Thing 33

I'm a posting member of TripAdvisor and wouldn't go on a serious trip without consulting it for places to stay. People's reviews provide really useful info that you can't find in a guidebook or on a hotel website, like, "They're demolishing the east wing with jackhammers all night, the work is expected to last six weeks, and they wouldn't give us our money back."

Jim used to be a member of Virtual Tourist and had fun putting his pictures up, but he got bored with it a couple years ago.

We googled for info for our Yellowstone vacation a couple years ago and found something very important in a random blog -- one couple spent six days there and ended up eating convenience store sandwiches for every meal. I expected actual grocery stores in a park that big and that popular, a la Yosemite. No way. The silly storelets in the gift shops were worthless, and the restaurants at the big attractions, such as Old Faithful and the huge camping area of Grant Village, have limited hours. We had to drive two hours to West Yellowstone for a grocery store.

The other most useful thing was Google Earth, which has way-cool virtual topography maps with people's photos of touristic opportunities. We could tell what the roads were really like, where they started to climb into the mountains, and what cool stuff we shouldn't miss.


I looked at igougo to see what that was like, and I think it kind of broke my brain to see Haleakala National Park listed as a tourist attraction. The posted photos of Maui made me feel like a Serious Photographer.