More pics from my trip

The following photos were on a roll of film that I am finally getting around to posting. The first two were taken on my way to New York, probably in Wyoming.






I took these on the winding road coming down from West Point. The first is a shot of the stadium, and the 2nd is one of the many views of the Hudson River.





These were taken on my way to Kalispell, and was a preview of the beauty I would see at Glacier NP.





I took my MiFi back to Verizon this morning thinking they would merely give me a new battery, but the tech said no, they would have to replace the entire unit, which will be mailed out from Verizon and I should get it by Wednesday. I will have to take the SIM card out of the old unit and put it into the new one, and will have to reinstall it with the new password on my computer. My experience with doing these things is that Murphy's Law ALWAYS comes into play, and for sure I will have to take it back to the store so they can figure out what I'm doing wrong.

The tech who helped me this morning was smirky and irritating to begin with. I explained that the unit would not turn off unless I removed the battery and reinserted it, as well as the rest of the problems I have had with it. He make a big flashy deal out of turning it on, then off, and said "See it is off." I asked if it is off then why is it still flashing, and explained that it would flash all night long unless I removed the battery. He turned it on again, finding out that yes, it was still on as indicated by the flashing light. He kept trying different things and finally admitted there was a problem, just as I had insisted there was. From then on the smirky smile went away and he became a regular guy. "I may look old and I wear my spectacles on a chain around my neck, but I ain't stupid!", is what I wanted to tell him, but I knew I was right and so did he.

From there I drove out to a Walgreens way out to the south of where I live, and where only last fall it was an empty grassy wasteland. Now new subdivisions are going up, and the Walgreen's must be the first (and so far the only) of the stores that will serve this new community.

Since I am planning to camp at Lassen for several days next week, and since I have to get up throughout the night, I am looking for a Porta Potty system. Conroe Penny wrote that I should consider the PETT system, and in looking it up I found that it is a small portable toilet that comes with a special tent if you want to buy it that way, but that hikers and others can use the bags by themselves. There is a substance that gels the contents of the bag for easy disposal.

On the shelf there was one each of two different brands, and I bought both of them. I haven't yet taken one out of the box to see how easy (or not) it will be to use; they both supposedly have "wide openings". I'll be okay with either of them I'm sure, as when I was a backpacker I always kept a supply of ziplock bags in my tent for dark stormy nights. Today's ziplock bags don't have the quality of the old days, and they leak! I checked to see where these two products were made - one says "Made in USA", and the other says "Designed and engineered in the USA", meaning it is no doubt made in the Far East.