My Nikon, being a few years old, doesn’t give me a way to get my photos to the iPhone. Or the cloud. Or anywhere, really, without going to the laptop first. That’s another minor issue with not bringing the laptop on this trip. But I can live with that. I’m sure someone will come up with an accessory—a card reader, or something—for the iPhone soon. In the meantime, I want to edit down the photos to twenty or so before posting them, anyway. Speaking of Grand Canyon photos, I took quite a few today, but not nearly enough to fill one of the 8GB cards I bought. Guess I could have just gotten one of those instead of two. But that’s okay. I can always use the other somewhere else. I highly recommend the Grand Canyon in winter. It’s a little risky, with the snow, and all. But it’s so beautiful. We completely lucked out and got here the day after a snow storm. So the roads were all fine. With the exception of the hotel parking lot, which doesn’t look like it was plowed well at all. Fairly surprising and disappointing, if you ask me. Tomorrow, onward to California.

Throughout Phoenix, good 3G. Twenty minutes north of Phoenix all the way to Flagstaff? Same as in New Mexico. Phone says I have full bars of edge, but instead I really have nothing. This time, MotionX seems to have done its caching better, because the lack of signal didn’t cause it to go wacko as often. I think what’s happening with that is actually a loss of GPS accuracy, which results in MotionX thinking it needs to remap the trip, which then leads to it realizing it doesn’t have a network connection, which leads to an error message.

I can’t blame bad GPS signal on AT&T, so I guess that one is Apple’s fault. In Flagstaff, I went back to 3G briefly. Then, all the way north of Flagstaff and into Grand Canyon Village, I get either weak Edge or nothing at all. Even here in the hotel, just a few seconds south of the entrance to the park, I get absolutely nothing. Thank goodness for free WiFi. Tomorrow we’ll see what happens between here and LA.

It was close to the hotel, and it was open early. And other than the doorknob, which is placed in such a way as to guarantee injury for a lefty like me, it was great.

Well, we made it from El Paso to Phoenix, as planned. I ended up getting a tape deck adapter for the iPhone, after all, which has helped a lot. On the playlist: Kaki King, James Taylor, Led Zep, and Police. A lot of songs I haven’t listened to in ages.

AT&T? Totally dead through most of New Mexico and Arizona. Bouncing in and out of Edge signal. When I finally bounce back to 3G in Tucson? Slowest 3G ever. This had a large impact on my GPS via MotionX, obviously. I don’t blame the app, though. AT&T is failing me on this trip big time already. Tucson? I’ll try to be nice, but it was simply not a good experience. Parking on University Blvd. was totally lame. The town was dead, thanks to the school being on winter break. I don’t know. Let’s just say I wasn’t impressed. 3G held up through to Phoenix tonight, luckily. Got me to the hotel with no issues. Hotel itself? No wireless in the room, though wired Internet is provided. Bar closed at 10. LAME. Luckily, bar down the street is open until 2 and serves Smithwick’s. Problem solved. Tomorrow, Grand Canyon, if the snow doesn’t become a problem.