On the Road with only an iPhone
For our Christmas trip this year, my wife, my dog, and I hit the road for a long trip to Missouri followed by an excursion to the wild, red-rock country of southern Utah. I had purposely left the computers at home to avoid any possibility of theft, damage, or other form of mishap. After all, we were going to be either on the road or camping in cold, snowy, backcountry. What good would computers do there? And who would want them?
Both my wife and I took our iPhones, and they proved to have more utility than I first thought they would. I mean, a cell phone is a cell phone, right? (I’m just kidding!)
Our route up to northeastern Missouri was via Interstate 45 to Dallas and Interstate 35 through Oklahoma City, Wichita, Kansas City, and north until we picked Missouri Six. During most of the trip, we had good (AT&T) phone and Edge (data) coverage which we used not only to keep Connie’s parents posted of our progress but to check road conditions and weather ahead. Once we were heading east on Missouri Six, AT&T coverage became spotty, especially as we raced up and down the country’s hills. In Green City, Connie’s old home, we pretty well lost all coverage but maintained our online abilities by hooking into the Ayers’ wireless network. It was nice being able to check e-mail every now and then and let folks know we were not back in Houston where they thought we were.
The first major demonstration of the iPhone’s utility came as we readied to leave. Our original plan had been to drive to Denver in one day, stay there overnight, and then finish the drive to Moab, Utah the next day. As our time to leave approached, however, it became evident that a bad snowstorm was moving in from the west. Fetching down reports from the National Weather Service while online on my iPhone convinced me the odds of being stranded in one of the little Kansas towns that dot I-70 were good. TO avoid that, we would drive to Wichita on the first day, arriving before the winter storm hit there, ride it out overnight in a La Quinta, dog-friendly hotel, and then make a decision whether to jog back north to I-70 and continue as previously planned; jog south to I-40 and press west to Albuquerque; or even continue south and return to the warm swamps of Houston. Sitting in the warm confines of the Ayers’ kitchen, I surfed over to the La Quinta website using Safari, placed a reservation at the hotel in Wichita, and used Google Maps to locate where it was.
Once in Wichita and established in the hotel, I used the iPhone and Google Maps to find out what restaurants were nearby. We drove to an Outback Steakhouse to discover the wait was more than we wanted to endure, so we relocated to a iHop, where I got happy with a steak and eggs.
The next morning, we used the iPhones to check road conditions and establish a reservation at the La Quinta in Golden, Colorado. And that night, we used Google Maps again to locate restaurants close by. We ate at a local Italian restaurant named Abrusti’s instead of the roadway visible “Mickey D’s”.
We didn’t need iPhones much for the snowy, windy, icy drive through the Rockies. It was all we could do to keep the truck’s nose straight on the snowy, icy roads! We stopped in Vail to visit the Swiss-chateau-like McDonald’s and in Grand Junction at the Red Lobster for lunch. But, then, when we decided to stay in the Moab La Quinta that night instead of heading into Devil’s Garden’s campground in Arches National Park, I used the iPhone to place an online reservation while we were driving in the truck!
Now, THAT is utility!
That’s not to say there weren’t a few hang-ups. La Quinta supports both “normal” and mobile websites, and I was constantly getting shuffled off automatically to the mobile website, even when I didn’t want to. (The iPhone handles mobile websites just fine, but it really was built to handle regular web sites with their greater flexibility and options.) Secondly, Google Maps can be a bit fickle. For instance, a search for “Moab UT hotels” showed me every hotel in Moab Utah except the La Quinta, making me think at first there wasn’t one there. The search terms “La Quinta Utah” automatically took me to the one in Moab. AT&T coverage in the north side of Albuquerque was almost non-existent, something I wasn’t expecting out of New Mexico’s largest city.
Still, the iPhone demonstrated its greater portability and almost equal utility to traveling with a computer on this trip. If there’s one old saying that true, “Don’t leave home without it!” applies to the iPhone as well. The only thing that would make the whole thing sweeter would be the inclusion of a GPS that linked with Google Maps and could show you instantly and continuously where you were!
Both my wife and I took our iPhones, and they proved to have more utility than I first thought they would. I mean, a cell phone is a cell phone, right? (I’m just kidding!)
Our route up to northeastern Missouri was via Interstate 45 to Dallas and Interstate 35 through Oklahoma City, Wichita, Kansas City, and north until we picked Missouri Six. During most of the trip, we had good (AT&T) phone and Edge (data) coverage which we used not only to keep Connie’s parents posted of our progress but to check road conditions and weather ahead. Once we were heading east on Missouri Six, AT&T coverage became spotty, especially as we raced up and down the country’s hills. In Green City, Connie’s old home, we pretty well lost all coverage but maintained our online abilities by hooking into the Ayers’ wireless network. It was nice being able to check e-mail every now and then and let folks know we were not back in Houston where they thought we were.
The first major demonstration of the iPhone’s utility came as we readied to leave. Our original plan had been to drive to Denver in one day, stay there overnight, and then finish the drive to Moab, Utah the next day. As our time to leave approached, however, it became evident that a bad snowstorm was moving in from the west. Fetching down reports from the National Weather Service while online on my iPhone convinced me the odds of being stranded in one of the little Kansas towns that dot I-70 were good. TO avoid that, we would drive to Wichita on the first day, arriving before the winter storm hit there, ride it out overnight in a La Quinta, dog-friendly hotel, and then make a decision whether to jog back north to I-70 and continue as previously planned; jog south to I-40 and press west to Albuquerque; or even continue south and return to the warm swamps of Houston. Sitting in the warm confines of the Ayers’ kitchen, I surfed over to the La Quinta website using Safari, placed a reservation at the hotel in Wichita, and used Google Maps to locate where it was.
Once in Wichita and established in the hotel, I used the iPhone and Google Maps to find out what restaurants were nearby. We drove to an Outback Steakhouse to discover the wait was more than we wanted to endure, so we relocated to a iHop, where I got happy with a steak and eggs.
The next morning, we used the iPhones to check road conditions and establish a reservation at the La Quinta in Golden, Colorado. And that night, we used Google Maps again to locate restaurants close by. We ate at a local Italian restaurant named Abrusti’s instead of the roadway visible “Mickey D’s”.
We didn’t need iPhones much for the snowy, windy, icy drive through the Rockies. It was all we could do to keep the truck’s nose straight on the snowy, icy roads! We stopped in Vail to visit the Swiss-chateau-like McDonald’s and in Grand Junction at the Red Lobster for lunch. But, then, when we decided to stay in the Moab La Quinta that night instead of heading into Devil’s Garden’s campground in Arches National Park, I used the iPhone to place an online reservation while we were driving in the truck!
Now, THAT is utility!
That’s not to say there weren’t a few hang-ups. La Quinta supports both “normal” and mobile websites, and I was constantly getting shuffled off automatically to the mobile website, even when I didn’t want to. (The iPhone handles mobile websites just fine, but it really was built to handle regular web sites with their greater flexibility and options.) Secondly, Google Maps can be a bit fickle. For instance, a search for “Moab UT hotels” showed me every hotel in Moab Utah except the La Quinta, making me think at first there wasn’t one there. The search terms “La Quinta Utah” automatically took me to the one in Moab. AT&T coverage in the north side of Albuquerque was almost non-existent, something I wasn’t expecting out of New Mexico’s largest city.
Still, the iPhone demonstrated its greater portability and almost equal utility to traveling with a computer on this trip. If there’s one old saying that true, “Don’t leave home without it!” applies to the iPhone as well. The only thing that would make the whole thing sweeter would be the inclusion of a GPS that linked with Google Maps and could show you instantly and continuously where you were!
posted by Andy Foster at
5:27 PM
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