kevin_standlee | Plans Are Laid

Thanks to excellent internet connectivity at the Holiday Inn Express Fremont — almost as good as we have at work — and enough time on my hands to do so, I booked all of the hotel stays for our trip to Worldcon. Lisa and I had previously worked out a general plan of how we would make the drive (with somewhat different routes out and back) and places we plan to make stops, which means some days we can't drive as far as we can on those days where it's all drive-drive-drive. Also, we've tried (although always successfully) to keep it down to only about eight driving hours per day, and I threw lots of slow-down orders into the trip-planning software, which won't allow an average driving speed of less than 50 MPH. In addition, we're mostly staying in Holiday Inn Express properties along the way, which somewhat constrains where we stop; in one night's case it obliges a slight detour and a longer drive because the location that was the "logical" stop was already full.

We plan on leaving after lunch on the Friday before LoneStarCon, with me working from home that week, which makes the first day's leg relatively short. Besides, Lisa wants to show me the hotel we were bidding for Westercon.

Fri Aug 23: Tonopah NV
Sat Aug 24: Kingman AZ
Sun Aug 25: Grants NM
Mon Aug 26: Roswell NM
Tue Aug 27: Abiline TX
Wed Aug 27 through Mon Sep 2: San Antonio TX (LoneStarCon 3)
Tue Sep 3: Fort Stockton TX
Wed Sep 4: El Paso TX
Thu Sep 5: Tucson AZ
Fri Sep 5: Tempe AZ
Sat Sep 7 through Sun Sep 8: Las Vegas NV
Mon Sep 9: Home!

Again, some of these legs will look oddly short to you. That's because of planned stops in places like Albuquerque (to visit Lisa's friends and family there briefly) and Tucson (a museum we saw while riding the train back from Chicon last year).

Las Vegas is a special case that caused me to request an extra vacation day. I have a coupon from Priority Club for one free night at any hotel in the ICG Hotels group, regardless of the hotel's class. A really good use of the coupon appears to be for a Saturday night at the Venetian, and since the Sunday night is merely expensive instead of insane, it amounts to two nights at a per-night cost comparable to what we're paying for the various HIX hotels along the way. It also gives us an opportunity for Lisa to visit a friend of hers in Las Vegas at relatively leisure without being oppressed by driving schedules.

It's a lot of driving: 1750 miles outbound and 1710 return, according to MapPoint, which means probably at least 10% more than that, or perhaps somewhere between 3500 and 4000 miles. I'd better get an oil change just before and just after the trip. And my regular mechanic urges me to let him give the van another once-over the last week I'm in the Bay Area before the trip just in case. I do not want to get stuck out on the road the way we were in Wells NV on the Denvention trip.