google apps email and your private domain.

This should help you out.

I ran through it again, but I had already configured everything as described on the page from your link.
mail.mydomain.com forwards you to the Apps website http://mail.google.com/a/mydomain.com

Does Google Apps have a way for you to go to your actual website and check your mail? Or does it always re-route you to their website?

It will always reroute you how it is now, to the Gapps webmail page.

On that page you posted, it walks you through a setup to customize your URL.  All that Gapps does is permits you to input your customized name  (mail.mydomain.com)  and it reroutes it to their original site.

that's the way it is supposed to be.
why do you see it  as a problem?

the gmail login page on mail.mydomain.com can be customized to some level: your company name, logo and color scheme can be applied to it.

Google consolidated the public Gmail and google apps infrastructures a few months ago, so you can even log into your google apps via the standard gmail login page (use name@mydomain.com).

Not really able to do what I wanted, but the"poster" helped me to stop spinning my wheels trying to do the impossible.  Thank you.