The other reason for this blog

This is my first born, Jeni, as she graduated with her BA in History.

And this is the graduate on the road trip that was my graduation present, DC & NYC.


What started as an attempt at a creative graduation present when Jeni finished high school has become a tradition. After each scholastic achievement, my gift to her is a road trip. We love these things.

Now, she's in the middle of her Masters in Teaching program and we're planning our next road trip. She decided that she wants to see as much of our great country as she can. I mapped out a couple of courses that would include the maximum number of states. I had to scrap most because I do have a job and a month's vacation is not in the benefit plan. We've settled on what promises to be a great trip. We'll visit some 25 states spanning the entire country, Cajun country in New Orleans, the Heartland of Oklahoma and Kansas, the Great Northwest of Oregon and Washington, the Rockies Mountains get crossed twice, we see both Dakotas and the home of the Cheese heads.

As I was planning this trip, I calculated the cost in gas alone, and let's say that a defibrillator was not too far away. I joked to myself that I needed some sponsors. Of course, that was a joke, until I thought of a great hybrid car ad; something like "Our hybrid crossed the Rockies twice in the same week!" I have to say that sounds like a great ad. OK, it needs some fleshing out. Once I accepted the idea of sponsors, I ran with it. It dawned on me that a blog chronicling our preparations for the trip, and esp. keeping a daily log of pictures, video clips and words describing our wonderful country might interest folks and if folks are regularly reading this blog, some businesses might decide this would be a good venue for advertising.

"But what is going to get folks reading in the first place?" was my main question What about a blog that lets ordinary folks see that doing ordinary things, very American things, like taking a road trip summer vacation, while being "green" is easy. Given my new found interest in normal folks being good caretakers of our planet, this made perfect sense.

So there you have the other motivation for this blog.