SS - Kanto it is

Allright, so maybe I'll be staying in Kanto.  :P

It turns out that one can easily Fly between regions by using Victory Road/Indigo Plateau as a transfer point.  Thinking that the Bug-Catching Contest would be a great way to get Rotti levelled up some, I flew over to the National Park and sallied forth into the grasses.

Only, I'd forgotten that after one gets the Nat'l Dex, the park now features bugs from all the regions -- at levels twice as high.  Poor Rotti was KO'd within five minutes, and I simply rebooted the game instead of taking the hit to my Pokeyen. 

So instead, I decided to look around Kanto some more.  Conveniently enough, the levels of the wild Pokemon north of Vermilion were around level 13 or so, just in the right range for Rotti and Tremor to get in a few levels.  The weird thing was, the trainer battles along the same route were at waaay higher levels, as in low-40's.  This disparity seemed strange to me -- if you went through with low-level Pokemon, the trainers would clobber you;  but if you went through with Pokemon strong enough to defeat the trainers, there'd be little point in the wild encounters.  Lots of switching up was required.

I'd expected Saffron to be blocked off as always, but it wasn't;  so I went up and netted myself the Marsh Badge from Sabrina.  This wasn't too hard, especially since I dodged out of the Gym to heal up after defeating the other Gym trainers.  Both Silph Co. and the Magnet Train were inaccessible, though -- it seems that the Rockets are up to something at the Power Plant.

Instead of jumping on that situation immediately, I ran over to Lavender.  Lavender's Pokemon Tower is now a Radio Tower, but again, not in operation due to the Power Plant issue.  If it were, there'd be a PokeFlute station, which would wake up the Snorlax blocking the path east from Vermilion.  With not much else to do there, I went over in the other direction, to Celadon.  There I discovered that the Game Corner there is also a Voltorb Flip game, and satisfied my itch to play for a bit.

Erika's Gym ought to be a cinch with Cynder, though I'd like to get Rotti up to the point where I can use him there as well.  From there, I have several options.  I could go back to Vermilion, and through Diglett's Cave to Rt. 2, and do the usual trek eastward through Mt. Moon and Cerulean.  Or I could just run north to Cerulean from Saffron, and grab the Badge.  Finally, there's Cycling Road, which would take me to Fuschia to net another Badge and open up the Pal Park.

With the guidebook ending at the League, there's really no way to tell which Gym to hit next.  From Bulbapedia, it seems like most of the Kanto Gym teams are around high-40's to low-50's levels, so maybe it doesn't really matter.  I'd like to get most of the towns opened up to Fly to, at least.

With no gaming (though I wish the reason for that was not so unfortunate! D: ) and a holiday weekend coming up, I should be able to make some definite progress.

Also -- Saturday is supposed to be cool and windy, so I should get me out for some triking if I can.  I've been looking at the Spring Grove campus as a potential location closer than the BWI trail.  I should also try for some serious steps, since I'm now on the Hoenn Field Pokewalker course.  Pity I didn't think to stay on the previous stroll, which could have netted me a Skitty.  I now have a second PC box dedicated to Pokewalker catches, and I intend to fill it. 8D