Road Trip Starts Tomorrow

OK, it looks like everything is ready. I set out from Rockland County, NY tomorrow morning, take Interstate 80 to Akron OH, hang a left and get onto I-71, continue down to Columbus OH and get onto I-70 which takes me directly to St. Louis. That should be pretty simple.

The first two sites that I want to see are Lewis & Clark State Historic Site - Camp River Dubois and Arrow Rock State Historic Site.

Camp Dubois is where the Expedition spent the winter of 1803-1804. It's actually in Illinois, right across the Mississippi River from St. Louis. One good reason for choosing that spot was that territory west of the Mississippi had not yet been transferred to the United States. Now there's a replica near the original site.

Arrow Rock is a restored port town on the Missouri River; it is also a National Historic Landmark. It looks like it will be about an hour's drive from St. Louis.

Once I get out there I plan to write about the drive, the places and any interesting people that I should happen to meet. Now that I've procured and learned to use the laptop PC, camcorder and GPS navigator, and subscribed with AT&T for Wi-Fi access at any old McDonald's, Starbucks or Barnes & Noble that I come across, I should be able to upload blog entries and videos as we progress along the trail to the mouth of the Columbia River and back.

Equipment (nothing at all fancy)

Toshiba Satellite A355-S6931 16.0-Inch LaptopGarmin nüvi 760 4.3-Inch Widescreen Bluetooth Portable GPS Automobile NavigatorFlip Ultra Series Camcorder, 60-Minutes (White)

Planning a Road Trip

I live in New York State, and only became interested in the Lewis and Clark Expedition recently from the audio book version of Undaunted Courage : Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West.
Now that the weather is warm, I want to get out and see the Lewis and Clark Trail! The plan is to drive out to St. Louis, follow the trail to the mouth of the Columbia River, follow it back to St. Louis, and then drive back home. Hopefully the trip eastward will be enhanced by ideas and knowledge gained on the trip westward.

I want to make videos along the way and post them to YouTube. From there the videos can be embedded on pages in this blog and my website. I plan to stay over at places with Wi-Fi coverage so that I can upload videos and blog about the trip along the way. This means that I'll need a camcorder and a laptop computer, and I also want to get a GPS Navigator. Once these are procured and set up, I'll need to learn the procedure for recording, transferring to PC, uploading to YouTube, and then I should be on my way!