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We drove through 46% of the US states on one trip

My wife and I just completed a three-week journey around a chunk of the United States. What started as a plan to visit family and friends in Boulder, Colorado and Albuquerque, New Mexico, expanded to cover 23 states, two countries, and 19 separate attractions, spanning 7,200+ miles of travel.

We got incredibly lucky with weather (generally gorgeous, only really too hot in Cincinnati), health (no colds or COVID for either of us), crowds (minimal), and the car (no accidents and no issues). It was an excellent trip; here's a view of the overall route:

(When we entered Oklahoma and then Arkansas, I crossed off the last two states on my list—I have now visited all 50 states. I though I'd get this done years ago, but it just never worked out until now.)

After our family and friends visit ended in Albuquerque, we started the real tour, heading east to Memphis, then generally northeast to Niagara Falls, and then back due west to Portland. Along the way, we stopped at 18 separate attractions—monuments, museums, an amusement park, a zoo, tourist traps, and even a tennis match. I'll post separately on the logistics of this trip, as we learned a fair bit that might be useful to others planning something similar.

But if you're interested in what all we saw, here's a chronological list with links to the Flickr albums associated with each attraction:

(One attraction doesn't have an album: We took the Ford Rouge Plant Tour, where we watched them assemble the F-150 truck. There are a couple pictures from one spot in the plant in the Ford Museum album, but you weren't allowed to take pictures on the floor.)

Finally, there's a small set of photos from things we saw during our travels. In a future post, I'll talk about the attractions a bit more—which ones surprised us, tips for visiting, etc.

In total, our "on the road" figures were 6,851 miles covered in 120 hours—106 of them driving, and 14 of them eating, filling up the car, etc—for an average highway speed of 65mph.

In addition to the on the road miles, we drove 430 miles in the cities we visited, bringing us to 7,281 total miles. We were driving a Toyota Camry Hybrid that averaged 41.7mpg, so we used 174 gallons of gas.

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4 thoughts on “We drove through 46% of the US states on one trip”

    1. Rob Griffiths
      Reply

      No - even as good as Tesla's network is, this trip wouldn't have been possible on our timeframe in any electric car, save possibly a max-range Lucid. We had several 650-700 mile days, for instance. And we had some days with tight timing between events that would have made charging impossible.

      As an example, our first day was 725 miles, and it took 13 hours. On Tesla's trip planner, using the base Model S (406 miles of range), this would've taken closer to 15 hours, and I don't think that accounts for the super high speeds in Idaho and Utah. In addition, we'd then have to charge to 100% somewhere at our destination ... plus the possibility of full chargers requiring a wait, or broken chargers, etc.

      Basically, taking the trip in an electric car would have added a whole bunch of variables that would have made the logistics incredibly stressful, and they were already stressful enough :).

      We took our car, a Camry Hybrid, which averaged 42mpg over the entire trip.

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