Sleepless Nights

One supposes that it will take a little time to get used to sleeping comfortably on the ground (for days on end!)  I'm therefore figuring that I will have plenty of sleep-less nights - that's nights when you sleep less than you wish you did - once we start our excellent adventure.

However, I did not expect to have a sleep-less night while comfortably ensconced in my great cushy marshmallow of a bed here at home! And yet, from about 3 in the morning until nearly 6, I lay awake for no good reason at all, randomly ticking through various things to do or to think about doing

                 should we have a little ground cloth just outside the tent door? 

          would a treated cloth work better and weigh less than that 
          old cotton cloth I have been using as a table covering?  

                                                     should I find some tiny clothes pins to carry with 
                                                     the cord, or how about using alligator clips?  
                                                     alligator clips would be great!

And so the night finally passed, and when I should have gotten up I rather got to sleep.  This is craziness, but I guess it just shows that my mind is working out the little details even when I am (supposed to be) at rest.

At one point, I got into the maps in the hall closet and found one of the US.  Roger and I had discussed putting some pins in the map to identify people and places that we wanted to try to visit, and then working out our itinerary between those points.  My mid-night perusal of the map was instructive. We don't know anyone to visit between Yellowstone and Minneapolis, but we've got to ride through that great expanse anyway.  So let's visit Mt Rushmore, and maybe the Badlands.  And wow - look at this!  It will make more sense to go through Michigan's Upper Peninsula and cross the strait to reach Traverse City than to go through Chicago at the base of the lake.  So here's the thing I guess I learned today:

c.  you don't really know what you don't know until you start researching it.