Today’s Plan: a LOT of stops

Map
Map

Todays Destinations:

1. My hotel in Gillette, Wyoming

2. Devil’s Tower in Wyoming

3. Mount Rushmore near Keystone, South Dakota

4. Wall Drug in Wall, South Dakota

6. State Capitol in Pierre, South Dakota

7. State Capitol in Bismarck, North Dakota

8. Theoretical Arrival at Konomi and Nataku’s place. I will not make this, the map shows me getting there at 11 pm not including any times I stop today, and does not include the hour I loose due to timezone change.

Wall Drug sighted!

Wall Drug Billboard
Wall Drug Billboard

Wall drug is exaclty 400.4 miles away from where I took this picture. Goddamn!
My computer is crashing every few minutes now, but in a different way. Something is wrong with the video card, it causes video corruption not only in Windows, but also in BIOS, startup, and the Dell Diagnostic Utility. Hell of a time for this to happen. 🙁

Montana State Capitol

Helena, Montana is the state capitol. I’m headed for Mount Rushmore next. By the time I get there, it will be dark, so I’m gonna have to stop somewhere for a motel.

Crazy Cropduster Plane!

This crazy guy was doing loops, hard wing-over turns, and divebombing cars on the Interstate. He came within a few yards of me!  He also touched the road on one pass with his wheels. CRAZY!

On the road to Montana

My Current Location
My Current Location

I am in Idaho right now, on my way to Helena, Montana to get the state capitol. I don’t have anybody to stay with tonight, I think it’s a motel for me.

Boise, Idaho

Got to Boise late last night, and did the capitol this morning. On to Salt Lake City, Utah next.
Special thanks to BoiseMk1GTI who let me stay at his place.

Visiting Microsoft Streets & Trips team

Today I visited Microsoft for the Streets and Trips team. They bought me lunch, and gave me the new version of Streets and Trips – the 2009 version. They also made me some “Powered by Streets and Trips 2009” magnets for the sides of my car.

Cool!! The new version of Streets and Trips is really cool. It now reads the names of the streets you are on. It can trace the route you have been, so I’ll have a map of every place I drive from Redmond for the rest of the trip.

Boeing Factory Tour

I took Boeing’s factory Tour. Craig (OorsciroccO on Vortex) tagged along. He works for a Boeing contractor that specializes in the production tooling.

Unfortunately, Boeing does not allow cameras or any sort of electronics on the tour – so my camera was in a locker the entire time.

The Map

Here is the map so far:

Current Hood Decal
Current Hood Decal

West Coast, yo!

The West Coast
The West Coast

And Craig (OorsciroccO on VWVortex) signing the hood…

OorsciroccO signing the hood
OorsciroccO signing the hood

Shooting Trip: Part 1

We  went out to the Washington Mountians to go shooting… Then the Police showed up! 🙂   They were cool though – they just told us that we couldn’t shoot so close to the high-tension power lines, and they told us a good area up the highway to go shooting.