Travel itinerary

I'm off to the US again on Wednesday. For the first time in ages, the itinerary is not 100% nailed as of departure. I'm going to look at my bank account, the excange rate and the price of gas before booking the last few weeks. If things go well I'll take a drive down to Key West and the Everglades, if things go bad I'll head back to San Diego. As of now I'm ready for a few days in Hawaii (again, the number depends on $$$) but I've decided against Alaska in winter. So I'll prolly come back and do my 50th state during a summer - possible as early as 2012.

Roughly, this is my plan: I'll stay in California the first 1.5 week, with trips to Joshua Tree National Park and Death Valley. With my friends in San Diego I'll then head up the coast to Seattle and back. The aforementioned event with Neil Gaiman & Amanda Palmer takes place there.

November 14 I'll start my trek east, doing some of the national parks in Utah and then making my way into New Mexico. On Friday the 18th I'll be joined by my good friend Astrid Meland, a journalist from Oslo. She swears she lacks the shopping gene, so hopefully she'll serve as a check on my impulse buying...

Astrid & I will then travel together up to Santa Fe, down to El Paso and across Texas to San Antonio and Houston. I'll stuff face in Houston on Thanksgiving, at the house of my old friend Mandy. Then we'll continue further east to New Orleans and then up through Mississippi to Vicksburg, Jackson and Tupelo, before rounding off with a weekend in Atlanta, from which Astrid will be flying home. I'm planning on seeing some friends in Atlanta on the Saturday, the ones I've written about before (scroll down).

Then I'll probably go west to see a friend in Huntsville, before heading northeast to see friends in Winston-Salem, then on to see friends in Wilmington... come to think of it, I have entirely too many friends in the US... anyway, this is where my itinerary gets foggy. I may dip down into Florida or I may begin my way back to California, taking my sweet time. In January sometime, Hawaii beckons. I'll keep y'all updated!