We left early on Friday (the day before the "official" start of things) during the daytime as opposed to the night, and made it all the way that day early. We stopped at a couple of new "Gez Rogers" spots on the way (details within each subgallery). The kids were not with us, for the first-time ever, and that will presumably be the way it is from now on.

We took my wife's 2008 Pontiac Vibe. I was of a mind to take my 2012 Scion xD but she really wanted to take her car. I thus had the tires upgraded, the oil changed, added coolant, and installed a Dual XD18BT Bluetooth stereo myself (link so we could have something suitable for the journey there and our outings once in Marshall (I had made a custom playlist for Kevin with some Christian songs for me and my wife mixed in, the last one to play was "Flowers On The Wall", whereas on the road or when it was just us two I had Pandora play a contemporary Christian channel). I also added a backup camera (Leekooluu LK3), doing a very "hilly-rigged" setup that nonetheless worked fine for the occasion.

I used the same computer that I bought around 5 or 6 years ago for $80, a Hewlett Packard with Windows 10 on it. This time I made sure not to repeat what happened last year when I left my computer and portable hard drive behind, putting me at risk of losing all my photographs. The cabin owner did ship it to me so all was fine in the end, but that was a close call. During the "off-season" as it were I bought more storage, including a 256 GB SD card and a 128 GB Crayola USB flash drive (things I could take with me in my fanny pack or such, separately from the computer, assuring I'd have copies of the photos no matter what), and with the 500G portable hard drive I also had I backed up everything three times on an almost nightly basis.

I used the same camera gear I've used since 2021--a Nikon Z50 and a Sony RX100 III (this copy from 2024, as I ruined the RX100 III during the June 2024 trip at Blanchard). Last year I added an extra-wide lens (Nikon 12-28 DX), something I'd meant to do for years, and a telephoto (55-250 DX), and those were taken this year too. I had pondered upgrading to the Z50 II, but never did.

I had intended for us to head towards "Brushy," a spot from Sept 2025 which I really liked, and then we'd get a hotel in nearby Mt Ina or such, then finish the trip off Fri morning, but instead we went our normal route, other than stopping off at the new Gez Rogers spots along the way (as well as Hardee's and Krispy Kreme in Conway, obviously). This lead to us arriving Fri night, fortunately the cabin owner (we stayed at the same place from 2024 and 2025) was willing to let us check in early for a little extra money. We got many groceries in Marshall at Harp's just before they closed.