New Ulm - Some R&R

To mix things up a little bit, I found a wonderful little B&B in new Ulm, MN. The Bohemian owner educated us on a bit of the region's ethnic and art history. We also enjoyed 3 big rooms and two whirlpool tub-appointed bathrooms. A great night's sleep and wonderful breakfast topped it all off.

Casey was happy to play with the owner's 1 year-old (I think she misses her baby cousin!) The kids were also eager to watch Olympic swimming and gymnastics, so they shared a pizza at the B&B while Madi and I hit the local steak/brew pub. (The kids had a cell phone with them, and we were only a couple blocks away...) My $14 'George's Steak' handily beat out Madi's $19 New York Strip. Chivalrously, I shared some of mine with her. If you're ever in New Ulm, stop by George's and enjoy some Shell's Firebrick Ale.

In other news, an ominous 'knock' sound is emanating from the van when we come to a stop. A quick stop at a local mechanic confirmed that the suspension, steering, and brakes are in one piece, but we'll have to look into when we get home. After 6000+ miles - including a good deal of engine braking through the mountains - I suspect something might have come loose. I don't know what the long-term effects of engine braking with a front-wheel drive vehicle are.

Tech Note - Here's how we've handled geocaching, photos, navigation, reservations, and blogging during the trip. A PowerBook G4 talking PPP over Bluetooth via Blackberry provides Internet access in all but the most remote areas (and canyons). We download pictures from a Pansonic Lumix FX35 camera to the Mac via an SDHC reader. Since I'm not willing to risk losing a month's worth of photos, we run backups with rsync to Madi's iPod ever couple days. A simple, one-line script ensures than any new or modified files from my home directory are copied to a data partition on the iPod. iPhoto and QuicktimePro are used to crop and compress photos and videos before we upload them to Blogger, since I have no desire to empirically determine the upload time for the full-size 10Mpixel image files. For geocache updates, 'pocket queries' are downloaded from geocaching.com and uploaded to the Garmins via USB; this enables the GPS units to know where the geocaches are in each new town. The Sienna's 3 12v ports are in constant use charging the various gadgets. Madi wields all this tech geekery handilly, and it's really come in handy for our seat-of-the-pants trip planning.

Onward to Wyzatta, MN!
Mike