USA Road Trip – The Recap of 40 day journey

Written by Kim

What an amazing trip! We are so fortunate to have the opportunity to take to the road for a journey like this. We both met our goal of visiting all 50 states. Many have asked now what. Hold that thought I’ll share more at the end but first let me recount this trip. As I reflected on a 40 day road trip I wondered how Noah did it in an arc for 40 days or Moses did it without bread and water or Jesus spent 40 days in the wilderness. Don’t misunderstand I’m not trying to say we are similar just put our trip in perspective. We were very lucky that we had sunshine very day except one. It rained the day we visited Yellowstone (and rained overnight a few days). The weather was amazing. We were even lucky on our rainy Yellowstone day because it was clear early in the morning when we went over the pass but the pass was closed later in the day because it was snowing there while raining in the park.

Our trip took us nearly 10,000 miles (9,823 to be exact) over 40 days and 39 nights with 27 stops. Many have asked what our favorite or least favorite stop was but I must admit we enjoyed every stop. We did different things at different places which made each special. We had a general itinerary but would firm up our plans about 3-4 days in advance and book hotels and tours, etc. We adjusted a bit from our original plan so here was our final itinerary:

• Richmond, VA
• Lincoln Park, NJ – saw all 3 kids and 3 grands in the area
• Lancaster, PA
• Pittsburgh, PA
• Toledo, OH
• Elkhart, IN
• Mackinaw City, MI
• Munising, MI
• Duluth, MN
• Fargo, ND
• Sioux Falls, SD
• Deadwood, SD
• Columbus, MT
• Rexburg, ID
• Boise, ID
• Salt Lake City, UT
• Beaver, UT
• Moab, UT
• Grand Junction, CO
• Cheyenne, WY – visited Bob & Lisa
• Council Bluffs, IA
• Wichita, KS
• Tulsa, OK
• Joplin, MS
• Little Rock, AR
• Tupelo, MS
• Sparta, TN – see Alex’s mom
• Back home – North Myrtle Beach, SC

We stuck to our original plan of driving only 3-4 hours a day. Overall we drove about 150 hours or 3.75 per day average. There were a few days we did longer drives but found keeping it shorter made it more enjoyable. Alex is a wizard at maps so he often found us a route that took us on country roads, Route 66, Natchez Trace Parkway or Beartooth Pass (very scary switchbacks up 10,000 foot mountain into Yellowstone ). It really pays to be married to a civil engineer he was in his element planning things and I was just a good co-pilot taking bad pictures, missing signs I wanted photos of and didn’t drive 1 mile! We are a match made in heaven.

As I mentioned in a previous post, we weren’t loyal to any hotel brand but picked hotels based on Google ratings which paid off well for us. We didn’t have a single bad hotel. Yes some were better than others but all were clean and in good locations. We won’t benefit too much from loyalty points but did have one free Hilton night and 8 nights that helped us keep our costs down. On average excluding the night we spent with friends and family we paid $166 a night and most including breakfast & parking in cities. After 29 stops we had our hotel moves down to a science. We each had a small roller board, I had my backpack with toiletries, Alex had his Cpap and we had a bag of cold things from our cooler. We traveled with a cooler than plugged into the car which made it simple because we didn’t need to deal with ice, always had cold drinks, and easily could pack a picnic lunch. I highly recommend a cooler like this if you take a big road trip. We kept a few extra suitcases in the car – one with extra clothes for cooler or warmer weather, one with extra shoes, and an empty one we filled with dirty laundry and hauled into laundromats to wash when full. We also had beach chairs for a roadside picnic and golf clubs that we only used once.

We enjoyed visiting several National Parks and monuments. We purchased the lifetime pass for $80 and have already recouped our initial fee and saved an additional $175 just on this trip. We visited 9 national parks – Indiana Dunes, Pictured Rocks Castle, Badlands, Mt. Rushmore, Devil’s Tower, Yellowstone, Craters of the Moon, Bryce Canyon, Arches and Canyonlands. We also visited a few state parks – Custer & Vedauwoo. I highly recommend the lifetime National parks pass – I believe they will actually give you credit toward a lifetime pass if you’ve purchased an annual pass too. We saw 4 of the 5 Great Lakes – all except Ontario. We also did a number of other activities that were fantastic like the Notre Dame game, the Toledo Mudhens game, the Mormon Tabernacle choir, the Tulsa Fair, golf, some biking, the symphony, the zoo, the Oz museum and my all time favorite feeding the bison!

Many have asked about the cost of our rental car and gas. We originally reserved a small SUV but in typical Avis fashion they didn’t have the one we reserved so gave us a Ford Explorer at the same price. We complained a bit knowing that our gas mileage wouldn’t be as good so the man offered a half tank of gas which was a drop in the bucket to cover the cost. We used 408 gallons of gas at a total cost of $1,275 or an average of $3.12 per gallon. Our cheapest gas was in Mississippi at $2.45 and most expensive was Utah at $3.86. Overall we got about 24 mpg and probably spent an additional $200 vs. the mpg we would have gotten in a RAV4. We had a great discount code so the cost for the 6 week rental was a little over $2,000 but I should say that Avis charged us incorrectly so I’m still haggling with them to correct our billing.

Oh….did I mention we did nearly 300,000 steps on our trip an average of 7,624 per day despite some days of limited steps. I’ve been working hard to try and lose weight (what else is new) so I actually brought my scale along to track along the way. I bounced up and down but was able to maintain over the trip – I actually lost 2 pounds but that’s basically maintaining. I guess I’m happy with that it’s such a struggle but back to the gym and keep on plugging.

We are so blessed to be able to travel. I write this blog largely for us since we know some day in the future we won’t be able to travel and will have our blog to reflect on our memories. Thanks to all who followed and enjoyed a virtual trip with us. We love that others can get some joy too in seeing our pictures and sharing our adventures.

Many have asked what’s next? As you can probably imagine, our bucket list is quite long. We took this trip because we felt a little guilty that we have been off to Europe without seeing all of our beautiful country. Now that we’ve seen all 50 states we consider our tasting of the US complete but have added more places that we’d like to see more to our list. Near term – we are heading to Vegas to see Billy Joel and Sting in a few weeks. I had a big birthday this year so Alex bought me tickets in Vegas because the cost of tickets in MSG was ridiculous! We also cut Zion from this trip so will visit Zion and maybe Bryce again while in Vegas. Then we will spend time with the family over the holidays before heading to Florida for a few weeks in January. Life is short you have to go while you can. Until then……