Cross-Country Trip Wrap-Up

Shane with Silvia, our Volvo, that took us on our trip, standing on a corner in Winslow, AZ... Such a strange sight to see.

On February 4th, 2020, Shane and I set off to drive across the USA in our Volvo XC-70 station wagon. We started from our island in Maine, Stonington, and we traveled through 23 states and DC, returning to our home yesterday, March 1.

Places We Visited: Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Arizona, California, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, Virginia, Washington, DC, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, and Connecticut. (The states underlined are ones I had not been to previously.)

Miles Traveled: 7,906

Here's the whole route.

Click map to enlarge.

Below are some photo highlights if you want the Reader's Digest version of our trip and don't want to bother looking through the last 4 weeks of posts -- some photos are new and some already published on this blog.

Niagara Falls, NY

The St. Louis Arch

In front of Harry Truman's house in Independence, Missouri.

With our sister-in-law, Laurie, in Kansas City, Missouri.

The Scout statue in Kansas City, MO.

Dodge City, Kansas

The Grand Canyon

Hiking in Sedona, Arizona.

Shane walking across the scary Devil's Bridge near Sedona, AZ.

Cleaned bird poop off of  Tippi Hedren's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

And the Oscar goes to... Shane!

That tiny white speck over Shane's right shoulder is the famous Hollywood sign.

In Santa Monica, California, near the Pacific Ocean.

Relaxing in Palm Springs.

At the Alamo.

Dr. Now's office in Houston, Texas, shown on the TV reality series, My 600 Pound Life.

Mardi Gras Sunday in New Orleans.

With our friend Ashley on Beale Street in Memphis, Tennessee.

In front of Elvis's home Graceland in Memphis, TN.

Outside the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville.

At Monticello, Jeffersson's home outside of Charlottesville, Virginia.

Days 26 & 27 - More Mom & then Heading Home

We spent Saturday with my mom. It was really a rest day to prepare for our last leg of our trip. My niece Megan came over in the evening, and my sister Kathleen (her mom) visited and we made pork chops for dinner. Megan is getting married in the spring and it was great to catch up with her. Earlier in the day, my older brother, Gary, stopped by also.

Today, we left a little after 6 am from Rising Sun, MD, and we are heading north. I'm writng this on my phone in the car on the NJ Turnpike. We are hoping to get back to Stonington before sunset. it will be good to get home. I've had enough of riding in the car. The last few days with this cold has not been fun either.

Right now as I publish this it is 7:50 am and we are at mile 87.4 of the NJ Turnpike. We are streaming Sunday Morning Coffeehouse on WERU. Will update with news later.

Update: 8:10 am: passing NYC.

Update 8:45 am: As we enter Connecticut, we have returned to New England! Only about 7 or 8 more hours to go...

Update: 10:39 am

Update: 12:14 pm

Today's Final Update: WE MADE IT HOME!!! We left Rising Sun, MD, about 6;05 a.m. this morning and arrived home in Stonington, Maine at 3:45 p.m. That was record time for us... 9 hours and 40 minutes. We have never made it back from my mom's in under 10 hours before. It has taken more than 13 hours before when traffic was bad. It was a Sunday and there was no traffic, so we flew. Shane drove the whole way Thank God, cause I have this F'ing cold that makes me feel like crap. Below is us in our driveway with the Atlantic Ocean behind us. The journey is complete. 

Now we get to do the fun part of unpacking and we have loads of laundry to do, although we did do some laundry during our travels. We are so happy to finally be back home. Dorothy was right. There is no place like home. Below is the map of our travels today.

Day 20 - To New Orleans and Mardi Gras Sunday

Today we traveled from San Antonio, Texas, to New Orleans, Louisiana, which took about 8 hours. We did a quick stop-over in Houston to see the office of Dr. Younan Nowzaradan, also known as Dr. Now, an Iranian-American surgeon, TV personality, and author. He specializes in vascular surgery and bariatric surgery. He is known for helping morbidly obese patients lose weight on the TLC reality television series My 600-lb Life. We are huge fans of that show... no pun intended.

Shane was worried he cheated on his diet too much and didn't make his weight goal this month.

I hope I have finally lost enough so that Dr. Now will perform my skin removal surgery.

We finally made it to the Big Easy after some bad traffic near the hotel. We immediately went out to the nearby Mardi Gras Parade to collect beaded necklaces. We luckily found lots of them discarded in the street.

Finally found Waldo.

Stopped in to hear some music.

Shane had a job interview while we were in town

There is a house in New Orleans, it's called the Rising Sun. 

We had a great dinner at Muriel's... Shane had Shrimp and Grits and I had the Pork Chops.

I believe this guy was in the Dick Tracy comic strip.

We went back to this club after dinner and heard more from another band.

It was quite crowded and the aroma of pot and puke mixed in the air. We decided to call it a night.

Day 18 - Traveling Back East Via El Paso, Texas

Today was not a fun vacation day for Mark and Shane. It is Day 18 of our cross-country trip, and it was our first long drive toward the east. This was really the first leg of a long way back. It is a bit daunting. We left Palm Springs, Calif., this morning around 8 a.m. and we made it to El Paso, Texas, around 7 p.m. We drove through western California, the entire state of Arizona, the entire state of New Mexico and into Texas. It was about 10 long hours of driving, and we lost an hour by going east from Pacific time to Mountain time.

Today's route from Palm Springs to El Paso via Interstate 10.

There are some beautiful mountains and deserts we drove through today. I love the giant cacti driving through Arizona. We passed time by listening to music and to an audio book. Today we started David Sedaris's book, Theft by Finding, which is his diaries from 1977 to 2002. It is about 14 hour long, and we listened to more than 5 hours today. I does make the trip go faster.

Below are some of the scenery we got to see on our drive.  All these shots were taken from the car along the way today.

Just of a few of the countless large cacti in the desert along I-10 in Arizona.

The flat valley of the eastern part of Arizona has scenic mountains all around.

This was on the opposite side of the highway as the mountains shown above this photo. 

These rocky features were in Western New Mexico I think... it kind of runs together in my mind. 

One of the worst things about driving across the country is the pebbles hitting our windshield. Every so often we hear something hit the windshield and then we scan to see if there is damage that needs to be repaired. We already had to make one stop in Kansas on our way west. We had several scares today, but so far so good. Our car as a really expensive windshield and getting it replaced, which we already had to do once before this trip, is a royal pain. 

Another interesting thing we saw on our trip today were small brush fires along the highway in eastern Arizona. I could understand seeing one or maybe two, but we say six or seven small fires along the road, which made me wonder why there were so many separate fires all within several miles of each other. 

We stopped to eat fast food for breakfast and lunch and then checked into a Holiday Inn outside of El Paso and had dinner in their restaurant. To offset the fast food we did have salads for dinner. 

Tomorrow, we have more driving to do. The plan is to go deep into Texas and get to San Antonio tomorrow. which should take about 8 hours. Stay tuned.