2008 Travels

It's been quite a year (for more reasons than one). I have gotten a lot of traveling done -- for work and pleasure. I was reviewing my travels and came up with some estimates of what I have "accomplished" in all this.

Using the Great Circle Mapper (another one of my favorite tools), I got a ballpark estimate on how many miles I traveled this year. This is for travel only, not commuting or anything else. To see the basis for my calculations, use this link.

Here's a map of my estimations:



Honestly, I didn't go to too many different places, it was just the same places multiple times. Sometimes I cannot believe how I meet people who have never been out of the state they live in! How does that happen in the 21st Century.

Some other things to put the travel in perspective:
- Total Travel was ~36,404 miles! As Borat would say: "Wowee Wow!"
- Hilton HHonors Points ~ 47,635 points. 34 Nights in a Hilton Hotel spread over 14 separate stays.
- Southwest Airlines Credits ~ 16 credits (enough for a free flight). Oddly enough, I only boarded 7 flights on Southwest this year, and two flights were a reward flight.
- United Airlines Miles ~36,611 Miles and 27 segments. Bear in mind that there's bonus miles in that figure, so I flew a little less -- although it comes close to the total miles flown and driven.
- 9 states were visited as destinations, but I traveled through 18 states in total.
- Geocaches were found in 8 states with a total of 94 geocaches found (as of 12/12/08)

All in all, quite a busy year, and there were huge gaps throughout the year where I didn't travel at all. This is kind of a neat way to recollect the previous year.

"Area - 52"

Right after Thanksgiving I headed out on a trip to Nevada for work. Unbeknown to me, I was headed out to what is informally known as Area-52. As we all know from urban lore, Area-51 is the place where "God knows what" goes on there. If you're wondering what really goes on there (no, we don't store alien spacecraft there), check out this site. It actually has some interesting facts on Area-51.

Now, officially, I can neither confirm nor deny any information that you read. Take it for what you think it's worth and draw your own conclusions. I actually signed some non-disclosure agreements before I was even allowed to go out there, so I must state this up front. I AM NOT CONFIRMING, or DENYING ANY INFORMATION YOU MAY READ. I post this only as information.

My trip started out heading out to Las Vegas where I stayed the night, before driving up to the area where I stayed. What did I do in Vegas while waiting to depart the next morning? The natural thing of course. Nope! No gambling. Nope! No happy ending massage. Nope! No buffets at one of the hotels. I went geocaching. I ended up finding about six of them. In geocaching there is a type of cache called a webcam cache. This is where you position yourself to be seen by a webcam, and have a friend on a computer save the picture as proof you were there. Here is a picture of me at my first webcam cache at the 4 corners of MGM Grand, Excalibur, New York New York, and some other casino. All in all that night I walked about 9 miles from my hotel to the various points and back. Good exercise!


The next morning it was off to Nellis AFB where we all met up, and the caravan headed up to the range. We stayed at what is called the Tonopah Test Range (TTR) near a rundown mining town called Tonopah (this is a link found when you Google TTR. By no means am I confirming or denying the information on this page. Some assessments may be correct/incorrect, but I am not going to verify it. Don't ask, I won't tell -- jail is not cool). Tonopah is about 25 miles from the range, and to give you an idea of the remoteness of this area of Nevada, the nearest Wal-Mart was 150 miles in every direction. No cell phone service, no internet, nothing for about 9 days.

The days up there were quite fun I have to say. Military stuff went on, and we played out in the desert with our 4X4 vehicles. I even got to drive a Humvee one of the days. That was something I have always wanted to do. On another day, I got buzzed by an F-16 at 200 feet while relieving myself in the middle of the desert. The pilot turned his aircraft so he could look down. Since one hand was busy holding the "aim" steady, I used the other hand to wave at him/her -- I hope it was NOT a her. It was very cold that day, and that would just be plain embarrassing.

Obviously, I can't go into great detail about the rest of the trip, but I have to say, it was the most remote location I have ever been to. There were no trees for miles, and the only thing that broke up the horizon were just the few scattered mountains. You could literally see for miles and miles in every direction. Bleek, barren, stark would all be good ways of describing the landscape, but it was still quite beautiful out there.



I left again, and headed down to Vegas. On the way down, I stopped at the merge of Hwy 375 - the Extraterrestrial Highway and Hwy 93. Yes, they actually named it the Extraterrestrial Highway. The entrance to Groom Lake (Area-51) and TTR are located on Hwy 375. So, I guess that is why the conspiracy theorists prevail in naming the highway that. Of course, I took my picture by the sign.

I saw the mountains stuck in the clouds on the drive back and thought it made for a cool picture. I'm really bummed that I didn't have my good camera with me. I felt naked without it. I had to settle for the iPhone's camera. Still decent quality, but just doesn't do some things justice.



When I got back to Vegas, I checked into the Las Vegas Hilton. Very nice rooms I have to say. Of course now I went to gamble, right? Nope. Back to geocaching. It's the best FREE way to see a city, place, landscape. So I wiled the hours away go for a walk/driving from cache to cache. Below is a picture of a cache that I found that night. Believe it or not, these things are all around you, and you probably don't even notice them.


The next morning it was up, bright an early for the flight home. I have to say, Vegas is not one of my most favorite places to go. There's just something about it that gives me the creeps. I tolerate it, but don't go out of my way to go there. I'm sure other people like it more, but that's a whole other topic.


No more travels this year (except Christmas in New York), so pretty soon I will sum up all my travels this year in another blog post. Look for them soon. Happy Holidays to all.

dave.