Sharing photos, videos, vintage images I've discovered, and -- occasionally -- commentary and thoughts from retired life and travels.

Monday, July 19, 2010

An answer to a previous post

July 19, 2010

In an earlier post, I asked, “What caused this ravine?”

Very simply, it was caused by traffic of people traveling to the western part of the United States with wagons.  Specifically,  the ravine started as a set of wagon ruts cut through the grass and sod by heavy iron-shod wheels.

2010 07 08 c 020ed

The hill where the ravine is located is called Windlass Hill where, according to legend more than factual history, wagons were eased down the incline using a windlass.  It is located at a point  where emigrants on the Oregon Trail (also the California Trail) left the dropped into and valley along the North Platte River that is called Ash Hollow.

In the photo below, you can see where the trail curved to the left at this point.  The bridge in the lower picture is where the top photo was taken from.2010 07 08 c 019ed

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Blogging While Traveling

July 19, 2010

2010 07 17 002ed 

We have been gone from home for about 16 days now and, so far, we have camped four nights in campgrounds with wireless internet. 

The other 12 nights have been in places where no internet was available except for what we brought with us.  On eight of those, we have been able to get online from our camper.

Our internet access is through our smart phones that we got when we signed up with Verizon at the end of April.

The primary feature that we were looking for at the time was something that would allow is to go online while we were traveling.  In addition being a phone, camera, and all the smart phone applications, the Palm Pre Plus can serve as a mobile wifi hot spot.

palm_pre_plus[1]

When we saw that the Palms were being offered with free mobile internet, we decided to go with it, even though we did have to pay for the data package. 

It ended up costing about $50 more a month than we had been paying for our old phones.

However, the service is good enough at home that we dropped our DSL and the old home phone service that we had had for 29 years. 

There is a 5 gb monthly usage limit on the mobile internet.  However, since the service is free, we got it on both phones, so, in effect, we have a 10 gb monthly limit.

On the road, mobile wifi has varied in quality.  Right now, we are sitting in a campground in Grand Teton National Park, several miles from the nearest cell phone tower.  Sometimes the wifi is good on one side of the camper, sometimes on the other.

We have found that the mobile wifi drains the phones battery quite quickly, so we always try to have it connected to a charger when the hotspot is turned on.

In the photo above, I’m sitting in the driver’s seat of our Navion IQ motorhome, at my computer.  My work surface is a little table that slides out of a little built in dresser.  Karen’s is a table that stores on end and, when deployed, is supported on the side by a frame.

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