So I just put the last of the pictures on the site, all 750 of them. This includes the ones from Anacortes, even though I was the only one there. Please excuse the captions. I don't normally do them and I got incredibly bored after about five pictures, so I just explained the pictures that needed it and left most of the others blank.

-Hanlon

So I've been putting this off for as long a possible trying to figure out what to say, but now that I'm back in Florida, I think it's about time I make this statement. That's right, I said Florida. I know how many people check this every day and I'm so sorry to have to tell you this, but unfortunately, the trip has been over since the night of the 17th, at least as the 4 of us go.

AJ flew home the next morning, I went to Anacortes, and Julia and Chris stayed in Poulsbo. However, this part was nothing new. Seattle was supposed to be our halfway point and we had always planned to stay there for a couple weeks, each doing our own thing. AJ had to fly home for a wedding, Julia and Chris were going to spend time with Julia's family in Poulsbo, and I was going to work and hang out with friends in Anacortes. The only difference was, we never met up again. AJ stayed at home and cancelled his flight back, and I flew back from Anacortes a couple days ago. Since we didn't tell anyone at first, I continued to update the site to reflect my stay in Anacortes, which was AWESOME by the way, the most fun I've had in awhile.

I'm not going to go into any details on here, but I don't have a problem telling anyone who wants to know why it ended so early.

Now that the unpleasant part is out of the way, I just want to say how much I appreciate everyone who lived vicariously through us via this website. It means a lot and I still feel bad that it took me so long to update sometimes. Speaking of, don't stop checking the site just because the trip is over. Now that I'm home and have more free time, I should have all the pictures up soon, from 4/25 to the present. I will complete the food, friends, and videos as well and tie up any other loose ends that need to be taken care of.

Thanks again, and sorry.

-Hanlon

Here are the site upgrades I promised awhile back. I actually sat down just now to work on them and realized that they were completely done, so I must have been working in my sleep or something. I don't remember doing half of this stuff. But anyway, we have 3 new additions, which can be accessed from the menu on the left side, as always:

The Food Page - contains all the cool places we've eaten. We try to eat out in most major cities, but it's not allowed to be a chain, or at least not a chain that we've eaten at before.

The Friends Page - contains pictures of all the people we've met along the way who weren't afraid of having their picture taken.

The Video Page - By far the most exciting update, we now have tons of videos! Click on the screenshots to open a popup window and then click the play button. The most recent ones are at the top of the page, so if you want to watch them in the order they occurred, scroll to the very bottom first. Dialup users will have to be very patient, but there's no way around that.

I'm pretty sure I tested everything, but if something doesn't work, let me know, especially the videos.

-Hanlon

Sorry for the lack of updates recently. We've been completely without internet and phone service for the past few days. I just updated all the stats, maps, and junk. Pictures will follow shortly.

-Hanlon

GO GATORS!!!!!!!!!!!

That is all.

Just kidding, but we do have an address for the next few days. Our campground will accept mail for us until we check out April 1st. I would suggest overnighting it because once we leave, there's no going back. Here's the address:

Halo Resorts c/o Chris Lewis
32300 San Timoteo Canyon Road
Redlands, CA 92373

Stalkers, don't bother. We're not actually staying there anyway.

It looks like the winner of the brackets will be determined by 2 games:
UCLA/Kansas on Saturday
Georgetown/North Carolina on Sunday

I picked Kansas and UNC; AJ picked UCLA and Georgetown; Chris picked Kansas and Georgetown. We all picked Florida to beat Ohio State in the final, so the rest of the picks don't matter.

There are obviously 4 things that can happen:

UCLA wins/Georgetown wins:

AJ	89
Chris	79
Hanlon	78

Kansas wins/Georgetown wins:

Chris	87
Hanlon	86
AJ	81

UCLA wins/UNC wins:

Hanlon	86
AJ	81
Chris	71

Kansas wins/UNC wins:

Hanlon	96
Chris	79
AJ	73

If UNC wins, then I win no matter what, but that game is not till Sunday, so I can't clinch the win until then.

Needless to say, we're going to be watching these two games pretty closely. I can't wait.

And, by the way, the reason Julia wasn't mentioned is that she didn't pick any of these teams to go to the Final Four, haha.

Oh yea, pictures are almost completely up-to-date. Right now you can look at all of them through 3/16. The rest of them are uploaded and waiting for captions, so you'll see them very soon as well. Finally.

-Hanlon

I made a new page to show everyone our brackets. Click "Brackets" at the bottom of the links section on the left side of the screen.

You can see the current scores as well as our individual picks. As usual, click the images to view them full-size.

Of course, I'm in first place because I'm awesome.

Also, stay tuned for some major updates to the site. I've been staying up almost all night every night working on it. Not only will the pictures be up-to-date, but there will be some other very cool surprises as well...

-Hanlon

It's kind of late notice, but we have a bracket group on CBS Sportsline. If anyone is interested in joining, email me and I'll send you the link and password. Prizes will be determined later.

-Hanlon

In case any of you were skeptical about the 5 "Contact" links (on the main page and 4 individual blogs), they do all work. I have 5 email accounts set up: webmaster, hanlon, chris, julia, and aj, all @gatorroadtrip.com. When you use the contact form, that's where they go. It seemed like a pretty cool idea until I realized we couldn't reply to anything. I kept putting it off because I could just email people from my normal address, but as my emails started to pile up, I realized I desperately needed to fix the problem. (Plus, it's just so much cooler to get an email from hanlon at gatorroadtrip.com.) So anyway, after messing around with it for awhile, everything seems to work. I just replied to all my messages and I'll let the others know when they get up in the morning. So keep contacting us; we love all your messages, and we'll do our best to reply in a timely fashion. We no longer have an excuse not to.

-Hanlon

P.S. I can't believe we have over 4000 views. You guys rock!

I know there are a lot of people around here without highspeed internet (specifically all of our parents) who find it very frustrating to wait for the maps to load on the daily pages. I finally modified the whole thing so that you'll only have to load the high quality images if you click on them. All the pages should now load in just a few seconds, even with dial-up. I should have done this from the beginning, but I was lazy, and then I forgot about it until I started getting complaints.

Go to the calendar, test it out, and let me know if there are any more problems.

-Hanlon

So I know I'm several days behind on the pictures and I apologize. It's a combination of being sick and having no time. I can update the stats, current location, maps, calendar, and daily pages in under five minutes, and I always do that right before I go to bed, but the pictures can sometimes take several hours.

1. I have to collect all three cameras that we use and copy every picture that was taken that day onto my computer. This is usually between 200 and 400 pictures.

2. I have to look at every one of them and delete the ones that aren't good enough, which is usually about half of them. I also have to make sure they are all rotated and cropped if necessary.

3. I have to put them in the correct order and rename them all so they can be sorted easily. This is difficult because there are three cameras taking pictures of the same things.

4. I have to resize them all because no one in their right mind puts uncompressed 8 megapixel photos on a website.

5. I have to upload them all to the site. This can take awhile depending on the signal I'm getting from the mobile broadband.

6. I have to make sure each picture uploaded properly and I usually have to redo a few of them.

7. The comments are the final step. I don't like the pictures to be on the site without comments. What makes this difficult is that I don't do the comments myself. So I have to coordinate with the person who does (It's more fun for you to guess who it is...) and find a good time for him/her to do them. He/she puts a lot of effort into them so this takes a good amount of time as well.

All of this needs to be done every single day. But we're usually busy during the day, and at night we're so worn out that we just want to sleep. I also have to share my computer with 3 other people who want to check their email, post blogs, etc., which is fine, but it leaves me very little time to update the site. I usually end up staying up hours after everyone else goes to bed because it's the only time I get... which, coincidentally, is what I'm doing right now.

I'm not complaining at all. I'm having the time of my life on this trip and I love working on this website for you guys. I feel really bad that I can't do better, but I will continue to try. Thanks for caring about us enough to check it every day and hopefully I'll get better with the updates as time passes.

-Hanlon

Check out this funny video from Memphis. Make sure your sound is on.

I just wanted to thank everyone for their support of this trip. I logged on a few days ago to see this:



2112 site views in under a week! Not only is that awesome because it's so many, but 2112 has always been one of my favorite numbers. (I'm a huge Rush fan, and coincidentally it's also my home address.)

So anyway, thanks for keeping up with us. Sorry it takes me so long to update it sometimes (but we have hardly any downtime). As I write this, we have 2469 site views, and this is only the 9th day of the trip. I can't wait to see how much that number grows.

-Hanlon

Go to Google and type in gator road trip, with or without quotes, and we are the first result. Very exciting!

Edit: I've done this a few times and it seems to change periodically so we are not always the first result, but here's a screenshot showing us as first.

There's going to be a delay on the Day 4 photos because we are in Memphis right now staying in a Walmart parking lot, thus, no power. We don't want to waste gas using the generator, so all I have is my battery, which isn't much. I updated the current location, map, stats, and calendar to reflect our status, but the photos take a little more time. I'm going to Searcy, AR tomorrow afternoon and coming back Thursday morning so most likely Days 4 and 5 won't be up til Thursday, on the way to St. Louis. Oops! That's our next stop. Oh well, I'll let you have one freebie.

-Hanlon

Day 3 is up and I finally posted on my blog.

Day 2 page is complete, including pictures!

Everything for day 1 is now on the site. Well, except for the blogs, but everyone else is asleep and I'm way too tired. You can access it here or through the calendar. Day 2 is updated except for the photos and should be up soon. Right now, the updates are taking a lot of time and work, but once I get into a rhythm, they will be much smoother and I'll get them up faster. Thanks for your patience.

-Hanlon

We had some setbacks yesterday which prevented me from updating the site, but the map and stats have now been updated. The rest should be up later tonight so keep checking. Thanks for everyone's comments and support so far!

I also made some minor modifications to the site which no one will notice but me, but I'm OCD so whatever. The picture at the top of the page is now our actual RV, which is very exciting.

-Hanlon

Welcome to GatorRoadTrip.com!

The site will hopefully be updated daily, so check back often.

Need help getting started?

The main page gives plenty of useful information, such as:
- how long we've been gone
- how long until we return
- map showing our current location
- total stats up to this point

For further information, click the links on the left side of the page:
- About - brief description of us
- Calendar - go to any day up to this point and see all the information we posted about it
- Stats - table of daily and total stats
- Photo Gallery - look at our favorite photos so far, organized by days

To read our individual blogs (journals), you can click on the pictures at the top of the page or the names on the left side.

Questions/comments? Click Contact Webmaster for anything related to the trip or site in general. You can also contact us individually through our blogs.

Don't forget to sign the Guestbook!!!