The Great American Road Trip

A final statistical update:

Miles Driven:  3,919

Hours Driven: ~65

States Visited: 16 + DC

Speeding Tickets: $0

Parking Tickets: $320 ($0 paid)

Days to pack:  4

Days to unpack: 1.5

Weeks on the road: 2.5

Best City:  New Orleans

Worst City:  Albuquerque

Cups of coffee per day: ~6

If I had one big revelation or surprise about the whole trip, it was how big and diverse the United States is.  Flying over the whole thing really doesn't capture the size like I always assumed it did.  I drove from a densely packed bustling technology centered city by the Pacific into huge agribusiness driven fields, sparsely populated stops along Indian Reservations and into the thick morass of swamp across the Gulf Coast.  I felt familiar with the East Coast, but stopping along the way in small towns and cities, seeing parts of Virginia I'd never seen before, and making it up through New York into Vermont took on a whole different tone this time.  It was like listening to a great album in its entirety when before you'd only listened to a few familiar tracks.

America taken at large feels like a dozen countries packed into one, each one with a distinct immediately discernible flavor.  Though people say the spread of mass media and the highways have dulled down the differences and created a morass of monoculture, if it will ever take hold, it hasn't yet.

Taking a 2000 mile trip and turning it into a 4000 mile journey was one of the best things I've ever done, and I'm glad you all got to follow along with the blog.  I'm taking a big break from driving anywhere non-skiing related for a couple of days, and I'll be posting the new blog format once I'm settled into my new place in Vermont.  Thanks for reading, tune back in 3 months from now when the real journey starts.