The "crew" catching a dip in between geocaches....

Crystal clear streams and lots of colorful rocks.

We're all packed up, and ready to hit the road.

Emily and the flowers in front of the lodge.

East Glacier Park, MT

0812 MDT

We arrived at East Glacier Park, MT last night shortly before 2100, which was a little later than planed. We got all of our gear off the train safely, then Joe and I went over to the Avis agent, which is located at the Glacier Park Trading Company (immediately across the Burlington Northern & Santa Fe tracks from the train station). We were lucky to look just lost enough to get a store employee out of her car and over knocking on the door to the store to get us inside.

The store was broiling inside. It had been 95 deg F during the day, and the building retained every bit of that heat. We rented a Chevrolet Tahoe, then drove it around to the train station to pick up Lorraine and Emily, along with all of our gear. From the train station, it was another 300m or so to the lodge.

We got checked into the lodge, then did a little scouting around. the temperature was dropping nicely between 2200 and midnight, so sleeping wasn't a problem.

I woke up about 0700 really parched. the lower humidity and the temperature overnight really dried me out.

We stayed in room 317 in their "annex" building. The room is enormous, and not bad for a historic facility. I'm up on the third floor veranda, facing the train station and the rest of East Glacier Park. It's pretty quiet on this side of the building; there's a diesel bus running on the front of the building which I can do without.

We'll probably be headed to West Glacier Park and Apgar later this morning.

The building on the left in the background is the train station, and the tunnel under the Burlington Northern & Santa Fe tracks is the path to Route 2 and the general store.

The pool is out back of the lodge; the golf course is out of view, to the right.

The lodge is in the Blackfeet Reservation, not in the National Park.

Golfing

Golfing is A Big Deal at East Glacier Park. This is a putting green that is in the front of the lodge; the big course is out back.

This was the view from the balcony, not far from our room.

The room was very comfortable, but it's an old lodge, and there wasn't much for ventilation. The weather cooled off in the late evening, so it was fine for sleeping.

Here's all of our stuff, and you can see the lodge in the distance. We're not too far away from having a shower and a nice (immobile) rack in which to sleep!

One of the advantages of being so far north, is that we have plenty of "hiking light" left after 2100.

The train station at East Glacier Park, Montana.

The good news: we made it safely to Montana.
The bad news (potentially): we arrived at 2100, just when the rental agency was scheduled to close. Fortunately, they remained open long enough for Joe and me to hoof it through the bridge under the tracks and over to the general store / rental counter.

Grand Forks, ND

0646 CDT

I woke up a few minutes before 0600 and discovered all the heads in this car to be locked. Bummer. We were just a few minutes out of Grand Forks, ND, so I stuck around to see the empty observation car we'd been pulling decoupled and left in Grand Forks. Not much has changed in that technology since the invention and deployment of the train coupler.

Anyway, I've now been to all fifty United States. It took 51 years, but I've finally done it.

The northern Great Plains are very, very, big and very, very flat. I'd always thought of wheat when thinking of North Dakota, but there's mile after mile of corn and other products, as well.

We were stopped in Minneapolis / St Paul, MN for quite a while last night, so we're nearly two hours behind schedule. It's a pleasant ride, though, and we're in no big hurry.

Departing Chicago

The train just left Chicago, enroute East Glacier Park, MT.

Shortly after arriving in Chicago, we tracked down the lockers to stow our gear. Unlike airports, the train station in Chicago has pay lockers (operated by the company behind SmartCartes), where you can stash your stuff. It turns out the lounge has secure storage, as well, but the line to get in when we arrived was very long.

After stowing our gear, we headed out into town to see the sights and score some geocaches. GPS satellite reception is AWFUL in Chicago (as bad as it is in Manhattan), so we weren't able to find any geocaches until we got closer to Lake Michigan. We headed over to see the Clarence Buckingham Memorial Fountain and Garden (there's a virtual cache there), then on to Millennium Park to see the sculpture Cloud Gate (another virtual cache).

After our walking tour of downtown, we headed back to the train station to grab a bite to eat at a sandwich shop in the station's food court -- very good food at a low price.

Lorraine, checking out our new compartment, on the Chicago-to-East Glacier Park portion of our journey.

One more picture of "The Bean".

On the hoof in Chicago, IL.

This is our image reflected in the sculpture Cloud Gate, which is located in Millenium Park in Chicago.

This item of art is affectionately known as "The Bean" (it's a virtual cache, by the way).

Yep...it's a little breezy by the lake. This is a great fountain -- a real icon on the Chicago shoreline.

We're on the loose in Chicago, hunting geocaches. The building cause havoc with the satellite reception, and we don't want to get bogged down looking for micros, we're limited to caching by the lake.

As you can see, the weather is really nice; perfect for hiking around Chicago.

Chicago!

We arrived!

Chicago

0917 CDT

Well, we're nearly to Chicago. We're a bit late because of freight traffic, but it looks like we'll arrive safely. all-in-all, this is a very relaxing way to travel across country.

You certainly get a different view of the country from the train tracks. Many communities locate recycling centers near the tracks, and there are a lot of junk yards along the route. It's a different view of the country than you get from the average freeway.

Find dining, Amtrak style....

Our fare included three meals a day in the dining car. The food was good, and there was enough to keep us comfortable.

Sleeping cars

The Amtrak sleeping cars are pretty nice. They're two-level; the lower level contains heads, showers, and some sleeping compartments. The upper level contains a few large rooms and a larger number of smaller, two-person rooms. The two-person rooms consist of seats that face one-another that can be reconfigured to make a single rack. There's another rack that trices up to make head-room, and that can be lowered to make the second rack. it's a bit cramped, but it's adequate and FAR better than trying to sleep sitting up in the coach cars.

The fare for the sleeping cars includes meals, but not alcohol or the gratuity.

Time zones

Well, it turns out we didn't get up an hour early -- the train is an hour or so late. Amtrak may be able to make up some of that time, so our layover in Chicago won't be shorten by much.

Ohio

I woke up in Toledo, Ohio this morning. Sleeping on a train isn't unlike sleeping on a war ship -- plenty of noise and motion. I slept reasonably well, so I'm well-rested this morning.

We didn't account for the time zone change, so we got up an hour early, but that's okay because it helps beat the breakfast rush at the dining car.

This is what it all looks like when the lower seats are extended, and the top bunk is lowered. It's just about time to hit the rack!

Verizon BroadbandAccess (again)

I continue to be happy with the Verizon BroadbandAccess service. I wish it were more affordable, but it certainly does work. I'm looking out the window of an Amtrak sleeper car, while downloading email and writing this blog entry, maintaining good connectivity as we go.

Emily remarked that I have now entered the "have all the toys" category, since I finally have a personal cellular telephone (after having a work cell phone off and on for nearly twenty years).

What's next on the technology horizon?

Departure

Well, we're on our way to Montana. We got out of the house about 1320, and arrived at Union Station at 1400. I took the truck back to the office, then took the Metro to Union Station to meet up with Lorraine, Emily, and Joe.

The train left on time at 1605, so we're off to Chicago.

Lorraine in her seat. My seat faced hers; both folded down to make the lower bunk. The upper bunk is triced up, and out of view in this photograph.

Pretty cool, eh?

Pretty exciting! We're moments away from getting settled in our compartments....

The beginning....

We're packed, and our bags are checked through to East Glacier Park, MT.

We're in the lounge at Union Station, waiting for our train.

I dropped Lorraine, Emily, and Joe at the station, then drove back to Arlington to park the truck (and, as I would learn in a few weeks, leave the overhead light on!).

The pack-out....

And it's all got to fit in my pack?

Summer heat

We're back into a string of Code Orange "unhealthful air" days here in our Nation's Capital again. Hazy, hot, and humid are the watch words in July and August, and this year is no exception. It looks like we're getting record highs both here and in the Pacific Northwest. I'm hoping that the weather moderates significantly before we arrive in Oregon and Washington.

Verizon Wireless and the Gateway CX210X

I've had the Verizon Wireless BroadbandAccess service several weeks now, and I'm increasingly pleased with the performance of the system.

I'd been having problems with Internet Explorer 7 (running on Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium) that, at first, seemed exacerbated by the use of the PC5750 air card. After getting "on the air", I was having problems either opening IE7 at all, or after getting an instance up and running, subsequent use of that instance or starting additional instances would fail to completely open. The process would be started (as evidenced in Task Manager), but the window would fail to open. I noticed that during shutdown, all the windows would open (just before they closed to perform the shutdown). That led me to believe that some process was interfering with the initialization process for IE7.

After some detective work (okay, it was really "easter egging" -- getting into a situation where the problem was occurring, then terminating processes one by one until the problem cleared up), I was able to determine that Google Desktop was the culprit. For some reason, the unconfigured Google Desktop was intermittently interfering with IE7. To properly configure Google Desktop, I had to uninstall it, then reinstall and configure. I got the impression that there were still a few issues that had to be worked out between Google and Microsoft Windows Vista.

Anyway, everything seems to be working okay.

Rhue Hollow

We closed on the Rhue Hollow Road house on Thursday. I had a chance to stop by and see the house after we finished with the closing, and it's even better than it shows in the photographs.

Nelson County will be an interesting place to live. It's funny that Nelson County has fewer traffic lights (one!) than Inuvik, NT.

Gateway

I've been intrigued by tablet computers since they came out on the market. I liked the form factor, the portability, the ability to hand-write notes and have them converted to other forms, and so on. I was concerned about being an "early adopter" of technology that I perceived needed some time to "mature", so I held off. Held off, that is, until about two weeks ago.

I had shopped around at a few integrators (e.g., Gateway, HP, Mobile Computing, Panasonic) to see what features were available and to see what trade-offs were necessary to get something like what I wanted. I've had very good luck with Gateway over the last fifteen years, so was a little biased, but tried not to let that bias affect the selection.

After the research and shopping, I decided to go with the Gateway CX210X, which coincidentally had promotional pricing at the time I was ready to make a decision. I upgraded almost everything to get as much performance as I could. I learned that dealing with a salesperson by phone was better than shopping solely online because the salesperson could make last minute price "adjustments" to provide an even better deal (in my case, the price was reduced an additional $200, well worth the time of a phone call).

I placed the phone order on 3 June 2007, and was told the machine would be at the house before 3 July 2007. I figured that it wouldn't really take a whole month to arrive, but since I wasn't in a hurry, it didn't matter much. I checked back on the order over the next couple of days, and learned that all the parts were available, and that my order was queued for "manufacture" (really just integration, since all the parts are built somewhere else). I was surprised to learn that just a few days later the finished machine was shipped from Shanghai via Federal Express. I didn't have a sense for how long it might take for the computer to arrive, so I was amazed to learn that Federal Express had attempted delivery at the house on Friday, 8 June 2007. Fortunately, Federal Express is open until 2000, so I was able to stop by the house to grab the door tag and head over to pick up the computer.

So, the story went from a phone order to having the computer arrive at the house in about five days. Pretty amazing. And, after all that, I really like the computer. I've started to configure it with all the programs I like, with a special focus on mapping (GIS) and radio communication (e.g., radio control, APRS™). More on those configuration decisions later.

Astronaut's arrest tests NASA's mettle - CNN.com

Wow, is this bad news. A Navy Captain (sigh), a Navy Commander, and an Air Force Captain all wrapped up in this little story. It will be interesting to watch this play out.

Astronaut's arrest tests NASA's mettle - CNN.com

Anna Nicole Smith Is Found Dead in Florida - New York Times

Anna Nicole Smith nee Vickie Lynn Hogan (1967-2007): Media Icon. RIP.

Anna Nicole Smith Is Found Dead in Florida - New York Times