Checkout from the hotel was at noon so I pushed it to the last moment so I could get all my odds and ends taken care of before my trek home. There have been 7,500 miles traveled thus far and there are about 4,000 miles and just shy of three weeks to go for the first leg of this journey. With the time being consumed by the everyday necessities, enjoying what this great country has to offer, writing and uploading the blogs, and selecting, editing, captioning, and uploading the photos, I am left little time to work on the program redesign. Mentally I have it all laid out; pen to paper is not as set. I may sacrifice some blogging and photo uploads so I can use the couple of hours (my estimate on the time it was going to take to do things was a bit off) to get some more course redesigns fleshed out on paper. Please bear with me if I continue to only update every few days.

Just in case one is wondering, it usually takes me about an hour to get everything set up to upload, then depending on how many photos and links I have to put into the blog it could take another two hours to complete the task. I HAVE to be connected to the internet to upload of course, but I also need the connection to validate the Adobe subscription to edit the photos and utilize Dreamweaver to format the blog with links. Then depending on my connection speed using LTE a majority of the time, it can take between a few seconds to over 30 seconds to upload each photo to the gallery.

Editing the photos is a multi-step process. I have to sort through and pick out the better/best photos of the day. I must downsize them to a web appropriate resolution for the blog, another size for the gallery, and one more size for the thumbnail. If it is a portrait picture there is one additional step when making a thumbnail; I have to select a portion of the photo and make it appear that the photo is in a landscape by cropping it as such. So just in case anyone was unclear of what goes on in this field, this is a taste of it. It is time consuming if done correctly. Just because it is done digitally doesn’t make it instantly perfect.

I didn’t mention this earlier, but I think I get a better night’s sleep in the car at this point. I didn’t notice the hotel I chose was right near the train tracks. At about 1:15 AM and again at 6:15 AM I was startled awake to the sound of a train horn and passing cars. I am not mentioning the hotel as while it was clean and spacious I wasn’t impressed with the value for the price nor the helpfulness at check-in. I will not stay here again based on the lack of customer service going beyond the minimum required. That and the train!

I decided not to take the interstate to my next destination. I went by the way of Lake Mead National Recreation Area. That was 100% a brilliant decision. The drive was relaxing and enjoyable. I took a few short hikes to snap some awesome shots. My words cannot give any justice to the sights that were seen.

I made it to St. George, Utah well before sunset and since the welcome center was closed I found a park not too far away. The trail system (bike and walking) is well established and had I gotten there earlier I might have explored a little more than visual distance from the car. I talked for a short while with a guy named Jake and then headed to my destination for the night.