Last year Kaitlin announced out of the blue, “I want to go to South Dakota.” We still don’t know where it came from, although we have a suspicion that an episode of the Wonder Pets or Little Einsteins might have had something to do with it.

A few months ago, an Op-Ed in the New York Times proclaimed Goodbye to the Great American Road Trip. Hogwash. I think too many Americans are loosing touch with our country. And keeping touch with our country and our history sure becomes much more possible and intimate if you just get out there and drive through it instead of fly above it.

So this year, we decided to plan our own Great American Road Trip with our fall vacation to South Dakota, and then swing through the Promised Land (Yellowstone/Tetons) on the tail end of it.

By the numbers: 2201.5 Miles. 47 Hours driving. 122 gallons of gas. 5 National Parks/Monuments/Memorials. 4 National Forests. 1 National Grassland. 6 Scenic Byways. 5 Continental Divide Crossings. 9 nights in 5 different hotels.

We also covered endless miles of BLM land. Saw a Grizzly Bear in Yellowstone. Saw two Bull Elk fighting. Saw more Pronghorn Antelope than you can shake a stick at (I think in Wyoming they look at Pronghorns like rabbits in most other places). Saw vistas and views I only thought existed on postcards.

Here are the highlights:

Mount Rushmore National Memorial
Badlands National Park
Devils Tower National Monument
Yellowstone National Park
Grand Teton National Park

Peter Norbeck Scenic Byway
Badlands Loop Scenic Byway
Wildlife Loop Scenic Byway
Bighorn Scenic Byway
Buffalo Bill Cody Scenic Byway
Wyoming Centennial Scenic Byway

It was a really fun trip. I know my kids won’t remember any specific details of this trip at all. But generally, I believe this lays the foundation for a strong family and for an appreciation of the wonderful country we live in.

And as far as a tie to entrepreneurship, I have read a lot about entrepreneurship over the years. I’ve seen a lot of entrepreneurs profiled and interviewed. And countless times I’ve seen entrepreneurs express this sentiment: “I don’t remember the last time I had a vacation.” “I don’t have time to take any time off.” “I hope I make a boatload of money someday so I can ‘make up’ all the time my family has sacrificed.” To all of that, I say: BS. Entrepreneurship doesn’t have to mean the elimination of any other priorities in your life. I used to think that way. But now I make sure I take time for the things in my life that matter (family, community, personal time). I track my PTO days every year in a spreadsheet. I get an allocation of PTO based on the same benefit plan as the rest of my employees. And I use every last one of those days every year. There isn’t ever truly a time when everything is balanced in my life, it’s always a process of the pendulum swinging from one to another and back. This last week, I swung it towards my family. So my advice: If you’re an entrepreneur, for Pete’s Sake, take some time off!

PS - I know a lot of folks might say, you know, you wasted a bunch of fossil fuels on this trip. (right around 6.25 barrels of crude oil to be exact) And that it wasn’t that environmentally conscious to haul your family and Ford Explorer over 2,000 miles. To that I say this: It’s every American’s God given right to burn as much fossil fuels for as often and long as we want.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Subscribe to my RSS feed so you can support Great American Road Trips and the blatant burning of fossil fuels.

It’s been over a year since I’ve posted about Adventure Buddies. I’ve done a few trips with the kids since then, but not a big one.

This weekend, I planned another trip to the High Unitas. I’ve been so busy this year, and my window to get the kids out on a backpacking trip was quickly closing. Kailtin is 4 1/2. Alex is just over 2. And I had a dilemma. K desperately wanted to go on another backpacking trip, but only with Dad. And I really wanted to take Alex on his first backpacking jaunt. And either way, I was pretty sure that even with my mountain goat tendencies, I would be pushing it to try to haul enough gear for me and 2 kids and also be able to somehow heft them too when they get tired. (Even though I own about 8 backpacks–not counting camelbaks–I don’t think I even have one large enough for that type of excursion)

So I hatched a plan. Friday afternoon, I headed up to Cliff Lake with K and our gear. We had a great trip hiking the roughly 1/2 mile to Cliff Lake, had a great night (she loved Mountain House spaghetti), cooked pancakes and hot cocoa for breakfast, and had some fun adventures Saturday morning hiking to another lake and up on top of some high cliffs.

Then we loaded up a small day-pack and hiked out. We drove the hour and 45 minutes home, I swapped K for Alex, drove back up to the trailhead, and Alex and me hiked to our base camp. Tent was right where we left it. We had a great night (Easy Mac n’ Cheese for us) and Sunday morning (pancakes and cocoa again), then packed up everything and headed home.

AWESOME weekend for me. Here’s some pics:

I love having adventures with kids in the mountains. Maybe one of these years, I’ll just setup a camp somewhere and take the kids every weekend.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Subscribe to my RSS feed so you can see dang cute kids in the woods.

I’ve lived in Utah for 14 years. I really like living here. Granted, there are some things I don’t like, but hey, I figure that’d happen anywhere, as I’ve yet to hear of or experience the perfect place.

As an entrepreneur, I’ve learned to focus on metrics and tangible results. However, you have to be careful as any metric can be misinterpreted, but they almost always put you in the right ballpark.

How does one measure entrepreneurship or entrepreneurial activity? There are those that do:

The Milken Institute in conjunction with Greenstreet Real Estate Partners just released their Best-Performing Cities 2008: Where America’s Jobs Are Created and Sustained report. The Best Performing Cities Index ranks U.S. metro areas based on their ability to grow employment and wages over one-year and five-year periods. (I’d have to agree that growing employment and wages are pretty central to measuring entrepreneurship)

Utah represented well. Very well.

Provo-Orem ranked #1, Salt Lake City ranked #3, Ogden took #18. (On the smaller metro list, St. George was #4.)

Again, all reports/metrics have to be taken with a grain of salt. But if you look over the past while, Utah (#34 state for total population) is showing up at the top of other reports that attempt to measure entrepreneurship as well. For the 3rd year in a row, the Provo/Orem area has more Inc. 500 companies per million residents than anywhere else in the nation. And again this year, we’re about twice as much as the next ranked area — 14.2 in Provo/Orem per million versus 7.5 in Austin, TX. (As an entire state, UT has 5.9 companies on the Inc 500 per million residents, Massachussetts is next at 3.7). In the first part of 2007, the Kaufmann Foundation ranked UT as the most dynamic economy in the Nation. Our unemployment was the lowest any state had every experienced back in 2007, and we’re still one of the best in the country.

So what’s going on here? What’s in the water here in UT? I’m going to post a few ideas on this over the next few weeks, I have some theories of my own. Until then, if you’re an entrepreneur in UT, let’s keep blowing the doors off growth here. If you’re not based here, well, you could always move.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Subscribe to my RSS feed so you can jump on the Utah entrepreneurship bandwagon.

At the end of last week, a group of 8 of us headed up to attempt to climb the Grand Teton via the Upper Exum Ridge climbing route.

Over Labor Day, the weather in the Tetons was pretty nasty, and when we arrived a couple of days later, the climbing rangers informed us the conditions on that route were in pretty bad shape: verglas, snow, and ice. They said we’d be better off coming back in the winter and climbing the mountain with a proper snow cover (something that is EXTREMELY difficult and dangerous).

So we adjusted our plans and headed up to camp at the Meadows for 2 nights, and then up the South Fork of Garnet Canyon Friday to climb the Middle Teton instead. The Middle Teton is 12,804 feet high. We climbed up the SouthWest couloir route that is Class III with a couple of Class IV sections (although with all the snow in there, I’d say more of it was Class IV). It was a great trip.

I’ve heard said before that “no plan survives contact with the enemy.” We’d planned to climb the Upper Exum Ridge for about 5 months. We sent out information, we met as a group and went rock climbing in Rock Canyon in Provo, we coordinated, we planned, we prepared (physically and mentally). We had a lot of momentum towards climbing the Grand Teton. But we got there, and courtesy of the Weather Service messing up my order for good weather, we had to change our plans. Some people in the world of climbing/backpacking/hiking get summit fever and don’t adapt and let all the momentum dictate their actions. They don’t change their plans, they get in over their heads, they have problems, and sometimes in the world of outdoor pursuits, they even make stupid decisions and die.

Entrepreneurship isn’t a life and death endeavor, but a lot of entrepreneurs don’t adapt their plans, get ’summit fever’, let the momentum take over, and run into lots of problems. Being nimble, being flexible is the difference in success and failure a lot of times, and for us, it was the difference in either bailing on the trip altogether, pushing up a mountain that we’d have had no business being on because of the conditions, or adapting and climbing an awesome mountain right next door and feeling like we were on top of the world in the coolest mountain range in America.

(Grand Teton right behind me, I could almost reach out and touch it!)

(6/8 of us on the summit)

(View to the south. South Teton is closest, and then you can see probably almost 100 miles)

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Subscribe to my RSS feed so you can see cool pictures of mountains.

So over the last couple of months, I’ve started to run a little bit. When I was in Japan, I ran around the city, when I was in D.C., I ran around the city. I wanted a way to track my runs, and I found out about the Nike+ system that includes a foot pod that works with your iPod Nano and iTunes to track your time and distance and upload them to Nike+.

After I uploaded my first run, I found out about the Nike Human Race 10k.

Basically, Nike was putting on the World’s largest running event. In 25 world cities, you could go down an run a 10k race on an official course. But with the Nike+ system, anyone anywhere could register and run their 10k and then upload their results.

I’ve never ran anything official (if you don’t count grade school track events), so I did it. A few weeks back, I ordered my official race jersey with my unique # on it and I got up the morning of the 31st, headed down to the Provo River trail in Orem, and took off. I finished in 56 minutes. My goal was to run the 10k under 60 minutes. I was pretty much alone, I passed the occasional person, but they probably had no idea what I was doing. It was sort of cool to know that I was running and around the world there were hundreds of thousands of others running too.

Self portrait after completing the run:

Screenshot of my congratulations after uploading my run:

Cities worldwide where the races where held: