prime I got a 16GB card with the adapter delivered for $11. That's over 3500 pictures at my camera's highest resolution; about 30 pictures a day for a 4 month trip without having to delete. Louis CK is right, "Everything's amazing and nobody is happy"

It's not the most elegant system for the camping days as the transfer with grimy, sweaty, or cold fingers might not be easy. But I don't have to take any cables or hunt for internet cafes. The one thing missing: auto-downsizing. I'd like to be able to take and store pics in 10M or 6M but upload to Blogger in a much lower res/smaller file.  I'll play with the software after I'm done cleaning the above mess.

Build high for happiness!

The post title is a reference to the original Doctor Who in perhaps its last half-decent episode.
The 1st photo is my storage bin.

 

The 2nd photo is the glass that should have gone in the dishpack box on the right in the 1st photo

The death of mirth

I'm wrapping family china finger bowls with pages from an old dube catalog

Test for travel

I've not gone anywhere yet. Boxes are still being packed, blogging tools still evaluated, friends still being visited.
Notice how he's scrutinizing every nuance of my face so he doesn't forget me.

It's less than 3 weeks to departure and I still don't know where I'm sleeping that first night out.