After over two months on the road, we are finally home! All in all, the trip was about 9,600 miles.
Since many have asked for one, below is a rough map of the route we took and the states we visited (27 in all).
Rachel is somewhat disappointed by the 4 small states not visited in New England... I guess we will have to go back sometime.
Random Facts:
During the road trip we slept in 30 different locations (three of which we never met the people before!) on air mattresses, foam pads, king beds, queen beds, full sized beds and twin beds -- even the two of us sharing a twin bed :-).
More random facts / Road trip Awards:
Travel Awards:
Longest single day trip - St. Louis to Denver (14+ hours)
Shortest single day trip - Wauconda, IL to Joliet, IL (about 1 hour)
Most congested driving - Cambridge, MA
Worst single traffic jam - New Jersey Turnpike (sat at least an hour in bumper to bumper traffic)
Worst overall in drivers speeding - too close to call :-)
Scariest 2 minutes of driving - I-95 north of Daytona Beach
Worst car problems of the trip - Orlando, FL (smoke started pouring out from under the hood upon starting)
Weather and Scenery Awards:
Most boring drive - Eastern CO
Most beautiful location/drive - Osprey Point, MD
Hottest location - Florida in April (and yes, our car has no AC)
Coldest location - Ankeny, IA in February
Food Awards:
Best Restaurant - Gourmet Hot Dog place in Cincinnati
Most surprisingly good food - Jenny's Mexican Food, Limon, CO
Favorite newly discovered chain - Five Guys Burgers
Most visited restaurant - Wendy's (this is unfortunate, but they have decent salads)
Worst Restaurant - ????
Random Awards:
Best beach - West Palm Beach, FL
Best flute recital - Winston Salem, NC (actually we only went to one flute recital)
Most flooded location - Southern Illinois
Best tourist attraction - Kennedy Space Center
Best tour guide - Michelle Anderson in Cincinnati, OH
Most projectiles thrown at friends - Middleton, CT
Best ping-pong - Ankeny, IA
Most utterly lost - Rochester, NY (driving for 30 minutes in the wrong direction)
Most utterly lost - Rochester, NY (driving for 30 minutes in the wrong direction)
We wanted to take a moment to thank all the people who hosted us, fed us, got coffee with us, encouraged us, or just spent time with us!! We feel the road trip was a big success!
Special thanks:
We wanted to give a special thanks to our friends Shawn and Kati for the awesome care package they made for us before we left!
One of the best things included were two CD cases FULL of public domain audio books (http://librivox.org)!!
A person favorite for Josh was the Cow flash light.
Several of the items were very helpful on the trip. We used the coffee mugs they gave us almost daily. We tried to use the air freshener. The problem is that perhaps the air freshener was designed for a car larger than ours. Thus, it was an overwhelming amount of fragrance. But we were able to come up with a solution with the duct tape (also included in the care package)
Don't forget to take your vitamins!
