My other blog is at bkdunn.com. I’m gonna keep this one free of distraction by not, like, adding stuff to it ever. Probably. Or at least, that’s my current theory. Working theory. Meantime, my other blog already has a couple new posts on it about driving back up the west coast (Highway 1, Redwoods National Park, Evergreen Air and Space Museum) and I’m on, like, Maui as I type, so maybe something will come out of that. And if it does, it’ll end up over there.

Anyway. Just if you’re interested.

bkd

(BTW, if you want to see the whole trip unfold, the blog post of the first day is here and you can go from there.)

Threw together this video. Well, threw it together over the last month or so of the trip. But definitely thrown, this video. It’s just stills from the trip, but I kind of like how it shows the trip’s progress over time. If I’m allowed to like my own reflections of my own trip.

I suppose I am.

Anyway:

I’m offering a bright, shiny mule (donkey? I can’t tell them apart) to anyone who can name the place where every photo was taken. And hopefully they don’t yank it for using the Breeders song as the soundtrack. It’s a good song for the video is all. IMHO.

bkd

A month and a half ago or so, it was requested that I share with all y’all how my rig’s outfitted for travel. Right after that, I shot this video. And now? Now I’ve bothered to post it. It’s from a while back and it’s kind of long (8.5 min.).

Ah, sweet memories of South Dakota. And by “Yellowstone”, I meant “Yosemite”. And the truck has never been that clean or organized in actual practice.

bkd

(LMK if the video doesn’t work.)

It’s August 16th and the Family Reunion at Mt. Baker is over. I’ll have a few posts I’ll put together to catch the readership up on that action. But in the meantime, the trip is officially paused. The lovely place that was supposed to have fixed my truck during the last week instead didn’t do anything, so I’m going to get that rectified over the next few days — but as such, it’d be improbable that I could get out of here before the end of this week anyway. Beyond that:

• I might as well use this time to get working on my grad school apps.
• Five days should get me most of the way there, unless I just get lazy.
• But assuming I don’t, I can push the end of the trip out a week.
• And the main problem is that I have to change (or cancel) my Boundary Waters reservation and put up with camping in the Southwest deserts in mid-November.
• Well, not including the other main problem of having to pay a lot of money to get my transmission fixed.

So that’s where we are. Although I might also see how much scalped tickets to the Thursday night Sounders game would cost. I’ll probably put together and post an updated itinerary also in case anyone wants to know.

bkd

It’s not the checklist of things that I think are necessarily great, it’s more just the collective “wisdom” (or my interpretation thereof) of the most famous sites in the USA:

• The Alamo
• The Empire State Building
• The French Quarter
• Golden Gate Bridge
• The Grand Canyon
• Hollywood — It’s a ghetto, but it’s an iconic ghetto to which people attach unrealistically romantic expectations. Ergo: checklist.
• Hoover Dam
• The Liberty Bell
• Mount Rushmore
• The National Mall (Washington Memorial, Lincoln Memorial, Capitol, Smithsonian)
• Niagara Falls
• Old Faithful
• St. Louis Arch
• Statue of Liberty

The Next Flight: Alcatraz, Arlington National Cemetery, Broadway (Times Square), the Brooklyn Bridge, Cape Canaveral, Central Park, Death Valley, Disneyland, Ellis Island, the Everglades, Fisherman’s Wharf, the Freedom Trail, Gettysburg (although it’s not like there’s anything to see…), Kitty Hawk, the Las Vegas Strip, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Miami Beach, Pike Place Market, the San Diego Zoo, the Sears Tower, Waikiki Beach, the White House, Wrigley Field

Thoughts?

bkd