It's Been Six Months!

Wow, its already been six months since we left Bellevue, and what a six months it has been!

In Review

We started out by heading north, driving through the heart of British Columbia, up the Cassiar Highway into the Yukon Territories. We did the whole circuit of paved roads in Alaska, from Fairbanks, to Anchorage, via Denali National Park. Next we headed down the Kenai Peninsula, and Kenai Fjords National Park, then over to Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Valdez, before heading back out the Alcan Border. We took a short detour down into Skagway on our way back through the Yukon before returning down the Cassiar Highway. We stuck to the coast on the way down, taking a ferry from Prince Rupert down to Vancouver island, returning home for a short time before continuing on.

In Oregon, we attended a wedding and then quickly headed east to catch another wedding in Washington, D.C. two weeks later. We took almost the most direct route through Idaho, Wyoming, and Nebraska before reaching the geographic center of the lower 48 states in Kansas. We'll be returning to Idaho and Wyoming when touring the west, and are content with what we've seen of Nebraska and Kansas. From Kansas, we continued through Missouri, Indiana and Ohio before running into a bit of trouble in West Virginia. We did make it to our second wedding in Washington, D.C. and explored Virginia, Maryland and Delaware before heading north.

After Delaware, we quickly headed north to see what we could and then get back south before winter caught up to us. We stayed in a few national and state forests in Vermont and New Hampshire on the way to Acadia National Park in Maine. The journey south was more leisurely as we drove along the coasts of Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut. We went inland to see Shenandoah National Park in Virginia, before returning to the coast in North Carolina. 

Our first cold winter-y nights caught up to us in South Carolina of all places. We went inland once we hit Georgia and took a central route through Florida, where we spent Thanksgiving and thought we'd spend most of December. Our plans changed as we coordinated a family Christmas gathering in Austin, Texas. We explored the parks of southern Florida before rushing up the gulf coast, through Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana to make it to Texas for Christmas. 

After Christmas, we went back east, exploring Mississippi and Alabama before returning to Atlanta. From there, we flew to the Dominican Republic. Since returning from the D.R. we've wrapped up the last parks in the eastern states in Tennessee and Kentucky We are now in Memphis, TN finishing up a few blog posts before heading on, back to the west.

The numbers

We both love numbers, so here's a few that we've been keeping track of on our trip:

20,273 Miles Driven
1555 Gallons of fuel used
35 States visited (Plus D.C. and the Dominican Republic)
10 National Parks Visited (Not including Los Haitises)
5750 Dollars spent on RV repairs
4 Oil Changes
2 Blown tires
32 Walmart parking lots
8 Cracker Barrel parking lots
2 Cabela's parking lots
14 Sets of friends and family visited
7 Sets of friends and family staid with

What's Next

Probably the most surprising numbers above for a half way point is the 10 national parks visited. At the most recent count there are 62 national parks (White Sands in New Mexico was made a national park in December). This is mostly due to the distribution of parks in the United States. There are 24 parks in California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico, all states that we have not yet visited. Alaska also has a lot of national parks (eight) but we had to limit ourselves to the three that we could drive through. We'll visit the others on another trip. 

Our next park will be Hot Springs in Arkansas before make a trip through Oklahoma and Texas to reach Big Bend. From there, we may try to stay on this optimal route. However, since we need to save the northern parks for the summer, we might try to hit all of the southwest parks while we are down there, even if that's not "ideal" distance wise. Our route for the next few months will still have to take into account the weather.

We're also hoping to start doing posts that are less about specific things we are doing and more big picture. If you have any questions about our trip or our life style we would love to hear them. We'll probably do a question and answer blog, or if we get some longer questions, they might even get their own posts. Send us questions if you have them!