Fall
East Coast Road Trip
A
Trip Through the Central U.S.
20181004-20181209
Last Update:
20181209
Back to Bill Caid's Home Page.
Bobcats at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum
Sony A7RM3:
1/125 sec, ISO 125, 70mm at f/2.8
All photos copyright, Bill Caid 2018. All rights reserved.
The
Trip
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.
Conclusions and
Advice to Travelers
America is a very
large country; it took us many weeks to get from one coast to
the other. But, despite the extended duration, we
bypassed many interesting things to see and do. If you
decide to do a cross-country trip, be sure to allow sufficient
time to "smell the flowers" along the way.
Many thanks to those who hosted us during our travels.
Top
Back to Bill Caid's Home Page.
Photos and Text Copyright Bill Caid 2018, all
rights reserved.
For your enjoyment only, not for commercial use.