Greetings, road trip dreamers!

Dreaming! is coming to you fresh from the Great North American RV Rally in Redmond, Oregon.  It was sure great to share our beautiful state with over 10,000 RVers from all across the United States.

We shared a booth with MyTripJournal.com there and had a wonderful time talking about traveling -- and keeping a record of your travels.  I'll talk more about this service later in the newsletter.

The thing that amazed me most about the Rally was all the new technology that is coming on line to make traveling/working/staying in touch so much easier.  Read about one example this month.

Hope you are all enjoying your summer.

Phil  and  Carol  White

"You Guys are Everywhere!"

So reads a sticky note from my friend Haley as she includes an article and picture from her local paper about a book signing we were doing.  We have had a very busy summer talking to would-be road trippers about the book and their visions for their road trips.

We already have lots of events booked for the fall, and I am busy working on a schedule including Southern California, the Phoenix/ Tucson area, and possibly, St. George, Utah for the spring.

If you have any ideas for locations in those areas, or have specific contacts for me, be sure to let me know.

You can always see where we are going to be by visiting our website appearance page at www.roadtripdream.com/appearances.html

Readers Carter & Connie Harrison sent along lots of good tips, which will be up on the website soon.  Here are a couple of ones that we particularly liked:

• Carry your dental x-rays with you.  It makes getting routine or emergency dental care so much easier.
• When selecting an RV for your trip the key interior items we suggest you look at include the bed size, chair comfort, reading lights, TV viewing distance and angle, and kitchen layout.

Thanks for the good ideas!

New Technology makes working on the road a breeze!

Subscriber Daniel Healy and his family left on their road trip dream in June.  Dan is working while traveling and I asked him about the technology he is using.  He gave me this report.

I essentially have DSL speeds anywhere I am (up to 100K up and 768K down), as long as I am 10-15 miles of a US Interstate Highway.  I can just choose the appropriate campground that is within that distance to an Interstate, and I’m all set.  It allows me to work from anywhere within 300 feet of my RV, so I’m not confined to the inside of the bus.  It runs on cellular data service, so I don’t have to worry about a satellite connection during storms or in a wooded area.  I can have the system running while in motion, so I don’t have to wait until stopped to respond to one of my customers.  I had my choice of national providers and made my decision based on my planned route.  The system costs just a small fraction of what a satellite system (I checked them all out) would have cost, and the monthly fee is only $80 for unlimited usage.  It’s amazing. 

You can contact him for more information at daniel@braytel.net

He is keeping a humorous and interesting journal of their adventures at www.braytel.net/roadtrip.html

Well, maybe not as good as your spouse or friend, but it is a great service for staying in touch with your family and friends.  We did it the hard way on our trip -- bought software, learned how to build a website, struggled to keep everything running correctly, keep the text and pictures all looking good, and making sure all the links were accurate.  If only MyTripJournal.com had existed then!

This service makes it all seem easy.  It is intuitive with its map-centric set-up.  There are hundreds of maps to choose from for everywhere in the world -- and if they don't have just what you want -- they'll make it for you!  Once you have chosen your maps, you provide your journal text, associate the pictures for that location and click the location on your map -- and you are done, almost.

One additional click will send an email to your list of family and friends telling them you have updated your journal and provides the link to your site that they can explore at their leisure.  No more lengthy emails and pictures cluttering their in boxes.

When you return from your trip, you can download your entire website to your PC or a CD and have your memories all in one location.  I can't tell you how many disagreements we have settled based on our journal entries!

They have a "premium" service for "photo intensive" users that will store your unlimited photos (up to 5MB each) on the site, yet optimize them for web-viewing and quick page loading.  When you return from your trip, they will send you a CD of the photos along with your website.  You may also download them at any time.  This is great for those road trippers who enjoy high-resolution digital photography as part of their adventures.

We have converted our travel website to a MyTripJournal site and you can see how great it looks along with viewing other demo sites at www.MyTripJournal.com/aid=1118&sid=news . You can sign-up for a FREE trial site, or subscribe to your very own MyTripJournal website.  If you are a Good Sam Club member, you can receive a discount by going to www.goodsamclub.com.