Description

Here’s what happened and what I learned from our cross-country road trip in August of 2019

Highlights

• 6,800 miles in 26 days
• Enough time to form some new habits and perspectives in new places which was interesting
• Off for the month of August 2019
• Ending “unnecessary suffering”
• Trip was inspired by a conversation with my ACS classmate Karen Ahlquist combined with several upcoming trips
• Knowing how much it costs us to live and knowing exactly how much we have at any time made it much easier to decide to do this
  • YNAB (You Need A Budget) software to manage our finances has been a game-changer
• Having just enough of a plan
  • The tension between planning or not planning
• We made a big loop and drove through the following states (see maps below)
  • Oregon
  • Idaho
  • Wyoming
  • Nebraska
  • Missouri
  • Tennessee
  • North Carolina
  • Kentucky
  • Ohio
  • Michigan
  • Illinois
  • Wisconsin
  • Minnesota
  • South Dakota
• The result of simply being for the first week or so–reading and listening to very little
• Things that went well or paid off
  • Prepared a month in advance
  • Physical/paper maps
  • Got our van serviced a few weeks before
  • Long driving days and days of no driving
  • If there was nothing to do or see that interested us after arriving at a location
    • we moved on
    • got us a few days ahead of schedule to do things we wanted to
  • Stop before it’s too late in the day so there is time to wind down before going to sleep
  • Making decisions on a full stomach
  • Seeing a place in person
  • Stopping at all the information places to find good camping
  • Leaving early in the day makes it easier to wrack up the miles and cover more distance
  • Stand-alone GPS unit (always had coverage) highly recommended
  • Costco
  • Thule box on the roof to hold camping gear and free up a ton of space in our van
• Living in the present vs. the tension of knowing what we would do the next day
  • Sometimes choosing in advance
  • Sometimes making it up the next day
• Next time
  • Write a few bullets each day after dinner to capture what you seen and where you’ve been
  • A better way to pool and manage all of our pictures
  • Taking a few pictures every day

Return Route

Credits

• Hallon by Christian Bjoerklund
• Cold Funk by Kevin MacLeod
• Photo credit: My odometer

All songs licensed under Creative Commons

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