28 days, 5500 miles, 13 states.....

No, that's not the Amazing Race finale, that is our road trip. Here are some fun stats:

The road trip lasted 28 days
We travelled a total of 5500 miles
We visited 13 states - Oregon, California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey
We visited 2 countries - USA and Canada
We visited 45 relatives
We went looking for Starbucks stores - 15 times
We found Starbucks stores - 4 times
We got issued a warning for speeding - 1 time
We stayed at 8 different motels

All in all it was everyting we hoped it would be. We didn't overdo the driving distances although there were some days that seemed really long. The motels/hotels we picked by and large met our expectations, some more than others. I'll admit there were times when we would check into a motel and think to ourselves "Didn't we just check out of this one"??? Also, living out of suitcases for days on end is not easy to do. We tried to be as efficient as possible in our packing, but suddenly we would find ourselves without enough clothes to wear or some very important personal item missing! In the beginning it used to take R and me about an hour and a half to get ready in the morning having to share a bathroom (we used to have separate ones in the condo), by the end of the trip we had it down to half an hour from the time we woke up. R and I used to joke about signing up for the Amazing Race, and I used to tell him we'd be no good at it cos we'd be arguing all the time, but if this trip is any indication, i think we would have done great. We were in total sync! No arguments, but the fact that he would wait till the gas tank was bare bone empty to fill it up drove me crazy!!!! The car is totally trashed....inside there are remnants of food all over the place....cookie crumbs, chips, fruit peels....the exterior of the car is mud spattered and sticky, the windshield is spattered with blood from the constant "ping ping" of insects dashing against....yuk! Budget has their work cut out for them.

We saw a huge slice of American life in terms of how people in different parts of the country live, what they eat, how they perceive us and it was an education in itself! There is no denying the partisan divide in the country, its very visible when you do a trip like this. There are definitely some places i do not want to visit again, then again there are some i'd love to go back to.

There are still so many states we have not visited, we hope to do more road trips like this on our annual visits. For those of you who have not ventured out too much, I urge you all to visit all the fantastic parks and monuments this country has to offer.

We will be visiting DC, Orlando, Dallas and Connecticut over the next week but it will be a combination of air and Amtrak travel. Shall keep posting pics and commentary!