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Our Road Trip, Spring 2004

This is us, 12,000 feet up in Rocky Mountain National Park

Dorothea and Charlie Bowen

This website describes a trip we took around the United States (with a brief excursion into Canada) from April 23 to June 12 of 2004, seven weeks altogether, starting and ending at our home in Lexington, Massachusetts. The site has two main components:

  • Narrative pages describe the places we went and the things we saw. A fair amount of attention is also given to the food we ate and the local beers I drank — these are subjects that hold a particular interest for me, and, since I (Charlie) am the narrator, here they are.
  • Photo galleries present a selection of the pictures we took.

The sections are organized around the picture galleries, and the titles tell you where we did the most picture-taking. I cut the narrative into chunks that more or less fit these picture gallery sections, but the fit is pretty loose. The chunks of narrative, when you read them in order, describe every day of our trip from beginning to end, not just the comparatively few days when we took lots of pictures. If you’re interested in background information about the trip (how we planned it, what we took with us, etc.) check out our FAQ page.

All the text and picture pages have navigation buttons you can use to move from one text section to the next, or from one photo gallery to the next, or to jump back and forth between any text section and the corresponding gallery. Alternatively, our site map page is a central location where you can find and jump to any text section or gallery, and you can just about always get back there in one jump.

The map below shows the route we took, starting from Lexington, the yellow star at the right, and going clockwise. You can click the yellow star to start at the beginning of the narrative with an account of our first day on the road. After that, each green star represents one of the picture-based sections of the website. Click any star to go directly to the section it represents. But if the map isn't easy to read on your screen, you can click the button below to go to the text site map, where you'll find the sections listed in nice big print, with links to the appropriate pages.

This site last updated 5-10-2007