Saturday, June 8
SAE Aero Design West - Lancaster, CA
I'm not that big on sand. When I go to the beach, playing in the sand is fun, but by the time you make it home, the sand is everywhere. I thought the beach was bad, but a windy desert is many times worse. We got up early, loaded up the plane into the van, and headed to the competition site, a model airplane runway just outside of Lancaster in the desert. A few notes on Lancaster: The city is basically a grid of streets in the desert, I guess they get their water from rivers coming off the Sierras or from the California aqueduct. The whole area is really flat, dry, and hot. Once we got out of the van, we immediately felt the sand pelt us as gusts came by. In addition the airstrip was downwind of a landfill, which meant that lightweight trash (plastic bags, paper) would blow by every so often. Being at the competition itself was neat, but these environmental factors made the experience pretty rough. The sand had a big effect on the competition too. Near the end of the day, they had to stop competition because the dust cloud were so think, people were having trouble seeing their planes. The dust also caused problems with Rice's plane too. Even though we eventually covered the engine to keep the dust out, sand got into the throttle body, and it jammed just before they went up for a run. It put the team in a bad position, because they only got one good run that day. The object was to takeoff and land (and not crash) while carrying the most weight. It was still pretty fun, because I got to serve as an extra pair of hands for Jackson's team. Helping with maintaining the plane and making last minute fixes and adjustments. By the end of the day sand was everywhere. All the moving joints in my video camera were messed up, and I had to spray a bunch of WD-40 in to get things moving. I'm sure there's still some sand in the camera though, which is no good. My still camera got scratched up, and we were all literally encrusted with dust. You could wipe your arm with a paper towel and just see brown. Anyway, cleaning up at the end of the day was good, and when we got back we made some more adjustments to the plane and headed to sleep, ready for the last day of competition.Sunday, June 9
Lancaster, CA to Las Vegas, NV - 250 miles
We got up early again,
and headed for the airfield. Luckily the wind was not nearly as bad on this
day, so things went pretty well in terms of maintaining the plane. Because
of the failed run the day before, the team tried to carry a whole lot more
weight the next day to make up for it, but couldn't get off the ground.
Then they were stuck with only the initial run they had made, which was
low weight and thus a low score. The plane did survive the competition intact,
which was a lot better than a bunch of teams who had some spectacular crashes.
There were two really cool model jet plane exhibitions, where they had scale
models of jets, incuding a MiG-15 take off and do some stunts in the air.
They whizzed by at over 200 mph (actual speed, not scale). One of the pilots
even landed his jet really smootlhy after a burnout (his engine cut in midflight).
After the competition was over we headed back for the hotel, cleaned up,
packed, and parted ways with the rest of Jackson's team. We drove out to
Vegas on I-15 across the Mojave Desert. One really weird thing we saw was
a water park in the middle of the desert. I don't know where they got their
water from, but it must have been a huge expense, since there is no surface
water out there. We pulled into Vegas just as the sun was setting. The perfect
time to get to Vegas, right? Well not really since we were both pretty tired
from working with the competition. We sprung for a room at Circus Circus,
about the cheapest place we could find. It was only $40 a night for two
beds, and the room was pretty nice. We were going to go out and walk along
the strip and drop into some of the casinos, but we were pretty tired. We
did eat at the buffet, which was probably some of the cheaper food around.
All you can eat for 8 dollars or so. The must really churn people through
these buffets at casinos, because they had a huge capacity. The food was
ok, but after eating we were pretty tired. We sat down, and Jackson wanted
to take a little nap, which turned into a long nap. I started reading more
of Shadow of the Hegemon, and I was content reading. The 'Bean' side
of the Ender series is really cool in my opinion. Anyway, it got rpetty
late, and I was sleepy and Jackson was still tired. So we called it a day,
and spent our one night in Vegas sleeping. =) Monday, June 10
Las Vegas, NV to Grand Canyon NP (near Jacob Lake, AZ) - 220 miles
We both got up late into
the morning, and then we figured we should definitely walk around the strip
before we headed out. We wanted to get to Grand
Canyon National Park with enough time to set up camp, so we had a few
hours. We walked from the north end of the strip, where Circus Circus was,
all the way down to the MGM and the Bellagio. Sunny had advised us about
the fountain show at the Bellagio, but unfortunately there were maintenance
people on a little platform working on the fountain underwater when we went
by. This was about 11 am in the morning, so I guess they figure it isn't
peak tourist time in Vegas. We walked into a few casinos, but there wasn't
that much going on because it was so early in the morning. Neither of us
are the gambling type, so as you can see I'm not much of a Vegas person,
and I don't think Jackson is either. There were lots of cool things to see
on the strip, and if we were staying there a few days, then we probably
would ahve visited a bunch of other places. Instead we headed back to our
room, packed and headed out for Grand Canyon. One thing we needed to do
before we got to GC was buy groceries. Since the Vegas was the last place
we thought there'd be a grocery store before GC we starting looking for
one, but ti took us a while. We weren't familiar with any of the grocery
store names, so when we finally saw one, we actually drove buy it. We eventually
turned around and headed back to Vons. Does that sound like a grocery store
to you? Vons. Anyway we got our groceries and drove through arid parts of
Nevada, Utah, and Arizona, until we got near the Grand Canyon. When the
elevation increased we started seeing more trees, until we got withing a
few miles of the canyon and it was pretty dense forest. One neat part was
driving through different areas and seeing the effect that fires had on
different forests. You could see some of the brush starting to grow back
and young trees popping up. We decided on going to the North Rim of the
Grand Canyon in hopes that it would be less touristy. It turns out it doesn't
matter which side you're on - there are a ton of tourists. After dodging
cows on the road in, we turned the wrong way when we got in the park, so
it took a little while before we reached our campsite, which we had already
reserved. One cool thing about arrving at the GC on this day, was it was
the day of the partial solar eclipse. We heard there was goign to be something
with the eclipse going on at the lodge, so we headed over there, but all
we saw was a cheesy lecture. It wasn't bad, it was just geared towards kids
and people who didn't know much about astronomy. After dinner, Jackson went
back later that night and saw a bunch of people with telescope who were
looking at the stars. He said the sky was really clear (partially because
of elevation) and the light pollution wasn't that bad. Jackson got to partake
in some good stargazing, while I headed to sleep.Amazingly again, no pictures. I guess we didn't find Vegas that exciting. (Tells you something about Jackson and me.)
Tuesday, June 11
Grand Canyon NP to Flagstaff, AZ - 165 miles
After waking up and packing
up our camp, we headed out to see a bunch of the sites in the park. At first
I didn't want to hike down into the canyon, because I thought we wouldn't
be able to get down that far, and it would be a rough climb back. Jackson
on the other hand was interested in seeing what it might be like. Jackson
and I got into a philsophical argument about enjoying life, contentness,
trying new things, etc. Eventually we decided to go down the trail, but
as soon as we got there we had a very bad surprise. The trail is shared
by mules. This means that the trail is covered in mule crap. The whole way
down really really stunk. Also people have to yield to mules. It sucked
going up and going down. The positives were that the people on the trail
were friendly, and that we stopped at a nice overlook and got to see the
base of the canyon from a few hundred feet closer than we otherwise would
have. After a climb back up the trail, we headed to a few other overlooks
on the North Rim. They gave great views of the canyon and the South Rim
which was at some points 5-10 miles away. I had no idea just how big the
canyon was until I looked at a map, and then when we were finally there.
It is grand. At one of the overlooks there were tons of birds flying
by us, just over our heads, really fast. They were looping around in circles.
We figure they were swallows and I even caught one (as a blur) on my still
camera. We also have some video footage, but they are going by so fast you
can hardly tell that they are birds. After that a few pictures we said goodbye
to the Grand Canyon and headed south for Flagstaff. This part of our trip
was a little open ended, so we were deliberating about what to do as we
drove down 89. I was looking forward to sleeping under a roof that night,
as I'm less of an outdoors/camping guy than Jackson is, so we headed for
Flagstaff. On the way we stopped at the Wupatki
and Sunset Crater Volcano National
Monuments. We took walks around each site, and then headed to Flagstaff
for the night. Flagstaff is a neat little city. It has a lot of history
because it was a major stop on Route 66. There were a bunch of tourist type
shops in the downtown area, and lots of people were walking around that
night while we were hunting for a quick meal. I imagine the Route 66 drive
would be pretty cool, although I guess the density of tourist stops along
the way might detract from the history. After our meal we watched some TV
(more free hotel cable) and headed to sleep.
After our trip down the mule-shared Kaibib trail, we got to this overlook, which was pretty cool. What added to the pain of the mule crap everywhere were the flies that swarmed around it. I guess it was still worth it for the experience. We are a few hundred feet below the North Rim.
Jackson taking in the view of the canyon. You can see the Colorado River as a blue area way off in the distance in the picture. This gives you a better feel for the size of the canyon.
A swallow flying by at what seems to be at least 30 miles an hour. The air was really crisp, warm, and insect free. That along with several mile wide gash in the earth a few feet away from us, made for a cool point to stop and eat lunch at.
A typical camping lunch. We'd heat up some water, and eat some canned or dry goods. We also did roasted vegetables and had rice, fruits, and other typical camping food. (without meat though).
At Wupatki there is a largely intact pueblo (ancient American Indian dwelling) that you can walk around. The signs described what each area was used for, and the pueblo had a big ball court, which I thought was pretty cool.
There was a trail near Sunset Crater where you could walk on the solidified lava terrain. They used to let people walk up the side of the volcano, but the erosion was damaging the surface, so now we have to stick to the trails.
Wednesday, June 12
Flagstaff, AZ to Cottonwood, AZ - 70 miles
We didn't have anything
specifically planned for this day of the trip, so we called Adam in Albuquerque
(our next stop on the trip). He was working during the week, but was taking
Friday off to hang out with us, and so we planned to join him Thursday night.
That left us an extra day in Arizona/New Mexico, so we headed down in the
the heart of Arizona. The area is covered in forests, and the climate is
fairly arid. We came through about the week before the forest fires that
you saw on the National news. So at that time, a lot of the state parks
and forests were closed because of the fire danger. (They must have smart
people working at the Forest Service). We figured we'd get down there and
find a park to camp at for the night. First we went to the Montezuma
Castle National Monument, which doesn't have much to do with Montezuma.
It was a local ancient American Indian cliff dwelling, but it was mistakenly
named for him. Next we headed back north a little to the Sedona area, where
I guess a lot of people who are vacationing go to camp and visit. We stopped
at a park information center, and looked at what parks were open. We ended
up picking Dead Horse Ranch State Park. It's apparently named for a dead
horse that was found, where they decided to build a ranch. (Yes, we thought
it was an excellent choice of name). This area was a lot hotter than Flagstaff,
because we had come down a lot in elevation. At this point we were only
2 hours away from Phoenix. We had hoped to camp somewhere higher and cooler,
but this was our mistake. It was really hot, and the park was on the Verde
River, so there were lots of insects. Despite this we still went for a walk
and had an enjoyable evening. We cooked up dinner, relaxed, and even got
to stargaze. Jackson and I partook in a few games of chess through the trip,
and I think I went up 3-2 on him in the series that day, which was the last
time we played on the trip. 
The amzing laptop. We probably listened to nearly a hundred hours of audio on this old Pentium 200. It made the trip a lot more relaxing and easier to plan (Excel at our fingertips!). This campsite had power, so we plugged in the laptop for some tunes, even though the laptop speakers were small, it was still nice to have music.
Water. We went through a whole lot of bottles and gallon containers on our trip. This became a ritual at almost every stop we made.
Here's Jackson's artistic rendition of the grill (which we couldn't use - fire ban) at our campsite and an acutal picture of it. Jackson did a few other drawings over the trip. He even started one on me, until he got fed up with the fact that I wouldn't stand still for more then a few seconds.
The air was really clear at our campsite, so the stargazing was nice, although there were a few nearby light sources. Still much better than urban viewing. At dusk we spotted two planets, likely Venus and Jupiter, although we're not sure which was which. This was the bigger one. The picture quality isn't that great, because this is 26x digital zoom on my 5 year old video camera, but still it was cool to actually see the curvature of the planet with just a little zoom. (at least that's what I think I saw.)
Thursday, June 13
Cottonwood, AZ to Albuquerque, NM - 385 miles
Jackson and I managed
to get up early on this morning, because we had a long eventful day planned
ahead of us. We had a light breakfast and tried to finish off or throw away
any of the food that was left. We figured this was the time that we'd be
out camping, so we didn't need to keep any more perishables. After we packed
camp, we headed back north to Flagstaff, then west on I-40. Somewhere along
the way we started listening to the 4th (and currently last) Harry Potter
book, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. The audiobook was 20 hours
long, so we didn't finish it until we got to Austin, but I think it was
pretty good. At this point the story is really developed, and the characters
are very familiar. Ad for the drive itself, the terrain changed pretty quickly
from green forest to arid land with sparse vegetation. Our first stop was
Meteor Crater. The crater is just immense. It was one of the bigger things
we saw on the trip (among the Rockies, the Sierras, the Golden Gate, and
the Grand Canyon). It spans about a mile across, and is over 500 feet deep.
The Washington Monument would fit inside and you wouldn't be able to see
it from outside the crater. We spotted the crater while we were still on
I-40, over 5 miles away. It's pretty close to the freeway, just a short
drive on an access road (with roaming cows). The crater itself is owned
by a for profit company, so admission was a steep $12/person. They have
done something with the money, though. The visitors center adjacent to the
crater is pretty nice, with lots of interactive displays and information
on the formation of the crater. Another interesting thing about the crater
is NASA's former involvement with it. Apollo astronauts went out to crater
for training, since most other craters on the earth were much more weathered.
It was a pretty cool site to stop at overall, and I'd recommend it if you
don't mind forking out the $12 for only an hour or two of time spent. After
we left Meteor Crater, we headed to Petrified
Forest and Painted Desert National Parks. The two parks are adjacent
to each other, and take up a sizable chunk of land just off I-40. As we
were approaching Pertified Forest NP, we saw a bunch of shops selling petrified
wood. There's plenty of legal pretrified wood out there, but the park has
a BIG problem with visitors walking away with it. So much so that they ask
every person leaving if they've taken any wood. I was hoping to get some
after we left the park, but we didn't see many shops on the way out. We
were also trying to get to Albuquerque at 5 pm, so we didn't stop. As for
the park itself, the petrified wood was pretty neat, but kind of boring
at the same time. Fun to walk around and look at, but once you've seen it
the fun fades pretty fast. One of the cooler parts of the park were the
colored clay hills we got to walk around. The clay is normally white, but
it can get colored by mineral seeping in from plant matter and other rocks.
There were brilliant blues, reds, and purples with petrified wood spread
on the ground around the hills. Next we drove inside the park to Painted
Desert NP, which was just across the freeway. We didn't get to spend much
time there, but it's basically a bunch of overlooks viewing the surrounding
land, which was brilliant with tons of color. We stopped at one of them,
snapped a picture, then headed off for New Mexico. (Only one state away
from Texas...) After a stop for some food we rolled in the Albuquerque (which
I know how to spell well now) and got to Adam's house. Adam is another friend
of Jackson's from Jones College at Rice. We spent the past 24 hours outdoors,
so we cleaned up, then went to a local pizza place with Adam for a bite.
Afterwards, Adam and his fiance, Tiffany, took us out to a jazz/blues club
to see a band they knew pretty well, Suite 42. Their set was pretty cool,
and we got to relax after a long day of travelling. After we got back, we
headed to sleep, since we had more fun planned for the next day.
Here's a view of Meteor Crater from a few miles away on I-40. It's a huge scar on a really flat piece of land. It must look amazing overhead from a helicopter or plane.
Jackson and I at Meteor Crater. The crater is just immense, and it's the type of place that words don't fully describe.
Inside Petrified Forest NP there are large hills made of clay that has been colored by minerals leaching from rock and degrading organic matter. The purple and blues in this picture aren't nearly as vivid or bright as they were in real life.
It was also really cool to see some shattered petrified wood in the area. It looked like fresh wood chips, only they'd been sitting there for hundreds of years. So fresh looking that you'd almost expect a pine or other wood scent.
Here's a view from one of the many overlooks in Painted Desert NP. The picture does look boring and bland, but the color in this picture doesn't compare to how vivid it is in person. The view is unlike anything I'd ever seen before, which was really neat.
Friday, June 14
Albuquerque, NM
We all actually got up pretty late this morning, because we had the opportunity to sleep in, in comfortable beds. After breakfast (mmm...cereal), we went for a short hike atop the Sandia Mountains. Adam's from Albuquerque, and he used to bike/hike in the area a lot, so he knows the area well. The mountains are just east of the city, which runs right up to the foot of the mountains. There's also the world's longest tram between the crest of the mountain and a spot on the east of the city. We drove up to the crest and hiked over to the tram stop and back. The forest here was very different than any of the other forest we saw on the trip (which was mainly Sequoia and Redwoods), but I guess more like you're typical hilly/mountain forest. The view from the crest was pretty cool, and after a few pictures we headed back to Adam's house to meet up with people and do stuff in the evening. The whole trip it hadn't rained, and we had dodged forest fires and heavy rain. Also it hadn't rained since the winter. Just as we got back to Adam's it started pouring, and there was a whole lot of hail falling - while it was still sunny outside. It rained for about 30 minutes, the clouds cleared up, and withing a few hours the air felt dry again. One nice thing about the rain in Mew Mexico is that it drops the temperature at least 10-15 degrees. (unlike Houston where it just gets muggy). We met Adam's parents and some other friends for dinner near the UNM campus to get a taste of New Mexican food. Adam says that New Mexican food is much better than the 'Mexican' food that you get in other southwestern states. Actually, the food we ate was better than most tex-mex food I'd had before. If you like spicy stuff, and you haven't had something with green chile before, you should give it a try. Green chile has a different spicy flavor from other peppers, that I can't really describe, but it's good. (Green Chile is a New Mexico specialty). After dinner we went with Adam's friends to see a movie, but it took us a fair amount of time to figure out what we were going to see. After deliberating, we decided on The Sum of All Fears, which Jackson and I had been wanting to see since the beginning of the trip. I think we both thought the movie was pretty good, and fairly entertaining. It was very different from the Tom Clancy book, says Jackson. After the movie it was pretty late, so we went back to Adam's house for the night.
Jackson and Adam at the crest of the Sandia Mountains. The view of Albuquerque is pretty cool. I guess this type of location (mountain in view of a large city) is nothing new to a lot of people, but I've lived most of my life on the Gulf Coast or on the Atlantic Coastal Plain, so being up this high above everything you know is pretty neat.
Saturday, June 15
Albuquerque, NM to El Paso, TX - 270 miles
We got up fairly early
and went with Adam, his sister, and Tiffany to eat breakfast at a local
place they have been to before. After that we headed back to Adam's and
packed up the car, and said goodbye to his family. They were really cool,
and it was nice staying there. Albuquerque itself was a really cool town.
There's lots to do, it's urban, but not completely packed or congested like
big cities in Texas. The atmosphere and the people seem pretty nice, and
the weather is fairly nice, just a little drier than I'm used to. People
there mostly use swamp
coolers (evaporative cooling) instead of air conditioners since it's
so dry. (which is something most people in Texas don't even know about.)
Our next stop was El Paso, TX. We were going to stay a night with another
Jones person, Jackson's friend Jerry. We rolled out of Albuquerque around
noon and headed along the Rio Grande down I-25. We were tempted to drive
an hour or two out of our way and see the VLA
(Very Large Array) Radio Telescope which was just an hour west of a
place we drove by on I-25. We figured that we didn't want to get to El Paso
too late, so headed straight for Jerry's. The scenery on the drive was much
like it had been in the rest of New Mexico and parts of Arizona - dry, plains
and hills, and sparse vegetation in most areas. We drove to Jerry's house
which was on the west side of town, and took a break before going out to
grab a bite to eat. We went to Carnitas Queretaro, a local Mexican that
Jerry went to often. The food there is pretty good and pretty cheap, based
on the opinions of Jackson and Jerry. I wasn't too smitten with it, but
I attribute that to my picky taste and not the food. Afterwards we met some
Jerry's friends and went across town to see the Bourne Identity.
On the drive we got to see a lot of El Paso, although we were viewing from
the freeway (I-10). I didn't know that there is a big mountain that divides
the city into east and west parts, he area isn't that flat, and you can
actually see across the border into Mexico because of the elevation dip
near the Rio Grande. I-10 runs parallel to the border for a few miles, and
it seems like the freeway is only a few hundred yards from the river (and
hence the border). The movie was entertaining and enjoyable, but not a a
really new idea or very challenging in mental terms. The action was good
and the acting was ok and of course I enjoyed it, so I liked it. After the
movie we headed back to Jerry's place and hung out a little before heading
to sleep. (As I'm sure you've seen by reading about the trip, Jackson and
I aren't exactly party animals.) 
(from left to right) Jackson, Mr and Mrs. Hawthorne, me, Adam, and Tiffany. Just before we said bye to the Hawthornes and Albuquerque.
Sunday, June 16
El Paso, TX to Austin, TX - 580 miles
This day sort of marked
the end of our trip, as we were heading back to my home, Austin, Texas.
We set out from El Paso in the morning, and went east on I-10. As many of
my friends have told me before (including Jackson) this drive is one of
the most boring you'll encounter. The Kansas plain was pretty boring, but
it wasn't as long, it was green, and at least there were farms along the
freeway. There isn't much in west Texas. We stopped in Ft. Stockton for
gas and lunch, then continued on to Austin. I don't know what you'd do in
Ft. Stockton. (I guess I'd don't know what you'd do in Lubbock, Midland,
Odessa, or any other west Texas cities.) The drive wasn't that bad overall.
We finished the fourth Harry Potter book as we neared Austin. The story
got way more involved, and the book ended with the situation much more up-in-the-air
than it had in the previous books. We finally got ot the hill country west
of Austin, and it got greener and, as the name states, hilly. There's some
neat stuff to see west of Austin, which I myself haven't seen, but we were
tired, and we had just finished one of the worst drives of the trip, so
we headed back to my apartment. After unloading some stuff, we went to Chuy's
to eat with some of my friends. If you haven't been to Chuy's in Austin
or Houston, it's worth a stop it's a pretty nice restaurant. After dinner
we went back to my place, and we watch some of the fresh video of the trip,
which made us realize we didn't really record much useable video. Luckily
for you, I've pulled the best frames ouf the video and spared you all the
extra commentary that we (mostly me) added. After people trickled off back
to their apartments, we went to sleep. Monday, June 17
Austin, TX to Houston, TX - 180 miles
The primary reason that
we didn't extend our trip and stay in some places a little longer was that
I needed to get back to Austin, since my roommate, Gautam, was about to
move out. We took care of the adminstrative apartment stuff, and split up
some of our shared stuff, since I wasn't going to see him until after we
needed to move out of the apartment. When that work was done, we frittered
away the day in Austin, mostly sitting around, and drove back to Houston
- a short 180 miles. When we finally got to my house we unloaded my stuff
for the most part, and took a picture to commemorate the trip and another
picture to document just how bad the bug splatter can be on a three week
6500 mile trip. See for yourself below. That was the end of the trip for
me, and it's where we parted ways...only for 24 hours or so though, since
I left some stuff in Jackson's car, and I needed to help him clean up stuff.
We spent the rest of the summer hanging out much like we had on the trip,
since we both had the time, and we were both gearing up for the grind of
graduate school - which is where you can find both of us now.
A close up of Jackson's front license plate after we stopped at my house at the end of the trip. Pretty gross, don't you think? Good thing Jackson got his car professionaly cleaned after this.
Well good things can't last forever. Jackson and I at the end of the trip.