41 States Down... 9 to go!

Heyyyyyy everyone!

Remember when I did this blog post titled How Many States Have YOU Visited??? Well, if you remember, my answer was 41. To recap for you, the states remaining for me are as follows:

4. Arkansas
16. Kansas
23. Minnesota
24. Mississippi
25. Missouri
27. Nebraska
35. North Dakota
36. South Dakota
50. Wyoming

As I am not an acclaimed writer, my foreshadowing skills are pretty lacking. I pretty much told you to wait for this blog, and then I never posted it. Whooooops! So, here we go... why is it important to know that I only have 9 states left? Mainly because in just a couple months I will only have TWO states left to visit in the ENTIRE United States.

Let me back up here a little bit. A couple years ago, my friend Laura and I were talking about how fun it would be to do a road trip and we kept calling it the "8 states in 7 days" trip. I had wanted to visit some of the states in the middle of the country, since those are mainly the states I am missing on the map. Laura is pretty much game for anything, and also eventually wants to complete the 50 states, so we just kept talking about it. Last February we went on our first LONG road trip to Florida... this is pretty much where we determined that we would NOT kill each other on a long road trip.

Time went by, Laura, another friend Kristi and I went on a cruise for vacation instead last year. No driving, only relaxing. Couldn't do the trip in 2012 because I was still new to my job and only had a little bit of vacation time...

More time went by and we decided that we were going to plan that trip for sometime in 2013! We had a lot to think about when we wanted to go... we didn't want it to be tornado season, we didn't want it to be cold, I didn't want it to interfere with a family vacation if we were taking one, etc. etc. etc. Soo... we came up with two times of the year... spring and fall. I leaned more toward fall, but Laura had a family thing going on then, so she was leaning more toward spring. One day, I told her that I couldn't wait until July before having a vacation, so we decided to take our trip in April! Hey, if it's going to be a 30th birthday trip for me, it might as well happen during my birthday month!

So April 19 we will begin our journey and we return to Richmond on April 29. We increased the number of days... you know what that means?!?! That's right, we can hit more states! Now, what you all have to remember when I talk about this trip, is that it is mostly about QUANTITY and not quality. We are not vacationing to a resort, we are not playing golf, we are not laying on the beach... we are driving through and eating/going to the bathroom/hiking whatever in as many states as we possibly can in the set amount of time.

Pretty much the main tourist attraction that we want to hit is Mount Rushmore, and I think that will be the most interesting thing we see from about Day 2- Day 5... I think we'll try to hit up the Mall of America, too, which I think is somewhere in Minnesota. So that will be cool, and I pretty much know that Laura is going to drag me onto the roller coaster! In the course of the trip we will hit the below crossed out states (not in that order) plus some others!!!


4. Arkansas
16. Kansas
23. Minnesota
24. Mississippi
25. Missouri
27. Nebraska
35. North Dakota
36. South Dakota
50. Wyoming


We bought our plane tickets, so the trip is definitely happening... what do we still have to plan? EVERYTHING else!!! I mean we have a general idea of how we're going to go... driving Missouri -> Kansas -> Nebraska -> (maybe Iowa) -> South Dakota -> Wyoming -> Montana -> North Dakota -> Minnesota -> Wisconsin -> Iowa -> Missouri... Nowww... you can see that on a map below in Trip A. Please note that this is 31 hours of driving and 10 states...

Trip A - This is the PLANNED route

Knowing Laura and myself, if there is a chance that we make it to Minneapolis and we still have two or three days left and enough energy to make it... we may alter the trip slightly...  see below for Trip B. This is NOT the scheduled trip, and would be a bonus, but we would add in Chicago and see the Bean which would be the third tourist attraction that we plan to hit up. This is 38 hours of driving and 11 states...

Trip B - This is the add-on route if we decide that we have enough time and energy

Crazy? Maybe... Tiring? That's pretty likely... Fun? HECK YEAH!

PS If you would like to make us a playlist for our roadtrip, we would totally accept that! :)