Road Trip USA

A week from today my family and I are going to do something very few people who live in the United States ever do- namely, drive across it. It's sort of unthinkable to be in California without a car and an awful lot of interesting spots in the 2,000+ miles between here and there, so a combination of these two means we should devote a few days doing the drive justice.

So for the next few weeks, here's what my schedule looks like:

Tuesday, May 27- get wisdom teeth extracted (turns out mine are coming in sideways or something... whimper)
Thursday/Friday- drive to Chicago (7.5 hours)
Saturday- Chicago
Sunday, June 1- leave Chicago, begin ~13 hour drive to Rapid City, South Dakota
Monday- arrive in Rapid City, go see Badlands/ Mount Rushmore
Tuesday- go see whichever wasn't seen the day prior, drive to Yellowstone National Park
Wednesday- Yellowstone NP
Thursday- Yellowstone NP
Friday- drive to Salt Lake City, Utah
Saturday- drive across Nevada and such
Sunday, June 8- arrive at NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California, where I'll be living this summer, sometime in the afternoon
Monday- begin work at the SETI Institute
Wednesday- family flies back to Pittsburgh

Of course, this is all subject to change except for the "start work" dates, but it gives you the rough idea of where we'll be and, hopefully, what sort of cool pictures will be arriving at this blog soon now that it's a travelogue again. If anyone has any suggestions or tips regarding these places or something we're fools to miss let me know.