Tentative Spring Road Trip!

With the graduate school process fully in process, I will be making some campus visits to my finalists sometime in the spring. I’m not 100% on the dates yet, but I think I have mapped my course. Call me crazy, but I’ll be rolling five campus visits into a 3-4 week road trip across this great country of ours, and by the time I am done, I will have set foot in around 44 states!* Part of the reason for the trip will be to see some old friends, but it will also be part of a larger attempt to cross something off my life’s to-do list.

*Looks like I’ll still be short Alaska, Kansas, Louisiana, Minnesota, North Dakota, and Tennessee, though I do claim to have flown through Minnesota once upon a time.Unless I decide to start earlier to catch a Ben Folds Five concert at Lake Tahoe, my trip will probably revolve mostly around the (unconfirmed) Student Investor Day at The Motley Fool sometime in March. I have a friend that plans on going to that event, and I have a school to visit in the area (the University of Maryland) and a sibling that lives there (Hi Jen!), so I figured I’d kill a few birds in one trip.

My various stops along the way will most likely be primarily to sleep, though I will have to spend some time writing at each stop along the way. I do have bills to pay after all. The current plan is to wake up in the morning each day, diligently write for 4-6 hours, see the local sights (if applicable), then hit the road for the next exotic locale.

Without further ado, this is my plan as it currently stands:

Day One – Drive from Home to Seattle – because I’ve never been to Washington State
Day Two – Drive to Portland
Days Three and Four – Portland State visit and a visit with my old friend Asa
Day Five – Drive back to Salt Lake – makes the most sense in the context of the trip
Day Six – Drive from Home to Denver 
Day Seven – UC-Denver visit in the morning, then drive to Santa Fe – never been; might grab some meth
Day Eight – Drive through Albuquerque to Oklahoma City – will probably swing by the Oklahoma City Bombing Memorial or something
Day Nine – Drive through Dallas to Little Rock – plan on seeing the Bill Clinton Presidential Library. Hooray!
Day Ten – Drive through Vicksburg, Mississippi to Montgomery, Alabama – want to see if I can stir up some Yankee trouble at a famous Civil War battlefield.
Days Eleven to Thirteen – Drive to Orlando
Days Twelve and Thirteen – Hopefully, I’ll get a chance to see my Army friend Maya. If not, I’ll check Florida of the list.
Day Fourteen – Drive to Fayetteville, North Carolina – I have a couple of Army friends in the area, so I’m going to try and see them/get a free place to stay for the night. I admit I’m a user
Day Fifteen – Drive to Alexandria, Virginia  
Days Sixteen to Eighteen – See the sights, my sister, the aforementioned Student Investor Day, and University of Maryland visit.
Day Nineteen – Drive to West Lafayette, Indiana
Day Twenty – Purdue University campus visit, then drive to Champaign, Illinois
Day Twenty-one – University of Illinois campus visit, then drive to Sioux City, Iowa
Day Twenty-two – Look for the old Eberhard homestead, then on to Mount Rushmore in South Dakota
Day Twenty-three – Look at the fancy carvings in the mountain and bum around for the day
Day Twenty-four – Drive back to Salt Lake City, thus completing over 8,000 of driving and an estimated 134 hours of drive time.

That’s how it stands currently, and at this point it’s all very tentative. It would be fun to have someone with me, but everyone I know isn’t as flexible schedule-wise, which is fine. If there is a leg you would like to accompany me on, however, just let me know and we’ll figure how to get you to/from departure/arrival points along the way.

Until next time…