Hi Jeff!
It was great to work 6 new grids over the past week, and I could've made a few more if passes would've been a bit more time friendly. :) In any case, I believe your trip was a huge success and many others will no doubtedly agree. It was nice to meet up with you, have lunch and chat for a bit on your final leg of the trip.
I've received a few e-mail requests for QSLs, and have had good comments about my trip. If I didn't have fun, there's no logical reason to drive to some of these spots. I like traveling around, playing radio, and - when possible - meeting up with some of the hams I have heard on the birds.
I hadn't realized how many different grids I operated from until last night. I thought I might exceed the 10 I worked from on my trip last July. Working from 14 was a complete surprise - until I looked at a grid map and saw all those grids. Six of the 8 Utah grids were new ones where I worked from (I worked from DM47 and DM57 last year), and now I think I have worked from 36 or 37 different grids in 6 states, one Canadian province, and one Mexican state since 2006. My satellite log for WD9EWK has crossed the 6000-QSO mark, not counting QSOs made from Canada or Mexico.
Sorry about the traffic over the dam, but the view and surroundings of the dam make up for any frustrations of waiting. :)
I knew it would be busy, but still a shorter travel time than the alternatives like driving from Las Vegas through Laughlin/Bullhead City to get to Kingman and then down to Phoenix. I was able to sit in traffic and get pictures of the new bridge, the low water levels in Lake Mead, and Hoover Dam without having to pull off the road near the dam.
I still have to make a fuller writeup of the past week, the hamfest last weekend as well as the road trip. I know that the group working on the AMSAT Journal might want to put some of this in print, the narrative as well as photos. I have a few hundred photos on my camera, and not just of my GPS receiver and radio gear at each stop where I operated from. :-)
With the summer heat here, I really should take some time to get my two FT-817 radios working with SatPC32, as well as printing QSL cards from this trip. Again, I had fun, and I hope others had fun working me while I was on the road. Now I can start thinking of my next long trip, which doesn't necessarily have to be a "road trip".
73!
Patrick WD9EWK/VA7EWK http://www.wd9ewk.net/