Every Saga Has a Beginning...
After my junior year, I was once again headed to California to reprise my role as a co-op engineer at Sandia National Labs. Having flown out the previous fall, I had been looking forward to driving cross-country for the summer session. It seemed like a pretty good deal; a week's vacation traveling the country, expenses being paid by the company, all I needed was a co-pilot. Unfortunately, I couldn't convince anyone that this was an awesome enough opprotunity to delay their summer plans by a week. They don't know how much of an adventure they missed...
Loading Up the Riceburner
My car for the trip was the trusty Mattmobile, stuffed to the gills with my things and bearing a Yakima rack and my bike on top. My nearly-full book of 100 CD's went on the seat next to me to provide a soundtrack, and the GPS got stuck to the dash for backup navigation. The latter got tossed in the back seat after the second day, since I was taking Route 90 all day and it basically kept saying that the next change in direction wasn't for another 300 miles. My Palm III hung out in the glove box, keeping tabs on expenses and gas mileage. All told, I logged 7076 miles, pumped 255 gallons of gas, and visited 6 national parks.
Travel Log Highlights
Here's the real goods: excerpts from my 21-page travel log which highlight some of the more entertaining parts of my trip.
