23,000 miles, 4,259 photos, 110 days, $9,500, 269 videos totaling 2 hours of footage, and a lifetime of memories.
What if I told you this trip cost us less than $.050 a mile?
This trip only cost us $0.41 a mile! No, that last one is a statement not a question. That’s for serious! Granted the trip was 23,000 miles long! It was definitely worth every penny! The trip actually ended up lasting 110 days. Our plans, though originally set almost hour by hour, changed to not knowing where we were going day by day. We didn’t skimp on things we really wanted to do like going to the aquarium in Atlanta or eating BBQ in Memphis. However, we did sacrifice on, in some instances, living conditions (though not safety) and when food was not a local specialty must-have we’d eat non-parishables we brought along from home.
We had a few road trip songs; I would say there are about 3 that really touched our hearts. Home by Phillip Phillips, Home by Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros, and Would You Go With Me by Josh Turner.
Fast forward to today…
Now we are just trying to find our place. Figure out what God wants for us in this new season. We are working on some books. Hashing out some business ideas. We’ve applied for an 11 month mission trip with the worldrace.org. We’ve applied for and gotten jobs. Entered back into the “real world” as some would call it. Though we will always remember when we blew a mattress up in our car to see if it would fit, spray painted cars, hiked through a national forest and came face to face with a gator, rode a ferry by the statue of liberty, put chains on our tires to cross the great divide, stayed with strangers and made new friends, rode a Gondola at Veil, watched whales migrate south, camped in our car, had an allergic reaction to poison oak, hiked 6 miles round trip into the second largest canyon, had coffee at the original Starbucks, visited the Baseball Hall of fame, chilled in a hot spring, climbed a fence to get a better picture of a leopard, tried to eat breakfast in Mexico, snuck into a golf club to shower, left my wallet in Vegas, traveled the USA in 110 days…
This short video only has clips from some of the trip! Not even all of it. We took over 200 videos with almost 2 hours of short clips from around the country, picked some of our favorites and condensed those into 2.5 minutes.
Keep checking back to the blog! There are two more posts from the trip. There will be other videos to be posted from the trip as well!
Don’t count the days. Make the days count.
The Great Race West East began. We had 5 days to get from Seattle to New York. Luckily our friend wanted to make his way to Montana too, and so he drove the whole there. We had to stop and put chains on our car to get over the Great Divide… but aside from that terrifying drive it wasn’t as bad as expected. The expected being that we wouldn’t be able to drive on hwy 90 at all in a compact car, all attempts would be fatal. The whole drive to Montana the boys talked in a Canadian accent. As a matter of fact, Adrian kept the Canadian accent for the rest of the trip through the Northwest, and every time he called a hotel he spoke in said accent.
To pass time we played yahztee in the car (yes, imagine this). We found gas at the cheapest price (2.69) in South Dakota. I was really excited that we were going to get to see Mount Rushmore, after all; something I’ve dreamed of doing since I was a child. Still a little sad that we had to miss the Grand Canyon, the Redwood forest, tons of things in San Francisco, Adrian’s skiing in Colorado just because we had to get back in time to pick up the car. I didn’t even get to spend as much time as I would have liked admiring the sculpted President’s. It just means we will have to take a more detailed Northwest Adventure trip in the future ; )
As we left Mount Rushmore, Adrian laid his seat back to take a nap. I entered highway 90. Cruise control set on 69mph in a 65mph zone. I passed a police officer in the fast lane, out of respect I turned my cruise control off and dropped to the legal speed limit. Other cars around me are going much faster, a white car in front of me was speeding much faster than I as we got closer to a 75mph zone (which only a local would know was up ahead). Then the police officer pulls out. Typical of my nature I panic, which I do every time a cop pulls out. I wake Adrian and he asks if I was speeding? Well, 4mph over. Then he’s not going to pull you over.
The lights come on… I look behind me. I get over to let the cop pass. He pulls behind me.
Is he seriously pulling me over for 4mph over?
Moral of the story, don’t speed at all in South Dakota. They are bored. They will pull you over. I didn’t get a ticket, but I did waste 45 minutes of my time. You see, I get upset at just the thought of getting pulled over… so then I start talking a lot. About EVERY THING. That poor police officer didn’t know what he was getting into. I am shaking compulsively, talking his ear off… he knows my whole family history and every thing about the road trip.
Because we were pulled over and wasted so much of our time we decided to get a motel. We stopped at a place in MN… sketchy. I am not sure if it was a hotel or someones shed built onto a home. LOL.
You know it is a long trip when you are reminiscing about the trip you are still on.
I have found that the spiritually mature look nothing like the world’s typical adults who have lost their hopes, dreams, passion and vision and are looking to finish their days in quiet retirement. -Outrageous Courage
After staying at the shed we finished the trek to Albany. It was nice to see family, some for a second time on the trip.
Feb 17
This gallery contains 63 photos.
Oregon was a stunning drive. We were worried there would be snow on the road in January. The warm weather has kept it at bay. All we saw was the immense volcano off in the distance. The drive over the lake was extraordinary through Shasta National Forest! There was some fog but it never hindered […]
Nov 17
This gallery contains 27 photos.
Chicken in the Car and the Car Won’t Go… What’s that? Chicago. Our time in Dayton, Ohio was finished, it was time to make our way up North to Chicago. The time we planned to spend there was going to be short, and we were way out of budget so we needed to be cheap. […]
Ashlee Karin 