Road Trip Almanac

It’s just about a month now since we rolled back in to Seattle. The Routan was unloaded and returned to VW’s fleet supplier pronto, but there’s still a pile of REI gear that I have to ship back along with a few other odds and ends. And part of my brain, or maybe it’s my heart, is still leaning back towards the Hi-Line, that northern Montana strip of road punctuated by old grain elevators and barbed wire fences and gas stations where time stopped in 1967. Regardless of the location of my head or heart, my body is firmly back at the keyboard. While I’m here, I thought I’d hammer out a recap of our trip.

Our Sponsors

Lots of people have asked how we got such great sponsors. The truth, which is so simple, is that we asked. I have lots of great connections, but more than that, our sponsors want to get their stuff in front of your eyes and saw our collective blogs as a good way to do that. And while we’re all keenly aware of the benefits on the sponsor side, we’re also so grateful for the support. Here’s a list:

• Volkswagen loaned us a Routan Minivan. We put just over 5000 miles on it going from Seattle to Chicago and back. We loved the space, the handling, the comfort, though there were some mixed opinions about the driver’s seat. We had a base model, we’d hoped for a bit more bling — we’d have used a GPS unit and the gadget hookups. Personally, I hoped for better mileage. That said, it was a GREAT rig for the trip, having the space was key to keeping us sane. The doors and windows all opened — on both sides — and that was super convenient. And back seat napping? Sweet.
• REI sent us a selection of camping gear. I wanted to poach Kelly’s camp mattress. New sleeping bags are always nice, but honestly, it was pretty warm and we didn’t really need the insulation most nights. Peter and I were a little frustrated by the camp cook set — you have to pick them up a specific way, the MSR set that I have doesn’t require this. We used the multi-tool for everything, opening beer bottles, pulling up tent stakes, tightening the tuners on my ukulele… that thing is going in my glovebox.
• Boingo set us all up with wi-fi accounts.  This seems like a great thing until you’re in, oh, South Dakota or Iowa or… Boingo is great in urban areas, where we were not. Hardly ever. Peter has been getting great mileage out of his account on the Washington State ferries and I’m sure I’ll use mine when I’m in an airport next, but for this trip, we just weren’t in places that had coverage.
• HomeAway provided our condo in Chicago, a smashing 34th? 37th? floor three bedroom, three bathroom apartment with a stocked kitchen and great views. I’m a huge fan of hotel alternatives and HomeAway has a terrific service for finding apartments, condos, homes… we loved the place they found for us, it was in a perfect location for both Chicago conferences and we were really comfortable. I’m looking at using HomeAway to book a condo for my upcoming trip to Vegas for Blog World Expo.

The Bloggers

• Kelly Goodman, Travellious: Kelly designed the TBEX Road Trip web site. Kelly had never been camping before and took to it like a duck to water.
• Austin Hill, Travellious: Austin built The Wondermap ™, our interactive map that showed our route and let our readers enter suggestions. Austin also served as our Twitter concierge, helping us find campgrounds late at night and breakfast joints early in the morning. “Thank you Austin!”
• Peter Carey, The Carey Adventures: Photographer Peter kept us exceptionally well documented on the visual side. He’s also something of a geotagging nerd, so we had great date tracking for our map.
• Pam Mandel, Nerd’s Eye View. Yeah, you know me.
• And hey, our trip blog, that includes the Wondermap, is at TBEX Road Trip. You can also find our photos on Flickr using the #tbexrt tag.

The Goals: Mission Accomplished!

• Attend two conferences, BlogHer and The Travel Blog Exchange (TBEX). Vanity moment? I was speaking at both events.
• See parts of the US we’d never seen before — and get in some National Park time. We visited:
  • Yellowstone National Park
  • Mount Rushmore National Monument
  • Badlands National Park
  • Devil’s Tower National Monument
  • Teddy Roosevelt National Park
  • Glacier National Park
• Stay friends with our travel mates.
• Eat in some diners.
• Have wacky conversations with locals.
• Blog like crazy — shoot videos, take photos, write stories, and update as often as possible.

What’s Next?

Well, we’re doing it again, aren’t we? We’ve got a week of camping in British Columbia on the cards for mid-September. We’re working with BC Tourism, BC Ferries,  a motor home rental company, and a campground booking service. Stay tuned!