A whole new world

As we finish getting ready to hit the road tomorrow morning, I'm realizing how different it is to travel than it was just a few years ago when we last took a long road trip. Last trip, we relied on a book (the heavy kind made from dead trees!) for restaurant recommendations, I had to use a wireless card in my laptop to find a hotel, and I was emailing photos from my Sony phone to the blog to keep people updated. I remember parking outside of hotels with free Wi-Fi to get internet access on my laptop. Oh, and we used an atlas (more dead trees) as our road map.

This trip, I'm pretty sure that the only thing I need for the travel part, is my iPhone. Maps, distances, restaurant information - it's all right there. I've checked out places to eat, but instead of transcribing the information, I just need a list of names - Google will do the rest. We're bringing a laptop for work, and to store excess data (photos and music), but that's pretty much just an extra.

Much like the laptop, we'll also bring an atlas, but that's just because I like to have a paper map to browse. We certainly don't need one to get us where we're going, and it's definitely not going to help us find the hotel. But at the end of the day, the paper map has a certain nostalgic romance to it - it's as much a part of a road trip as a Hostess cherry pie, bad music, and roadside attractions.

Oh, that reminds me, I have to download the Roadside Attractions app. It really is a whole new world.