Road trip

I made it.  3 days and 2221 miles later, I'm in Gainesville.  I had planned on doing this in three parts, each night updating on how that day's voyage went.  This turned out to be a little over-ambitious.  Turns out I get really tired after 14-16 hrs of driving and am not really in a blogging mood.  So, you're getting a 1 post overview of the trip.

Day 1: Orem, UT - Lincoln, NE

 

Literally the only thing in Sinclair, WY

To save some money, I reserved camping sites in Lincoln and then Nashville.  I pulled into Lincoln at about midnight MDT.  The RV park was nice and it was good to get a warm shower.  Didn't take long before I passed right out.


Day 2: Lincoln, NE - Nashville, TN

Metropolis, MO...Population 6,000

Ohio River

I don't have any pictures of my entering Tennessee because it had gotten dark and I didn't want to try and take a picture from the side of the freeway with cars rushing by at 75 mph.

Now this is where the trip goes a little off-track.  As I said, I had reserved a campsite in Nashville.  It was next to J. Percy Priest Reservoir and I was excited to spend a night next to the water.  Well, when I got to the campground at 11 PM, guess what greeted me.  A locked gate across the entrance.  Yep, the campground had been locked down for the night.  Nobody in the guardhouse.  It wasn't like the campground was closed.  There were RVs there, but there was no way to get in.  There's no local phone number posted, just the one for the national reservation service.  So, I called it at 11:11 CDT, and the office had closed 11 mins prior.  Awesome.  So, here I am, 600 miles from my destination, tired, stinky, with nowhere to sleep.  I drove around the bay looking for another campsite but there was nothing.  So, I made an executive decision to go ahead and plow through the night and just get to Gainesville.

Day 3: Nashville, TN - Gainesville, FL

Sunrise outside Atlanta, GA

Atlanta

I made it!!

Barring a 2 hour nap somewhere in TN, I drove through the night and got into Gainesville at about noon on the 31st.  Sorry there weren't more pictures from this stretch, but there's not much to see in the dark.  1 of the disadvantages of driving through the night.

Thoughts on the trip

1. The United States is HUGE, amazingly varied, and beautiful...
2. Except Wyoming.  Sorry people from WY, but that was the ugliest state along the trip.  Bleak, brown, and barren.
3. Surprisingly enough, Nebraska was my favorite.  Maybe I just caught it at the right time of the year, but it was beautiful.  The corn and grain fields were the most gorgeous shades of green and they stretched on as far as the eye could see.  The towns were small and quaint.  Very Midwestern.  I wish I had taken more pictures.
4. When you're really tired, you are able to sleep in very uncomfortable positions in a cramped, fully packed car.
5. Human butts are not meant to sit for 40 hrs straight.  It's still a little numb.

So, anyways, that's my trip.  I'm here.  Safe.  Now the search is on for a place to live...

The Drive

I know it's a few weeks away, but I'm anal...and a planner.  Maybe a little too much of a planner, because I have recently been looking at my upcoming drive to Gainesville, plotting my course, calculating where to fill up/spend the night, etc.

So, here's the route...

In case you are wondering, that's 2,221 miles of freeways, highways, and byways.  I have never driven that far before.  Google says it's going to take 36 hours.

So, like I said, I've been trying to figure out how far I can go on a tank of gas so that I know where to stop to fill up.  I went through and calculated each leg on Google Maps, adjusted distances, found nearby cities, blah, blah, blah.  It wasn't hard, but it took me a little bit of time.

Then I decided to see if there was a website out there that would tell me where I could find the cheapest gas.  Turns out there is.  www.gasbuddy.com.  So, I started working my way through each city I would be stopping in to find the best gas prices.  After 5 cities, I discover that the website has this very handy tool.  A freakin trip cost calculator!  That does just what I had been doing manually over a couple nights!  Seriously internet.  Is there anything you can't do??

Put in your starting point, destination, car year, make, and model and it spits out this little guy.

How cool is that?  I think I'll have to have a cooler stocked with highly caffeinated beverages and make plenty of stops to stretch...but I really love road trips.  I love to drive.  I love the open road.  It gives you a lot of time to just clear your head and think.  Plus, there's not much better way to see the country.