Most of my previous US vacations were planned a long-time in advance, typically time off from my previous employer was booked off 9 months in advance and then my personal arrangements were always booked very quickly. Normally they are inspired by previous trips, i.e. places I want to visit again and do more stuff, places nearby on the chosen route that I wish to visit for the 1st time, joining together new places with previous favourites etc. It’s all variations on a theme. Planning early is the classic “pre-emptive” strike as very often your colleagues have no idea what they intend to do with their valuable time off that far in advance, so you’ll almost certainly get your time off authorised easily and quickly. Plus most companies can’t accurately predict which project you’ll be working on at that time!
This Sept 2011 trip has been in planning for a long time for various reasons. It was originally plotted out at the tail end of 2009/2010 as a double-header with the 2010 Appalachian Trail and High Points trip that you’ll see references to elsewhere in the blog with some picture highlights in the “Greatest Hits Photos”.
The inspiration for creating a 2010 “double-header” that year was the Ken Burn’s documentary film “The National Parks – America’s Best Idea” which was released in 2009. It was originally shown on PBS in the States, but of course I can't receive that in Scotland so I ordered the DVD Box set and had it shipped to me. Engrossing stuff. I destroyed the 10+ hours of the 6 episodes and extra features very quickly one weekend. Yosemite and John Muir. The Grand Canyon. Various historical tales, interviews and fantastic old photos and modern colour footage. It was all there. I lost track of the places I’d been and the views I recognised. An aerial shot above Nevada Falls in Yosemite brought back pleasant memories of stopping there for a rest and drink numerous times when hiking, mainly on various Half Dome hikes! I could go on about this fine documentary forever. Buy it, or watch it!
It inspired me to look at doing a few places in it, some of them again, the following jumped out at me from the DVDs :-
Yellowstone National Park, Grand Teton National Park, Great Smoky Mountain National Park and Acadia National Park.
Even I knew that the stuff out west (first two) wasn’t compatible in a 3 week trip with the eastern 2 National Parks, so it became a split trip with the first being built around other stuff such as 11 High Points and other enjoyable nonsense such as bits of the Appalachian Trail and the Big Apple. It also contained a memorable pilgrimmage to Appomattox Court House in Virginia which I became aware of from watching the famous Civil War documentary film, also by Ken Burns. I don't want to give away the ending of that one, but General Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox and President Lincoln got shot soon afterwards. Buy that series, or watch it! My folks guessed where I was heading for that day after a cryptic text message from the other side of Virginia told them that I was heading for a place where there was "an important meeting in 1865".
The 2nd fully booked leg never happened last year as I took a personal decision to cancel it when I was between full-time jobs. Then literally, right after I cancelled all the trip arrangements, I got my new and current full-time job. If I’d really wanted to, I could possibly still have done the trip last year, but I’d made the decision and I stuck to it as I had more pressing matters to deal with at the time. Yellowstone etc. would have to wait. I'll quite possibly look back on that as one of the bigger mistakes of my life!
When I kicked off the booking process of the “rescheduled” trip in March this year, it took approx 3-4 hours one night to get most of it in place, as most of the accommodation was for the same places again at the same point in the trip’s originally planned sequence, it reduced the effort involved on the Internet! The 2010 version was 17 days. The revised one is 21 days which allowed me the opportunity to plan in a few additional things that I couldn’t fit into the 2010 version. I’ve already tweaked a few things in my itinerary, it may remain a work in progress until Saturday 3rd Sept.
I have one month to go. That’s plenty of time to fine tune the final arrangements, and take care of stuff back here such as my car’s annual service and MOT etc. I also have to contact various local jurisdictions I'm visiting in the States to ensure I’ve paid outstanding speeding fines, parking tickets, warn them I’m coming to town etc.
Things used to be simple with credit cards and bank cards, but nowadays you also have to phone them all up as a precaution to let them know that you’re going over, otherwise they might just freeze your cards mid-vacation. That bit me in May 2009 when most of my cards got cut off. The banks etc. do not proactively tell you that, which I feel is outrageous. The “Fraud Centre” shall just shut down your account when you use it in the States sometimes, due to the higher fraud rates (epidemic In 2009 apparently). They pay no attention whatsoever to your previous financial history, and expect you to contact “them” to get back access to either your own money or your credit facility.
I also need to contact various places to ensure they serve draft Sierra Nevada Pale Ale at the optimum drinking temperature.
A man need's refreshment after a hard day’s hiking.
More to follow...
Stu B
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