Uncharted, meet Android

From what I hear, smartphones are all the rage. They’re the latest thing. They’re – I think the word is – keen.

I’ll tie an onion to my belt and take your word for it. And John Milligan’s. He successfully used his Android smartphone to take a photo and upload it to his personal profile at www.uncharted.net.

Big deal, you say. Folks have been doing similar things since the time we called nickels bees and could say nonsensical things like “Gimme five bees for a quarter.”

But this is significant.

We want our Explorers to use our website through a mobile world. Why be tethered to a desk to make an update to your profile, upload a photo, or even a story, if you’re good at touchscreen or itty-bitty keyboard typing? We expect our Explorers are mobile now, and will only get more mobile as the future unfolds.

John’s shown us it can be done. Huzzah for him, I say. He makes me want to replace our circa 2001 T-Mobile cameraless cell phone with that nifty little bowling game on it for something newer. Tell me, do they make a smartphone with dials now? I like to make sparks when I place a call . . .

Dancing, Dancing, Dancing.

It's almost time again this year for the folks at the Idaho International Folk Dance and Music Festival to roll into Rexburg, Idaho, completing one of the many invasions this small university town witnesses each year (the others involve influxes of students at random times during the year in which they pillage the local Wal-Mart; and hordes of Sunbirds fleeing the Arizona heat and coming here in search of, among other things, rhubarb).

Uncharted's got the poop on this year's festival, at least as much poop as can be delivered. Go here to read all about it.

The Milligan-Wiser Method

John and Mike, Intrepid Explorers

There is something to be said for planning.

Pick a destination. Go to Google Maps. Plan a route, taking in the scenes along the way. But keep that final destination in mind. In the eye. And on schedule.

There are, of course, other schools of thought. Take John Milligan and Mike Wiser’s approach to climbing a central Idaho mountain peak, which started with Google Maps but ended up with he and a friend using their climbing gear to build a raft so they could paddle around on an icy Idaho alpine lake with the unclimbed mountain pouting in the distance.

Both methods make for fun vacations. Both make for spontaneous vacations. But the latter method, hereafter known at Uncharted as the Milligan-Wiser Method, is the one that holds the most appeal to me as a guy.

So go read about John and Mike and their adventures in Idaho’s central mountains. Then go and don’t plan a vacation just like it.

Goonies Never Say Die

Most of the catchphrases I use come from two movies.

The first is Ghostbusters. The second, well, let’s see if you recognize them:

Something goes terribly wrong and I’ve discovered the evidence. I say: “It is Chester Copperpot.”

One of my kids has wandered off, but I can see a trail that might lead me to them: “Follow them Size Fives.”

A child o’ mine has to go to the bathroom in a place that’s less than sanitary: “This isn’t the kinda place you wanna go to the bathroom. Because there might be daddy longlegs . . . and DEAD THINGS, Mikey! KILLER dead things!”

Someone’s having trouble getting something, anything, to open: “Let go of the handle, Francis!”

Mom wants the kids to do something they’re reluctant to do: “Trust your Mother, boys! Throw ‘er into four-wheel drive!”

Any helpless, innocent person is instantly named Missus Rosalita.

Every time I encounter a dead bird in the yard or a dead mouse in a trap: “IT’S A STIFF!”

You Goonies understood. Immediately. Even before I mentioned Chester Copperpot. Because the best catchphrase is in the blog post title – which I use whenever I’m asked to do something difficult that I don’t want to do.

Last year, I got to go to Goonie Astoria (and nearby Cannon Beach) before the hysteria of the 25th anniversary of the film’s release hit the town this year and swelled its population far beyond its ordinary 10,000. I found Mikey’s house and saw where Chunk performed the Truffle Shuffle.

I saw Chunk’s bowling alley. I walked on the pier where Steph went bobbing for crabs. I saw Mikey’s Dad’s museum, the County Jail, and other Goonie landmarks as I took my family on our own Goonie adventure through northwest Oregon.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/06/AR2010060603590.html

The most heartbreaking thing I learned as I read about the film’s 25th anniversary: This from the Washington Post:

According to Sean Astin, who played Goonies leader "Mikey" Walsh, he was allowed to keep the treasure map used in the film. Several years later his mother discovered it, thought it was just a crinkled piece of paper, and threw it in the trash.

It hurts just thinking about that.

But I’ll tell you what doesn’t hurt: My wife’s a Goonie, though of the Andy variety (real Goonies will know what I mean). I’m so glad she is. My kids are Goonies, because, hey, what kid wouldn’t want to be?

I can easily see my kids doing this same thing. Riding off, getting into trouble, manufacturing and using fake puke, then expecting a Domino’s pizza after it’s all over. Especially my five-year-old. He’s dangerous.

I have my sister Chris to thank for turning me into a Goonie. She saw the film in the theater and insisted the rest of the family had to see it. We didn’t believe her. Later, when it was out on video, she rented it and made us watch it. Now, almost every time we see each other, well, you know:

Watch Out -- He Knows Karate

In the Sandra Bullock film "While You Were Sleeping" -- hey, given that this film features Michael Rispoli as the hilariously innocent yet lecherous Joe Fusco, Junior, this counts as a guy movie -- Bullock's character Lucy Moderatz wants nothing more than to spend her honeymoon in Italy. She does eventually get to go, but not with the man she intended.

Explorer Lisa Dickson harks back to that wonderful 1995 film as she takes us on an Uncharted tour of Rome, Florence, and other points in Italy, showing off the romantic and Romantic splendors of these ancient cities. Makes me want to go there in a terrible way. Also, I want to visit Maude Larrabee's house in Tuscany. She does have one there, you know.

Can You Improve Old Faithful?

If you’ve got a snazzy idea to improve one of the United States’ premier tourist attractions, now’s the time to do it.

Planners at Yellowstone National Park want your help to improve the developed area around Old Faithful, the park’s most famous geyser. The developed area encompasses everything from the Old Faithful Inn to the boardwalks through the geyser complex to the acres and acres of parking lots that spread south of the geyser itself.

The park is also looking for ways to preserve the geyser area for future generations, protect wildlife habitat and more quickly respond to changing visitor and resource needs.

The comment period is open now, and closes at midnight, June 7, 2010. Comments will be accepted electronically through the National Park Service’s Planning, Environment and Public Comment website at http://parkplanning.nps,gov, by hand-delivery at the park’s headquarters at Mammoth Hot Springs, Wyoming, or by mail at the following address:

Comprehensive Planning & Design
Old Faithful Area Comprehensive Plan
P.O. Box 168
Yellowstone National Park, WY 82190

You can deliver your electronic comment using the link here. The perk service isn’t accepting comments by phone or via direct e-mail.

The park service will also host three open houses on the plan starting in just a few days:

May 17, Old Faithful Warming Hut, 6-8 pm
May 18, Yellowstone Association Headquarters, Gardiner, MT
May 19, Visitor Contact Station, West Yellowstone, MT

All open houses will take place from 6-8 pm.

The trick will be to balance what sound like good ideas with what makes for a wonderful Old Faithful experience. Some kind of stadium seating, for one, might be handy, as crowds around the geyser can be thick and seats are scarce – but then who wants to swim through a stadium to see a geyser, or have stadium seating block long-distance views? Maybe just a few levels?

And picnic areas. Old Faithful needs more of them. They’re always at a premium, so finding a spot that’s not already occupied by someone else is difficult.

I agree that parking at the geyser is ugly, not only from an acres of asphalt perspective, but simply for trying to navigate through the parking lot to get to the geyser. Better directional signs and marked pedestrian paths would be helpful, especially if those paths crossed as few roads as possible.

I’m sure you’ve got better ideas. Send them on.

Cannon Beach Bliss-Out

To think I used to be a homebody.

As a kid, we never went on vacations. Oh, the occasional trip to Salt Lake City for the day, but rarely anything beyond that. We did do the camping thing in Yellowstone National Park. We did fly to San Francisco. But that was it.

Then I got married to a globetrotter. Within a year, she dragged me to Washington, D.C. Within five years we'd visited England and France, not to forget to mention a cross-country road trip in the USA and many, many other smaller, yet still grandiose, vacations, including a cruise to Alaska.

Read here about our latest adventure: A trip to Cannon Beach, Oregon, where we stayed for days under the cloudy -- but never rainy -- Oregon sky and enjoyed playing on the beach with our kids.

Cannon Beach is a wonderful place, and not only because its famous Haystack Rock was featured in The Goonies, one of my favorite films. We visited in the off-season, which I highly recommend. The beaches weren't crowded. The hotels were less expensive. There were fewer people about, so we were able to enjoy the solitude and beauty without having anybody else's laundry flapping in our faces. Go during the off-season, before mid-June and after August ends. That's when Cannon Beach is a wonderful place.