This summer my family decided to head out to Yellowstone I figured that seething hot springs and exploding geysers would have more appeal to an 8 and 9 year old than touring museums in major metropolis. And in a time of tightening budgets and the astronomical plane ticket costs, we decided to DRIVE to Yellowstone. And while we're at it, we figured we might at well camp to really get "close to nature".
I'm always up for a challenge, so after a dry-run weekend camping trip (where we figured out among other things that our gas stove didn't work) we were ready - at least on the camping end. There was this little problem of a 20 hour drive standing between us and American Western nirvana.
We all packed the various things we thought we'd need to entertain ourselves for the drive (and for the two week long trip). What I didn't anticipate was just how many electronics we ended up taking with us. And we were going camping for a week. In a tent, Where the only electrical source would be our car battery, Oh, the irony!
Here's a picture of all of the electronics we took with us and an inventory list:
- Three laptops (mine, my husband's, and my son's). My husband and I anticipated that we'd probably have to check in, get files, etc. We also used the laptops to play movies in the car, so they did double duty. My son had his favorite games on the computer that we refuse to load on our work computers, so we let him bring his. My daughter's Apple iBook has been on the fritz, or we likely would have brought that as well.
- Two Nintendo DSs. One wall charger and one car charger.
- Two cameras, a big Nikon SLR and pocket Canon and their chargers.
- Two phones, a Treo and Blackberry with a Treo car charger, wall charger and Blackberry mini-USB.
- iPod and Zune music players and their respective USB connector cords.
- Portable GPS (only the windshield holder is in the photo - the unit broke down the second day and we had to navigate with (gasp!) paper maps. It's been sent back to the manufacturer for repair).
- Sony Ericcson/TMobile PC Card to get wireless access. It turned out that only my laptop could use it and then, we rarely got a signal that would allow me to connect.
- iGo charger. This octopus of wires was our lifesaver. It's a universal charger that has interchangeable tips. Given all of our electronics and one power source - the car battery -- we had to make efficient use of our two cigarette outlets. One was shared between my husband's phone, one of the Nintendo DSs, and the GPS (while it was still working) - we were constantly swapping plugs in and out. The other outlet was used by the iGo which could charge a laptop, my phone, AND the other Nintendo DS all at the same time.
So the good news is we were pretty powered throughout our trip, although we didn't have Internet access for about a week while in the national parks themselves. We definitely missed the access, but not to the point where we went out of our way to find it. Occasionally we'd hit a pocket with mobile service and our phones would start pinging with text messages, voicemails, and emails.
We were also pretty good about leaving all of the electronics in the car once we got to the campsite -- and we didn't miss them at all. After hours of driving through the Nevada desert and Idaho potato fields, the kids were pretty sick of their electronics, games, and movies. Instead, we had the typical kind of fun that comes with camping - and most entertaining of all was emulating Bear Grylls of "Man Versus Wild" and trying to get a fire started with a flint.
Toward the end of the trip, we finally broke down. While in Mammoth Springs, we realized that we were just 5 miles away from Gardner, Montana -- and that there were Internet cafes there! As a treat, we took a break and headed there for coffee, ice cream -- and some quality time with a wifi network. An hour later, at 10 cents a minute and a total cost of $15, we had had our online fix and it was back to tracking bison, cowboy cookouts, and sprouting geysers again.
When we finally left Yellowstone and headed back to connected society, we landed in Cody, Wyoming where we found a hotel with wifi -- but only in the lobby. Again, we gave ourselves an hour of quality wifi time, but we also received several looks -- and verbal disdain -- from fellow travelers. It was something to the effect of, "In my day we wrote letters instead of all this fancy Internet stuff." My son took it in stride, and just declared the older gentleman as "not with it". But sitting in the stands of the rodeo that evening, I couldn't have felt further from Silicon Valley -- here were cowboys and cowgirls who's livelihood was made from staying on a bucking horse for 8 seconds. So we enjoyed the last few days of our vacation in the West - cheering and whooping for the heroics of these brave young adults and all of our electronics stayed neatly tucked away in their bags -- where they belonged.
