Brothers Across America – Wrap-Up

I was hoping to have the entire map here, but it seems that my margins prevent it from being the way I want. If you want to see the full map, just click on the link at the bottom of the map to see where we went. 

All told, Billy and I drove over 6,800 miles over the course of our 23-day trip. I spent over $1,000 in gas along the way, and probably $800 more in hotels. Throw in what we ate for food and everything else, as well as the money I had to spend to fix my car in Virginia, we probably did the trip for just under $3,000. Not too bad in my opinion, and if not for having to replace my brakes, it would have been even less.

Along the way, we saw a few interesting things, but nothing that hasn’t been shared already. The cheapest gas was found just outside Memphis, Tennessee, while the most expensive was just down the road a bit in Brundidge, Alabama, and we averaged $3.94 per gallon for the premium that my car requires. Speaking of my car, Pamela averaged just over 26 miles per gallon for the duration of the trip, doing well in Pennsylvania and not as well as we drove against strong winds in the Midwest. She’s going to be sitting for a while in recovery, especially considering that she needs an oil change and other various work done after her long trip.

The goal of the trip was to see the country, and I think we achieved that. We missed some places along the way, and the map paints a better picture of some of the places that we missed. Nevertheless, we did pass through or stop in the following 28 states (the ones in bold were new for me), leaving me with only a handful that I have not yet seen:

• Colorado
• New Mexico
• Texas
• Oklahoma
• Arkansas
• Tennessee (for a few miles)
• Mississippi
• Alabama
• Florida
• Georgia
• South Carolina
• North Carolina
• Virginia
• District of Columbia (not a state, but we were there)
• Maryland
• Delaware
• New Jersey
• New York
• Connecticut
• Massachusetts
• Pennsylvania
• West Virginia (briefly)
• Ohio
• Indiana
• Illinois
• Iowa
• Nebraska
• South Dakota
• Wyoming

For me personally, there are now only seven states that I have never graced with my presence: Alaska, Louisiana, Kansas, Michigan, North Dakota, Oregon, and Washington. I plan on taking care of the Pacific Northwest sometime in the next few months, and the others sometime over the next few years. I want to do a trip like this again, maybe seeing some Civil War battlefields in 2015 or something, but we’ll see what happens.

Thanks for following along on our little trip. If you haven’t done so already, I encourage you to see more of your country. You might be surprised what you find or how much it makes you appreciate where you are from.

Until next time…