Fall East Coast Road Trip 201810-201812

My step brother Larry was turning 75 and we were invited to his birthday party in Tucson. Given that we had to leave San Diego, it seemed like a good excuse for a road trip. Our plan was to attend the party and then head east toward the Gila Mountains in New Mexico before it got excessively cold. From New Mexico, we planned to take back roads across Texas and middle America to reach our mog friends in Greenback, TN. From TN our planned route took us east to Long Island and then south along the Atlantic coast.

Tracking Our Location Via The SPOT

Some years ago, after a scary mechanical failure in the canyons and mesas of southern Utah, we decided that we need a better way to advertise our position and call for assistance if needed. Kathleen found out about the SPOT which is a GPS locator that transmits your coordinates via satellite so that others can see your location. The location is plotted on Google maps and a "bread crumb" feature is available for an additional fee. We have the enhanced service, so you can see our historical path back 50 updates or so. See our current location plotted on Google Maps in Real-Time via SPOT satellite geo-locator device. This page is "book-markable" and is updated approximately every 15 minutes, but may miss updates due to inability of our transmitter to reach the satellite. The communication is "open loop" so the device never knows if it's messages are actually going anywhere, it just keeps trying until the next update is available. If we are in a congested urban area with high buildings (like Manhattan) or in deep canyons, the position may not update. We try to send an "OK" message once a day just to let everyone know that we are, in fact, OK. Given that this is a remote area and has many obstacles (like mountains), it is not clear how well this capability will perform.

Connecting and Contacting Us While on the Trip

Because of internet connectivity issues on a previous trip, we purchased a MiFi cell phone modem that allows us to connect nearly anywhere there is at least 3G service via cell phone (which is most of the cell phone service area available today). But, as we all know, cell phones are useful many places, but not everywhere has coverage, particularly in the remote areas of the country and outlying territories. Our phones and the modem are enabled daily so you may contact us, although it may take a few days for us to respond. But, we will respond. My email, spelled out, is "bcaid at yahoo dot com".

Trip Details

The link table below contains links to the photos and dialog for each of the days of the expedition. This table will be updated as the trip progresses. For this trip, the bulk of the photos were shot with my Sony A7RM3 with Sony 24-70mm f/2.8, Sony 16-35mm f/2.8 or Voightlander 35mm f/1.1 lenses.

Part	Dates	Adventure Locations
1	20181004-09	San Diego to Tucson, AZ including Desert Museum
2	20181009-12	Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta
3	20181013-20	Albuquerque to Herrin, IL and Fox Hunting
4	20181021-1104	Herrin to Long Island, NY
5	20181105-1119	Long Island, NY to St. Augustine, FL
6	20181120-21	Kennedy Space Center
7	20181122-24	Florida Keys
8	20181125-28	Battleship Alabama
9	20181129-1201	Galveston and "Dickens on the Strand"
10	20181202-09	Galveston to Las Cruces, NM

Fall East Coast Road Trip

A Trip Through the Central U.S.

20181004-20181209

The Trip

Tracking Our Location Via The SPOT

Connecting and Contacting Us While on the Trip

Trip Details

Conclusions and Advice to Travelers