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We spent a long lazy morning packing up and saying goodbye to Miguel’s, the coolest climber’s campground ever, before hitting the road for West Virginia.

After four straight days of climbing (with no Fulwider epics!), we were tired. But not as tired as this dog, the mascot of Mike’s Mountain BBQ in Torrent Falls.

Muir Valley boasts excellent sport climbing you can approach with a light pack because your lunch lies ready to pick along the trails. Fueled by blackberries, Jami did her second lead — on a 5.8! — and Jamie did her first at Rebel Camp Hollow. Later we drove down a long and winding road (da da) to Solar Collector and Gold Coast in PMRP, where the real climbers go to feel the pump on ridiculously overhanging 5.12, 5.13 and 5.14 (!) routes. We saw the route on the cover of the Red River Gorge climbing guide, which we’ll definitely have to try sometime when they invent antigravity boots.

We took advantage of our laid-back non-plan to stay an extra day at Red River Gorge, this time climbing with new friends Scott and Jens from Michigan at Military Wall. Jami climbed two 5.9s and Scott busted out with the JetBoil, making stroganoff noodles at the crag for lunch while the rest of us ate trail mix. Above, Scott masters Possum Lips (5.10d).

We had so much fun climbing at Left Flank in Red River Gorge on our first climbing day that we took rather a paucity of pictures. Here’s Jami on a route, the name of which and other details I will add later. The Red is paradise, and the best climbing we’ve ever experienced. We may just have to cut short other parts of our trip to extend our stay here. No, not the family visit portions! We might skip some country music time in Tennessee or the end-of-trip climbing at Sam’s Throne.

Jamie drove down from Indianapolis to join us for two days of climbing at the Red. Here she climbs Roadside Attraction the right way, as opposed to the wrong way, which involves fist jams, trying to conserve cams, and a flat-on-both-feet groundfall when a hex pops. Three guesses as to who climbed it wrong, and the first two don’t count. Note to self: First placement is a cam. No excuses.

The four #2 Camalots I’ve managed to accumulate came in plenty handy on this route, the last of the day before some tasty Thai tuna wraps courtesy of Jamie. (Note the irony in my trying to conserve cams.) Earlier it rained constantly but we stayed dry and climbed all day because the Red River Gorge crags have abundant huge roofs hundreds of feet up to keep things bone dry.

After our morning in storm-tossed St. Louis, we spent most of the day on the road to Slade, Kentucky and Red River Gorge. Car and rope troubles slowed us down somewhat. On the former, our car security system must have decided we were stinking thieves! because it cut off the fuel pump, leaving us unable to get our motor runnin’ after stopping at the above-pictured Kentucky Welcome Center for a map and a loo. Kind Welcome Center greeters loaned us phone books and tools, and eventually we convinced our car we were not stinking thieves! and were on our way. On the latter rope troubles, we had set off on a 20-day climbing trip without a rope for various reasons I shall not entertain you with. So we were trying to find a new one and after Herculean efforts to find gear shops and interview their employees about the state of their inventory, we drove to the northern Loo-a-vull, Kentucky burbs and purchased an exceptional Sterling 9.8mm rope. She’s a beaut. All these adventures put us at our intended late-afternoon destination, Miguel’s Pizza (and $2 a night camping, and $1 showers), at 10 p.m., where we collapsed.

On the first day of our 20-day climbing-rafting-family visit-family visit-climbing adventure, we arrived in St. Louis the same day a historic severe storm hit the city, knocking out power to hundreds of thousands, flinging an airport terminal roof onto I-70, and trapping us in a mall parking garage for several hours. It was all good, however, because we made it to Trader Joe’s just before they lost power and closed the doors. We purchased ample tasty provisions for the road ahead, including a picnic breakfast we enjoyed the next morning in the branch-strewn Gateway Arch park.

I’ve been tooling around Stanford University and Palo Alto on my bike after the day’s Summer Institute in Political Psychology lectures let out, and taking photos galore with my new camera. Here’s a slideshow featuring photos with nothing more in common than that they were taken in California.

Warning: The slideshow features photos of a pickup truck festooned all over (hood, doors, roof) with anti-Bush stickers. Some of them are profane.

A while back I used Betterbidding.com to help me make the best bid on Priceline Hotels and ended up getting about $99 $75 a night for a Club Quarters room in Chicago when the conference rate at the nearby (four blocks away) Palmer House Hilton was over $160 $169 a night. I saved $282.

The users and especially the site manager there will bend over backwards to help you find the best rate, even going so far as to post a detailed multi-step bidding strategy to take advantage of some quirks of Priceline bidding. Basically, a rejected bid is not the end.

Here’s a link to the discussion thread on the forum for the Chicago trip, which includes the bidding strategy they posted for me.