We got our date for the Grand Canyon hike.

Our Back Country Permit date for Phantom Campground is June 6, a Wednesday.

Called quickly and snagged a room at the Miswak Lodge for the night before.

An old hang gliding buddy (Phoenix) is going to rim out on June 5, from a Rim-2-Rim-2-Rim, so we will try and be there with a cold beer.

Our tent (Kelty) showed up today, and we did a practice setup.

Its not very big, but it should work for us, heck it was only $37, including shipping, from Sierra Trading.

Can you believe Marlys is going to sleep in a tent?

Looks like we got our Grand Canyon back-country permit!

The National Park Service charged our account for the back-country permit yesterday, so it looks like Marlys and I are going to do the South Kaibab - Bright Angel loop (~15 miles) in June.

Question is when. We won't know that until we get the permit in the mail.

Welcome to the 21st century!

When you live where we do the choice for a internet connection is not between superfast DSL or cable, heck its not even 3G or 4G, since we don't have cell phone access either.

Its a choice between dial-up @26.6k (fast as a line can go out here) or satellite.

A couple of years ago, when the permanent move happened, we left the city where last we had a 12 meg DSL service, so dial-up was not really an option.

At that time there were two sat providers Hughes and Wildblue. Both had comparable offering, but the FAP (fair access policies) differed slightly, so in our case the nod went to Wildblue.

We signed up for their Pro Package, which gave us a speed of 1.54m down and 600k up and 18 gig of down/up loads during a rolling 30 day window. Go over and the speed dropped considerably, as punishment.

Better then dial-up, but way short of what we were use to.

In December, I heard about a new bird that ViaSat put up which would give 12 meg speeds. ViaSat had purchased Wildblue back in 2009, so I gave them a call about upgrading to the new service.

The folks at the call center had no idea what I was talking about, even though their CEO had given an interview on the new service in the Denver Post.

Two weeks ago, I get a call from Wildblue, letting me know that they had a new service, and I could get in on a early installation date, if we signed up for Exede(?), the new service, now.

...oh and pay a $150 service fee to assure our space in line for a April or May install,
...oh, ya you need to get all new gear @$220,
...oh, ya and even though you get faster speeds your FAP drops to 16 gig a month,
...but hey your monthly rate stays the same at $79.99.

What are you going to do, we went for it.

Welcome to the turn of the century.

The Wait Begins.

Marlys and I want to hike the Grand Canyon this year. Nothing extensive just the South Kaibab-Bright Angel loop.

This is about a 16 mile/~4500' trip going to the bottom and back up, but because a overnight at the bottom, is needed, and we can't get reservation at Phantom Ranch (until sometime next year), we will need to camp. Camping requires a Backcounty Permit.

The soonest you can apply for a BCP is 4 months before you want to go. According to available info, about ~30K people apply, but only about ~17K are issued.

So the strategy is to get your permit application in ASAP, via fax, when the window opens and then to give the Rangers great flexibility in finding a date and getting you a permit, e.g. open up the date and campground options.

We missed the May window (apps go in in January).

Last night starting at 12am, I started faxing (attempting) in our application, at 1:03am it finally went through.

Now we wait. It could take up to 3 weeks to hear back.