The Gear and Gadgets of our Great Adventure

If you have ever read an epic novel, such as Moby Dick, or an epic poem, such as the Iliad or the Odyssey, you may recall a chapter where the storyteller lists in painstaking detail the manifest of tools and supplies necessary for the journey. (See epic characteristic #6 here.)

Our adventure will be no different! This appendix describes the stuff we have found to be absolutely essential, the stuff we brought but didn't need, and the stuff we had to acquire along the way.

The original purpose of this list was actually quite pragmatic. On Day 4 of our adventure (our second stop, actually) we packed up and left, but managed to leave our pillows behind. Our pillows were actually our most treasured connection to home!

Of course we had to go back for them. To prevent this from happening again, we scribbled down a complete list of our belongings, quite literally on the back of an envelope.

On kindergarten field trips, Kim counts heads to make sure no one gets left behind. We did the same thing throughout the trip, each time we left a host, we rattled through our list.

Dustin's

• roll-aboard suitcase, laptop backpack, laptops (3), toiletry bag

Kim's

• roll-aboard suitcase, craft bag, shower caddy, toiletry kit, small overnight bag, computer, purse, winter clothes

Ours

• backpack of camping gear, pillows (2), cooler, shoe bag, laundry bag, stove, coffee mugs (2), toolbox, battery charger, camera case, cameras (3), tripod

But at this point, we are veritable road warriors, veteran experts in travel and I think we have some useful information to pass along about the gear and gadgets that made our adventure what it was...

The Jeep

Our most essential possession was our mode of transportation, Giuseppe the Jeep Liberty. A 2006, 4x4, diesel powered, trail rated SUV, this Jeep Liberty was powerful, efficient, and spacious. We found it to be the perfect vehicle for this road trip. We got about 25 mpg, bounced around off-road, and packed it into compact parallel parking spots in the city, while still having room for all of our necessities.

We carried a basic toolbox...

We also brought an AC/DC power inverter, a portable battery jumper, and a small air compressor. We actually needed the air compressor to adjust the tire pressure when driving through Rocky Mountain National Park, near Estes Park, Colorado.

GPS

A last minute addition to the trip was our (Linux-powered) Tom Tom GPS. It faithfully guided us through the back streets of countless cities, unmarked mountain roads, and even throughout Canada. It located campgrounds and lodging (with phone numbers), coffee shops and pharmacies, museums and monuments. Other than one trip through the Chattanooga ghetto, it was been spot-on accurate.

Smart phones

Both of our phones (Dustin's HTC Hero and Kim's Palm Pixi) served us thousands of miles of MP3s, and provided us with random trivia about the places we've visited by tapping into Wikipedia. Our smart phones were nice complements to the Tom Tom GPS. In a pinch, they took blurry pictures, but they were definitely cameras-of-last-resort. They also made and received phone calls too ;-)

Camping Gear

Our camping gear came in handy, providing much-needed respite in nature. We started with a low-end two person tent by Swiss Gear. Dustin had used this tent for about 7 years backpacking around several continents, but it started to show its age after heavy use, with one of the tent poles cracking and one miserable night in the rain, as the fabric soaked through and the seams started leaking.

We eventually upgraded to a much nicer North Face, bought on sale at an outstanding off season 25% discount.

It has a separate rain fly, that snaps on over a mesh shell.

We also used a pair of short, self inflating Thermarests, and a pair of three season sleeping bags.

Most of the nights we camped were quite cold, usually with lows in the 30s F. Our knit caps were essential to keeping us warm.

We cooked our mac-and-cheese and jambalaya on a small gas stove, in a set of three Teflon coated nesting pots and pans.

Our stovetop espresso maker was bulky, but absolutely justified. We used it countless times.

Of course we also needed a couple of all-purpose insulated mugs.

Neither of us being smokers we had to borrow a lighter until we finally bought a couple of our own. We have a pair of LED headlamps, two LED handheld flashlights, one LED lantern.

A Swiss Army knife and a first aid kit have seen minimal action, but are essential nonetheless. Kim's favorite camping gear are a set of two-foot-long wooden marshmallow roasting sticks.

Dustin bought a (rather metro-sexual looking) Fiskars hatchet and a pair of elk-skin gloves in Jackson Hole, WY, which he used extensively for chopping firewood.

We brought along an air mattress and a rechargeable electric pump, but the air mattress deflated both times we used it, so we tossed it in Plymouth, MI.

This picnic blanket came in handy for all sorts of purposes. While in the car, we used it to cover our valuables. On cold nights, we spread it over our sleeping bags. On warm nights, we put it under us for a little extra padding.

And we carried a series of plastic water bottles, filling up whenever we could.

We also brought two frame backpacks. Dustin's 10+ year old Gregory Reality backpack housed all of the camping gear, which was really handy when setting up and striking camp. Kim's Deuter was typically our laundry bag.

Clothes -- Kim

I had a really difficult time packing for this trip considering that none of my clothes fit. So before the trip I had to buy some new summer clothes and then I brought some of my favorite winter clothes from home. I thought that by the time we got to colder weather they'd fit, but alas they didn't so I had to buy a few more items to make it through the rest of the trip. Needless to say my suitcase was on the verge of exploding so finally in Sonoma, CA I mailed three boxes home with clothes that were now too big...hooray! or were out of season. I brought three pairs of flip flops, cross trainers, walking shoes, heels (I never wore), and I bought a pair of croc flats.

Clothes -- Dustin

Dustin packs rather minimally when it comes to clothes, so he had quite a hard time packing for 4 months on the road. He brought 5 t-shirts (picked up a few new ones along the way), 2 button-up shirts, 1 polo shirt, 2 long sleeve shirts, 2 pairs of shorts, 1 pair of jeans, 2 sets of swimming trunks, 1 set of running clothes, 8 pairs of boxers, 10 pairs of socks, 1 pair of wool socks, 1 belt, 1 fleece, 1 rain jacket, one fleece cap, 2 baseball caps, a pair of sunglasses with several sets of lenses. He brought a pair of cowboy boots, a pair of hiking boots, a pair of Brooks running shoes, and a pair of flip flops.

Initially, we brought a large, rolling cooler, stocked with groceries and food. It took up way too much room, though, and constantly draining the water and replenishing the ice was a losing battle. We traded Kim's parents for a much more compact Coleman Personal 24 cooler, which served our needs much better. Also, we started out with soft gel freezer packs. These turned out to be really messy and inconvenient. Dustin finally got aggravated enough with them to tossed them on the fire one night in Colorado, and bought a set of hard plastic freezer packs, which were much better.

Food

We also traveled with a soft-sided cooler filled with food and snacks. Our staples include: pretzels, goldfish, granola bars, macaroni-and-cheese, Zatarain's (when we can find it), ramen , Thai peanut noodles, instant coffee, tea, hot chocolate, Horizon non-refrigerated milks, smores fixins', trail mix, and beef jerky. Oh, and a lifetime supply of specialty jellies from the Graner's Farm. If we're headed camping for the weekend, we'll also pick up a few days' supply of more perishable items, such as hummus, pita (or tortillas), cheese, and fruit. Initially, we brought our old stove-top espresso maker, but it was rusted beyond repair, and so we picked up a new one at a Bed Bath and Beyond along the way. We far prefer espresso to Nescafe instant coffee. Dustin will usually grab a six-pack of the local micro-brew, and Kim sometimes opts for mini-bottles of chardonay or sauvingnon blanc. We love to picnic just off the beaten path in a national park, cooking mac-n-cheese, snacking on granola bars, and brewing coffee or tea.

Electronics

Dustin traveled with his primary work laptop, a Lenovo X200 Thinkpad.

He also brought a pair of Dell Vostro 1220, a 1TB external hard drive with a full Ubuntu mirror, and a Linksys wireless router/switch, which comprises his Ubuntu cloud-in-a-bag development setup for work.

Kim has her 10" Lenovo S10-2 netbook, and a few bags of crochet projects to last her a lifetime.

Dustin takes most of his conference calls from a Plantronics Voyager Pro (with noise-cancelling) Bluetooth head set, paired with his laptop and Skype.

Cameras

We are traveling with a small arsenal of cameras, each with their own specialty. The diminutive Canon SD1000 Digital Elph was a perfect little point-and-shoot, quick to power on and easily fitting in a pocket. Unfortunately, it died a soggy death in a soaking night camping in Yellowstone National Park. We replaced it a successive model, a Canon Powershot SD1300 Digital Elph (basically the same camera, with 12 megapixels and a 4x zoom), shooting 5mm-20mm -- this is our super wide angle camera.

The Kodak Z812 is a decent (though aging), very flexible midsized camera with a hearty 12x zoom (36mm-432mm) -- this is our super zoom camera, and the one camera we would take, if we only wanted to carry a single camera for some outing.

Our Canon EOS xTI digital Rebel is our big gun -- a remarkable SLR, taking the best high resolution digitals through two lenses (18mm-55mm and 55mm-250mm).

We shot some of our most remarkable pictures with the 55mm-250mm image stabilized lens.

Beyond those, Dustin's HTC Hero and Kim's Palm Pixi have small embedded digital cameras, too. We have a nice over-the-should camera bag that holds all of the cameras and their lenses. We also have a fullsized aluminum tripod -- a real luxury of traveling by vehicle.

We took great pains to keep the internal clocks of all of these cameras perfectly synchronized. About a week into the trip, Dustin wrote a program (pictor-unload) that we used to pull the pictures off of each memory card, and rename the images, prepending their timestamp to the beginning of the filename. Named accordingly, we can sort thousands of pictures across all of our cameras and view them chronologically. Dustin uploaded all of our pictures on a nightly basis to remote, redundant storage back home in Austin.

Software

Software was surprisingly important to our travels -- all of it running on Linux, and most of it being free and/or open source software.

Obviously we run Ubuntu on all of our computers.

We have already mentioned our Linux-based Tom Tom GPS.

And Kim's Palm Pixi, which runs the Linux-based Palm webOS.

And Dustin's HTC Hero is also a Linux-based Android device.

We were backing up and publishing all of our pictures using a web-based photo viewer Dustin wrote (and packaged for Ubuntu) called Pictor. We used Musica (another web application Dustin wrote) for streaming our music from home. Dustin uses Skype extensively for work conference calls, but we also use Skype quite a bit for video conferencing with our friends and family (and Tiger and Aggie)!

Google Maps and Google Earth were essential to planning our journey. A broad trip plan was initially constructed in Google Maps, dropping 25 rough destinations into a single map.

Google Earth supported far more waypoints, and was useful for fine-grained trip planning.

A spreadsheet in Google Docs records our day-by-day mileage, lodging plans, and budget.

We used Google Latitude for detailed and extensive waypoint tracking, and sharing our rough location with friends and family.

And Google Blogger hosts TheKirklands.net, our connection to the rest of world while we are on the road.

Books

Our Rand McNally giant road atlas is easily the most important book we have. A real atlas is a nice supplement to an electronic GPS. While the Tom Tom is wonderful for calculating the most efficient route from point A to point B, the atlas is the only way to find the most beautiful or scenic path from that same point A to B.

We brought a rather large stack of guidebooks from our bookshelves, which have largely gone unused. Dustin read the Lost City of Z.

And Ewan MacGreggor's The Long Way Down (the sequel to the book that inspired our very trip).

We also both started reading Steig Larsson's The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo on the ferry back from Victoria, BC.

Music

The Jeep has merely a six-disc traditional CD changer -- hopelessy inadequate for 4 months on the road. Instead, we're using a low power FM-transmitter to play MP3's from our smartphones. Dustin's 16GB playlist can be found here, and Kim's 8GB playlist here.

Movies

On typical road trips between Austin, TX and Baton Rouge or New Orleans, LA, we would watch movies on the laptop in the car. We have done this very little, actually, on this trip, as most of the roads have been quite scenic and beautiful, and we have done most of our driving during the daylight hours. However, we do often watch videos in the tent at night when camping, or at a hotel.

We kept up with the current seasons of:

The IT Crowd

True Blood

Dexter

And of course, The Office

We also watched the dry-but-informative National Parks Series (America's Best Idea, by Ken Burns).

I am sure that I have forgotten a few things, but what you have above is a pretty solid list, with links and pictures. If you've ever traveled on a long road trip and have some favorite supplies that I've missed, please do leave a comment.

Happy trails,

:-Dustin