Roadtrip Retrospective

A few stats:

• Days: 16 (not counting the piddly little first day where we only drove up to Placerville).
• Miles driven: 6,161 in first car; 2,551in second car. 8,712 total.
• Lowest elevation point reached: 282 feet below sea level.
• Highest elevation point reached: 10,600 feet above sea level.
• States touched: 22 if you count CA (California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, New York, Kentucky, Tennesee, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona).
• Highest temperature noted: 115 F
• Mazda RX-8s seen: 7.
• Vasectomy reversal billboards seen: 7.
• Family members visited/seen: 16, in 4 cities
• Internet peeps visited: 5, in 4 cities.
• Longest day of driving: about 14.5 hours
• Shortest day of driving: about 6 hours.

I’m going to do up a map of our route, but here’s a list of the cities/destinations we hit, in the order we hit ’em:

1. Placerville, CA (spent the night)
2. Salina, UT (spent the night)
3. Keystone, SD (spent the night)
4. Mt. Rushmore
5. The Badlands
6. Wall Drug
7. Winona, MN (spent the night)
8. Aurora, OH (spent the night)
9. Lafayette, NJ (spent the night)
10. New York, New York
11. Wilmington, DE
12. North Brunswick, NJ
13. Philadelphia, PA (spent the night)
14. Centerville, OH (spent the night)
15. Laurel, MS (spent the night)
16. New Orleans, LA
17. Austin, TX (spent the night)
18. Las Cruces, NM (spent the night)
19. Aguirre Springs National Recreation Area
20. Santa Fe, NM
21. Counties just north of Santa Fe so Twon could check ’em off
22. Albuquerque, NM (spent the night)
23. The Painted Desert
24. The Petrified Forest
25. St. George, UT (spent the night)
26. Zion National Park
27. The Grand Canyon
28. Las Vegas, NV (spent the night)
29. Mammoth Lakes, CA (spent the night)

It was a long, busy trip! Twon says his road trips are sort of like sampler platters – you don’t really have enough time to see things thoroughly, but you get enough of a taste to know what you want to see next time. I’d say that’s accurate. We blasted through a bunch of places and saw lots of awesome stuff. It was a great time all ’round. I’m still getting pix up and captioned (I just uploaded a handful of panorama views I couldn’t stitch together until I got home) here. Enjoy!
I’ve wisely taken today and tomorrow off to get the apartment back into working order and to give myself time to recover, yay. But Wednesday, it’s back to the grind. Sigh.