We continue to knead the route but have gathered sufficient confidence in at least the first stretch. So it’s time to make it all official and book something! One of AirBnB’s charming — or annoying, depending on your point of view — steps to making a reservation is to write a short note to your hosts.
ChatCPT, the machine learning language model that’s set to put all of us out of work, has been making waves lately, so we decided to put it to the test for this task. I asked for something simple. George did not.
I am most definitely not a murderer. Please write an introduction from me to an AirBnB host for a house in Missouri that will leave them with the impression that I am not a murderer.
George.
100% this reservation request screams “the call will be coming from inside the house.” My request included the trip theme, but left out the part about how non-murder-y we are.
I wonder if our host in Anchorage would take issue with the pledge that we will treat the place with respect, but I maintain we’ve yet to irreparably trash a place. But before I tell frontier AirBnB-ers that I’m a history buff, I should probably do reading. Or just write my own request; it only needs to be two sentences and it took longer to come up with the prompt. Maybe AI won’t replace me today.
We decided to arrive into Independence a night early — on Thursday — and “work” on Friday, giving us a little more time for automotive getting-to-know-each-other festivities and gathering provisions. (I assume this will turn into that day only I worked from Tacoma.)
Kearney had even fewer interesting rental properties than I was expecting. There was one house for rent that was downtown-adjacent, but the host didn’t respond. So to preserve momentum, we decided to reach into our collective pool of rewards points to stay for cheap at a water park that George found. I made the boys promise that if we stayed at the Water Park Conference Center Crowne Plaza, that we would have to use the water park.
Kearney, NE to Kadoka, SD is on the longer end for one of our drives, but we’ll be able to take shelter for the night in The Charming Farmhouse and celebrate George’s birthday!
And that’s when things go from good to great. Our last booking for this shopping spree is the two-night cabin in the woods of Black Hills, SD.
Although it seems odd to have a beach day so early in the journey, the first to drive days are fairly long, and look at this place. Just means we’ll have lots of time for me to drag the others on more hikes, which I suppose I should start researching now.