I often find myself researching stuff about this trip. It's trying to replace Facebook I guess... you know, that time-killer-when-you-need-to-be-working-on-anything-and-everything-more-important kind of thing. Well, I was going over the route last night and realized that I had left off Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons. One of the initial inspirations for this trip was pictures I found of the Grand Tetons a few years back. I remember seeing them online and being blown away. Little did I know that those pictures would eventually lead to a trip this massive, but here we are. I'm just stoked that I remembered to add this to the trip. And I've heard that you just have to see Yellowstone, so we'll tackle all of that by rerouting through northern Wyoming then crossing up into Montana. We won't spend as much time in Montana as I had at first hoped, but we'll pass a city called Big Sky - which will satisfy wanting to see "Big Sky" Montana - and we'll also pass through Bozeman. Let me explain the Bozeman stop because it does have significance. I saw the movie Shooter on TV a few weeks back (I had seen it a few years ago on ClearPlay, but couldn't remember much about it other than that the dude blows everything/everyone up) and was inspired to the MAX with the final scene. It didn't last very long (30 seconds tops), but as Swagger and Sarah drive off into the sunset, their backdrop are these incredible mountains and Otis Taylor's "Nasty Letter" (the song is kind of hard to find, but it's on iTunes if you wanna give it a listen... which I do recommend). I think the actual filming for this scene took place somewhere in Canada, but since that trip isn't as feasible right now (don't wanna fool with passports yet), I'm going with Bozeman. I've looked up pictures and it's beautiful anyways and looks very similar. Maybe one day I'll actually get to see the real setting for that scene. Another stop I added is the Olympic National Park on the west side of Seattle. It's going to add about a 3-4 hour loop, but from what I looked up, it will be well worth it even if we have to cut other chunks of the drive out. I also moved the route over to include the Pacific coast from Washington all the way down to LA (at first the route was just coastal in California because I had it going through Portland, taking the quickest route which would save time, but hey, time isn't what we're worried about here - it's all about the experiences). There are some activities that I'm wanting to make sure and enjoy too, but I'm not ready to talk about those yet. Momma and Dad are nervous enough about the trip anyways.
There is a bit of a problem with the directions though. It's easy to set up a route in Google Maps because I can drag the route to include areas that I want to travel through. However, I can't do that on my GPS. Last night, I tried converting the Google directions to a .iti/.itn/itinerary file in my TomTom, but it didn't work. My GPS can only handle .iti files, and the only conversion websites I could find converted the maps to .itn files only - no .iti files. So I just tried sending the directions to my GPS which seemed to work at first, but what it did was basically send the destination then it found the quickest route, completely erasing the route I had worked on. Right now, all I can think to do is make a binder of all of the directions, all of the maps, and everything we would need to punch in addresses or roads or whatever in the GPS to reroute us the way we want to go. That would take a little work, but I think it would work out just fine. I just wish there was a way to get it on my GPS so I wouldn't have to worry about all that. There's still time to figure something else out, so if anyone has any suggestions, leave a comment.
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