Another day of 8.5-hour drive today. We traveled 700 miles (over 1100km), and arrived at the Rocky Mountains in Colorado right before sunset. The following pictures were taken at 12000 ft altitude.

Funny I just noticed that I might have sounded too lucky – always arriving “right before sunset”. The fact is there were many times I had to “compromise” with the 2nd or 3rd sunset location choice due to all kinds of uncertainty in the trip. Fortunately, any 2nd or 3rd choice to me is something new. And photographing something I have never photographed before always brought me some excitement.

Tip of the Day

Today’s tip is not necessarily photography related, but it might be useful if you also enjoy road trips. Accommodation is one of the most important things to plan during your travels. Unless you bring your own tent and sleep bags and don’t mind crashing anywhere in the wild or sleep on other people’s couches, I’d suggest finding your accommodation in the following websites:

Airbnb. I’ve been a long term user of the site and really like it. Instead of using a hotel or motel, you can book other people’s homes. It gives you so much more flexibility if you’d like to use kitchen and cook yourself a nice meal. You also have the chance to meet with locals (your hosts) who might give you excellent travel tips you can’t buy from travel books. Depending on how certain I knew where I would travel to, I made my bookings typically 5-10 days in advance. In summer peak travel seasons, if you want to stay in a popular place (eg. close to Glacier National Park in August), you need to book early. Most of the hosts were very responsive and I had a profile with lots of positive reviews, so I typically could close the booking within a few hours. Maximum it took me 1 day. Depending on the location our average rate per night was between $70-100. I’ve stayed in numerous 5-star hotels around the globe for business trips, I have to admit I like the Airbnb homes much better.
Craigslist Most people use it to find long term rentals, but you can find plenty of short term 1-week rental deals. We found our Lakeside Cabin with 60 acres private forest, and Livingston 2 bedroom home on Craigslist, each for 1 week, and are very happy with it. Average rate per night was around $100
Motels: For some single nights we were transiting between places, and wanted to keep flexible of where to stop, we stayed at motels. Our criteria were pretty simple: non-smoking and has wifi. We have a few repeats in Hampton Inn, Quality Inn and some random ones, the Hampton Inn is pretty nice and clean, and will be my motel of choice if I have to stay again.
VRBO I never used the site because I don’t like its user interface. But it’s a similar to Airbnb, so you might find similar homes