September 2001: A drive to Yellowstone, and so much in between

Our first drive toward the north western states began on The 9/11. Long stops in the Black Hills and Yellowstone. We left shortly after the towers fell, so it was an interesting exploration of the mood and people of America under stress.
Map of Trip reconstructed in 2021

Note added decades later:


Back then, I would write up the days in text, often emailing them to a list of friends via a dial-up modem, sometimes alligator-clipped to the phone jack.

This was my first trip with a digital camera, and memory cards were expensive at the time. The computer I'd borrowed for the trip was a 1996 Mac Powerbook 190, that was not capable of reading my camera memory cards. So all the pictures had to stay on CompactFlash.
Only after I got home could I paste together the travelogue and add pictures for my website.
The pictures seem small for two reasons: Most people back then still had 640x480 screens, and dial-up modem internet connections. Also the CompactFlash cards for my Kodak digital camera cost about $2/MB and I'd been out of work for almost a year. So I set the camera at the smallest size (1080x720) to fit more pictures on what memory I could afford.

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