To be honest, there wasn’t much in the Midwest that we had our hearts set on seeing. We caught almost all of the highlights that we had intended on: the Mall of America, and the Wall Drug store. Unfortunately we missed seeing Mount Rushmore because we didn’t roll in to that part of South Dakota until 7pm, long after the park closed. Instead of bumming around until morning we decided to try to make the 2000 mile drive as short as possible.

The people of Mitchell, South Dakota made up for our loss by presenting us with an undeniable barrage billboards (only beaten by Wall Drug, numbering in the hundreds) suggesting that we visit their “Corn Palace.” They found a sucker in me, and I convinced Ben to pull the van over. We were amazed by what fancy creations can come from a town full of highly motivated & deathly bored citizens. The pictures speak for themselves.

So there’s America’s Midwest: indoor roller coasters, corn castles, anamatronic cowboys, and awesome scenery. Our stay at Yellowstone was quite another story, but that’s… another story. More photos after the jump.

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Before Ben left for Miami he feared that he was coming down with something. I didn’t worry since I don’t get sick very often. Alas, two days later, I’ve got a case of the sniffles & a sore throat. The fact that it’s rainy in Chicago doesn’t help, same with the partying last night with my brother-in-law & friends.

Illness be damned, today I’m venturing into Chinatown. My plan: get a tasty meal and buy chopsticks. You see, when you only have room in your life for one utensil, you have to make it count. I believe chopsticks are the most versatile and easy to clean. I’ll keep you posted.

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I drove Ben to the airport this morning at 5:00am so that he could make his flight to Miami. Circumstances with his family dictate that he needed to be down there this weekend, and that I would be solo in the Windy City for 4 days. Now is the time, people, to toss suggestions for things to occupy my time

Since I was up early anyway, I drove down to Frank’s Auto Repair to get repairs started on our busted speedometer/odometer/cruise-control. Google My Maps + City Search proved pretty handy in finding a good place to go. The guys at Frank’s were down with H.t.b.o.t.I., so I knew they were cool. Having learned the hard way, I also plotted my next Internet hookup on My Maps, and am presently waiting it out at MoJoe’s Coffee Lounge. It’s pretty dead here. Hopefully they’ll view me as an asset, making the place look lively for the next, oh, 5 hours.

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Find yourself eating every meal in different ZIP codes catching glimpses of the Internet on the hot spot du jour? One way to make this lifestyle a little smoother is a handy little website called IP Weather. It’s a bookmark that will give you a 3-day weather forecast based off your IP address. Neat, huh?

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Planning a trip into a new city can get tough. There’s all sorts of questions: What are you going to see? Where are you going to stay? How will you get around? One of the best tried & trusted tools of the traveler has been, no surprise, the map. But paper maps get folded, torn, lost, and above all else, are hard to share with other people. Even more difficult is collaborating on these maps with all your buddies.

Enter the “My Maps” feature on Google Maps. It’s a relatively small feature to the already superbly popular mapping program, but it provides a lot of bang for your buck. Basically you can use it to scribble on maps to mark areas & points of interest. We here at RoadTrip20.com are using it to figure out things like:

• Where all the Wal-Marts are
• Where the coffee & free WiFi is
• What sites we want to hit up
• Where the bars & restaurants are
• And when we park, where the hell we left the van!

Toronto is the first city we’ve really put it to use, but it’s already proving very helpful. I could have prevented myself from stealing WiFi in a urine-infested park if I used this in Montreal. Anyway, enough rambling. Check out our map if you’re interested!

A legend is provided after the cut.
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This could also be true for the rest of Canada, we’ll have a better idea later. The first European impression is obvious: everyone’s speaking French. But it goes much deeper than just road signs and overhead conversations on the Metro. The architecture and design have apparent roots overseas, too. The biggest similarity is the people. Everyone (and by everyone, I mean about 80%,) are in shape and seem to have a sense of style about them. You just don’t see people here eating their filet mignon in last decade’s sweat suit, unless of course they’re from out of town.

I could go on, but I’m sitting in a public park stealing WiFi from a near by “linksys” and power from a municipal building. And it smells like urine. Ahh, the joys of being on lifecation!

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Today, I’m spending most of the day as a work day…I just spent quite a bit of time putting receipts into our shared Google Spreadsheet, which we’re using to manage and balance expenses.

One of the things that I’ve learned on this trip is to always have something to do, because you never know when you’re going to not be able to do what you intended to, when you’ll be waiting on someone for something, or when you’ll end up on a Metro with 20 minutes to burn.  This happened a bit ago as I ducked into Starbucks to get some work done…no power outlet and my laptop battery was dead.  Here I was, with a stack of receipts and nothing to do with them.  Since I rode my bike here, I’m a few miles from the van and my books that I usually bring along with me.

What I did have, however, was the smaller of my two digital cameras and a stack of receipts.  I also have a group of virtual assistants based out of India through a company called GetFriday.

As I was organizing my receipts, waiting for a power outlet to open up, I seriously considered photographing each receipt, sending the images to GetFriday, having them enter the data into a pre-formatted spreadsheet, then I would just copy that to the shared spreadsheet.  The idea is that I would be able to at least make progress in the meantime rather than simply wasting the time away, listening to my iPod, waiting for an outlet to open up.

Cumbersome?  Absolutely.

Luckily, as I was organizing the last of the receipts, a table opened up near an outlet and I input them myself.

But, I think that this exemplifies the mantra of “Always have something to do” and what becomes possible.  When I talk to people about outsourcing, the first response I always get back is something to the effect of “I have no idea what I would outsource.”  Until I made the jump and hired them, neither did I.

In this instance, what would otherwise be considered laziness could have turned into an efficiency.

Next time, though, I’ll be sure to have a book on hand.

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To stick with the food theme, we decided to show you guys what it’s like to cook in the van kitchen. I’m no Julia Childs but you should get the idea. Notice that we’re not only being constrained by space, but also our $100/wk. (umm.. attempted) budget.

Note: The content of this video may cause more sensitive viewers to lose their appetite.

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Despite the sound of “living in a van,” we’ve been in luxury’s lap for a majority of the trip. From mansions to apartments, there hasn’t been very many nights where we’ve been on our own. It also has given a sort of rushed feel to the whole trip, trying to park the van in downtown areas before we’re late to meet up with people. So we decided to just get away for a few days. The first attempt (Phippsberg, Maine,) didn’t pan out, so we’re on Round 2 in South Hero, Vermont, at the Apple Island RV RESORT. It’s pretty sweet, and it’s only $15/night (thanks to Passport America!) Here’s what we plan on doing here:

• Exercise: Ben on the bike, Alexi running.
• Eat cheap: Canned tuna.. again. Also looking for some of that Vermont White Sharp Cheddar.
• Work on our projects & businesses.
• Read.
• Relax!

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Who knew that RV parks had seasons? More specifically, who knew that the RV park in Phippsberg, Maine closed on the very day we were to arrive? Well, we do, now.

We sat in the van and cried for a little bit, then got on Ben’s Verizon Internet card to find another option. Since Vermont’s on the way, and Ben can’t stop talking about the sharp cheddar you can get there, we decided to hit up a park there that IS open this time of year. But all wasn’t lost! We got some killer lobster rolls before we left.

All in all, we rocked Maine pretty hard. Probably best we left early.

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