And finally…at last…the end is near…

We would like to dedicate our final post to Will’s mother Ruth for coming up with the idea and encouraging us to take this amazing journey!

Some quick stats and our favorites:

• Total mileage: 10,621 miles

• Time spent in the car: 8.47 days (203 hours and 7 minutes)

• Most spent per gallon: $3.09 in Winthrop, WA on 11/06/09

• Least spent per gallon: $2.41 in Richmond Hill, GA on 12/15/09

• Total spent on gas: $1,093.47

• Favorite city: Livingston, MT … though we enjoyed every stop
  • The runners-up (in no particular order): San Francisco (CA), Sedona (AZ), Colorado Springs (CO), San Antonio (TX), New Orleans (LA), St. Louis (MO), Louisville (KY), San Luis Obispo (CA) – it was hard not to list every city!

• Favorite restaurant: The Space Needle Restaurant in Seattle, WA

• Favorite breakfast(Aside from all of the wonderful home-cooked meals): Pine State Biscuits in Portland, OR

• Favorite dinner(Again aside from all of the wonderful home-cooked meals) : K – Couldn’t think of her favorite – too many good choices; W – Macadamia nut encrusted Mahi Mahi at The Chart House in La Jolla, CA

• Favorite pizza: Zachary’s in Oakland, CA

• Favorite view: Highway 1
  • The runners-up (again, in no order): Cascades National Park (WA), atop the Gateway Arch (MO), the Red Rocks in Sedona (AZ), the Golden Gate Bridge (CA), Highway 90 through Montana

• Favorite National Park: Too close to call, here’s our top 3 (no order): Yellowstone (WY), Arches (UT), and Redwood (CA)

• Favorite bridge: The one we took along Highway 1

• Best argument: The Grand Canyon – based on the sole fact that Will did not want his elbow’s space on the center console infringed upon by Kathleen…getting up early that day didn’t help…and neither did being within arm’s reach of each other for 40 (or so) days at that point!

• Favorite unplanned stop: Colorado Springs (CO) and The Garden of the Gods (with Cascades a close (K) / distant (W) 2nd)

• Biggest disappointment: Carlsbad Caverns National Park (NM)

• Most shocking: Only traffic jam we hit was in San Diego on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving

• Favorite state: California (a little bit of everything)

• Least favorite state: You guessed it…Kansas (a lot a bit of nothing)

• Favorite souvenir purchase: an 8″ statue of Kokopelli

• What we collected: laser-etched 3-D glass paperweights, beer glasses, and postcards

• The absolutely greatest quote of the trip: the idiot behind us at breakfast in Austin (TX)

• If distance from wasn’t a factor, where would we want to live: W – couldn’t pick just one: Livingston (MT), San Francisco (CA), San Luis Obispo (CA), Colorado Springs (CO); K – same as W plus San Antonio (TX)

• Favorite brewpub: its more of a brewery with an attached restaurant – Stone Brewery in San Diego, CA

• Favorite hotel: K – Homewood Suites in Seattle, WA; W – Comfort Suites in Fort Stockton, TX

• Total states driven through: 24 (includes NC); we slept in 17 (excludes NC)

• Funniest moment in the car: Seeing the mini-Tonka truck alone on the bed of a tractor trailer

• What we learned from this trip:
  1. We have lots of return trips to make
  2. Always drive AROUND Kansas
  3. The Pacific Ocean may be prettier, but less fun than the Atlantic (its always cold even in the summer)
  4. With all we’ve seen, there is still so much of our great country to tour!
  5. We are absolutely, totally, completely still in LOVE!!!

We have been busy getting all of our stuff ready for our move to Greensboro.  We are moving it all tomorrow and will do the final post later this week.  So far, we’ve got some ideas on what to write about but we need more!  Stuff like: favorite view, best meal, worst / most boring drive, etc.  Please leave any suggestions on what you want to hear in the comment box.

Wow.  What a trip!  We’re holding off on the sum-up post, so this one is about our stays in Florida and Georgia.

From NO we drove to Panama City, FL to stay with a friend of Will’s, Ray.  He was living there for 3 months on an internship to study sharks in the Gulf of Mexico.  While there we just laid low and hung out for the evening.  The next morning, He and his girlfriend (Cora) took us this breakfast place called “Andy’s Flour Power.”  Kathleen and I shared a croissant loaded w/ eggs and all the other good breakfast stuff and French Toast – both were very good.  After breakfast it was back to the road for another 8 hours to Vero Beach to see Will’s grandmother, Meme.  So, thanks Ray and Cora for keeping us company for our short stay in Panama City.

In Vero Beach we went shopping and briefly saw the Atlantic.  On Saturday, we watched our alma mater, Appalachian State University, play in the 1-AA football playoff semifinals…we lost.  Meme also took us to her club for dinner with some of her friends.  It was fun and the food was delicious.  Kathleen ordered ribeye and Will ordered duck – both good and for the first time we didn’t want to share.

After Florida it was on to Georgia.  While there for two nights we stayed in Will’s grandmother’s house in The Ford Plantation (in Richmond Hill, GA).  Our main activity here was just enjoying the last couple days of our amazing trip.  We had a very nice meal at the clubhouse and ended our trip the way it started – by drinking “Irish Monkeys.”  We also rode bikes along a dike that surrounds a former rice paddy.  We love Ford and it was a great place to end our trip.

Now, we are just getting settled back into Charlotte.  Soon, we will move to Greensboro.  We have been told we will need to blog about our grocery shopping so family has stuff they can read about while we are gone – sorry, that ain’t happening!  We will probably have 2 or 3 more posts in store.  A main sum up post and we are hoping readers will ask questions in the comments section that we’ll answer on the here, too.

From the song “Lucky” by Jason Mraz and Colbie Caillat.  We thought they seemed relevant:

I’m lucky I’m in love with my best friend
Lucky to have been where I have been
Lucky to be coming home again

Heading home tomorrow – It has been a blast.  A bit more to come in a couple days.

Ah, “The Big Easy.”  What a blast.  Sorry we have been a bit burnt out with the blog – but we’re back…and just in time for the work week to start (blog hits double during the working hours – slackers!).

Our trip to NO was a long one – over 9 hours if we can remember correctly.  We booked our hotel through Hotwire.com.  It was a 4.5 star hotel a block from the French Quarter called Le Pavillon.  It was incredibly nice…too nice, actually.  We arrived after dark and promptly checked in so we could lay down for a bit before dinner.  After a quick nap, we got all dressed up and ate dinner in the hotel’s restaurant.  Kathleen had a steak and Will ordered the meatloaf.  It was a nice (and expensive) meal but worth it since it was good food and incredibly convenient.  Then we were able to get some much needed sleep to prepare for our big day walking around the French Quarter.

We woke up, grabbed our bag, and hit the streets to explore everything the French Quarter has to offer.  We began our journey by having breakfast at the Cafe du Monde.  There we had their famous Cafe au Laut and Beignets.  We didn’t care for the coffee (though we aren’t big coffee drinkers) and the beignets were tasty even though we thought they were just oddly-shaped funnel cakes.  From breakfast we spent the remainder of the morning exploring Decatur Street.  We started by walking around Jackson Square.  Here, artists lined the street selling their beautiful paintings – a bit pricey for our budget unfortunately.  From Jackson Square we ventured into the various shops and stopped by the Moonwalk (it looks like a set of stairs descending into the Mississippi River).  We also walked through the French Market and bought a couple of a retired Marine’s pencil drawing prints.  Lunch quickly snuck up on us so we backtracked to the Central Grocery.  Here, we ordered a Muffuleta and a Root Beer to go and we carried it up to the water for a great view while we shared this very olivey sandwich.  After a quick bite to eat, it was back to the streets.

We continued walking – this time down Bourbon Street and on each of the connecting streets between Bourbon and Decatur.  Along the way we stopped inside a Voodoo “museum” where we paid a steep price of $10 to look at two small rooms filled with dolls and other voodoo artifacts.  We also stopped in Pat O’Brien’s, the local Irish pub, for a drink.  We looked at their famous “Fire & Ice” fountain but were less than impressed.  After walking back to our hotel, we informed Kathleen’s sister we didn’t love the fountain and we were ordered to return after dark…

After walking all day, we laid down and took great naps.  We awoke to darkness and knew it was time to venture out and find some authentic New Orleans cuisine.  The concierge recommended a place called “Mother’s.”  Here we ate a combination plate of Jambalaya, seafood gumbo, white beans & rice, potato salad, and greens (the beans & rice were our favorite).  From here we walked to Bourbon Street to see how it was different at night.  Once at the mouth of the beast, it quickly became evident that it was the place to go.  People were crowding the sidewalks, neon lights line the street, and to-go beers were seen everywhere (legal in the French Quarter=awesome!).  We visited a few places, mainly Pat O’Brien’s.  Here, the fountain lived up to its reputation.  A fairly large fire shoots from the top of the fountain and the water is lit by different colored lights – mesmerizing!  On our way back to our hotel, we stopped and picked up some “Huge Ass Beers” to-go.  We chose the locally brewed Abita and it came in a 32-oz cup – more than enough for our mile walk to the hotel.  Once at the hotel we thought the staff would question us about who we were and if we were legit guests of the hotel – we didn’t exactly fit in with our giant beers!  The hotel has a tradition of putting out PB&J sandwiches nightly and these were a great compliment to our beers!  After quickly snagging a few sandwiches, we went up to our room (unquestioned we might add) where we quickly fell asleep.  All-in-all, we walked more than 10 miles and saw enough to make New Orleans one of our favorite stops of the trip.

After NO we drove to Florida where we have been until today (12/13/2009).  We are currently in the town of Richmond Hill, GA (not far from Savannah) and will lump FL and GA into one post once we return home on Tuesday.  Once we get settled back in and relaxed we will put up a few follow-up posts about our trip (if anyone has anything they would like us to write regarding our experience, please let us know!).

We have been slacking off in our posting recently and we PROMISE there will be a post on New Orleans tonight.  Stay tuned!  Go Panthers!

After driving over 800 miles through Texas and spending a night in both Austin and San Antonio, we are exhausted!  We stopped in Austin to stay with some of Kathleen’s relatives.  They showed us around town where, unfortunately, we weren’t able to see much due to the foggy weather – we saw a lot, just couldn’t see far.  We drove to the Congress Avenue bridge to see the largest urban bat colony but it was too cold for them to leave the comfort offered by the bridge.  And though we didn’t get to see any bats, we could easily smell them!

After the attempted bat viewing, we went to Chuy’s (pronounced Chewie’s) for a very good Tex-Mex dinner.  Chuy’s is a local chain with eclectic decorations and very good food.  We shared a chicken burrito.  For dessert, our hosts (Mark and Karen) insisted we try the tres leches cake.  It was very tasty and we ate way to much of it.  Next, we drove around and saw a bit of the University of Texas campus – the clock tower was lit up orange due to their big victory over the University of Nebraska to send them to the National Championship game just a day before – but its not really a National Championship unless there are playoffs!  Also, thanks Mark & Karen for taking us in for the night, showing us around town, and treating us to some of the great food that Austin has to offer!

The next morning, before heading to San Antonio, our hosts took us to breakfast.  Here, Kathleen ordered Breakfast Tacos and Will ordered Pecan Pancakes – both were delicious!  It was here where we heard one of our favorite quotes of the trip from a very picky man at the table behind us.

“What would you like, sir?” asked the waitress.

“I want eggs over easy but I don’t want no liquid.  And I want two pieces of toast, but I don’t want ‘em toasted” muttered the man.

“So, you want bread then?” asked the incredulous waitress.

The man responded, “I guess.”  And after his eating partner declined his request to share a waffle, “And I would like 1/2 a waffle please.”

All in all, it was quite a hysterical few moments listening to this guy place his breakfast order.

San Antonio, only 90 short miles from Austin, was one of our favorite cities on our trip.  It is a big city but the downtown doesn’t feel like it.  The Alamo was neat (Will was a bit disappointed); we loved walking around El Mercado – the largest Mexican market outside of Mexico; and we fell in love with the Riverwalk.  We walked around this all night and stopped at the various bars and restaurants along the way.  Each offering a different type of food and drink and all are located right along the waters edge…it was very very fun.

We checked out early to hit the road for the long drive to New Orleans, LA.  We left at 9 AM and didn’t arrive in N.O. until after 6 PM.  Tomorrow, we plan on walking around the French Quarter.  We are sad our trip is coming to an end, but we have had so much fun documenting our adventures on the blog.  We are glad everyone is enjoying it as much as we are.  And to those of you who haven’t signed the new “Guest Book” page, please do – we know you’re there since there are currently only 7 comments yet we’ve gotten over 150 hits since we created the page…

au revoir

While we make the long journey across Texas to New Orleans, please visit our new page entitled, “Guest Book.”  Regardless of if you have commented 20 times or 0 times, please leave a message there.

And, we’re back.  104 pictures.  We hope that makes up for the recent photographic drought.  There are a few doubles in the album – flash on / off.  We either couldn’t pick the better photo, or we thought that each method of taking the picture captured something different within the cave.

We spent the night in Roswell, NM (on the way – roadkill #2, a bird) and got up to go see some of the quirky alien stuff.  Our first stop was the Alien Zone.  It cost $1.50 each and we took some ridiculous pictures with their many “Alien Scenes”.  It was entertaining but did not tell about the “Roswell Incident of 1947″ like we hoped.  Our next stop was the International UFO Museum & Research Center.  This museum had tons of newspaper clippings and affidavits about the supposed alien landing that the government claimed was just a weather balloon.  Many of the buildings and businesses have some sort of hokey connection to aliens.  For example, the Arby’s sign says “Aliens Welcome”, the McDonalds playplace was in the shape of a spaceship, and the Wal-mart building has a painting of a spaceship on the outside.  After staying in Roswell a bit too long, it was on to Carlsbad to see the caverns.

Sadly, our much anticipated visit to Carlsbad Caverns National Park was a big letdown.  We were both really looking forward to seeing the cave and hiking down to it.  First, we arrived 20 minutes too late to hike to the cave by the natural entrance and we had to take the elevator down 750 feet to the cave floor.  The cave was so big that it did not feel like you were in a cave at all.  They had lights illuminating many of the interesting formations. It was neat to see all the stalactites and stalagmites, especially where they have joined and formed columns.  However, there were very few informative signs in the cave.  They offered a “Guided Audio Tour” for purchase but at other national parks that we visited the park signs contained enough information for us.  In the 1.2 mile loop of the Big Room there were about 25-30 numbered posts that you could listen to the audio tour to find out what you are looking at.  We just were not impressed with Carlsbad Caverns – to be fair, it was partly because we were upset that we missed out on the hike in by 2o minutes (Will read the the time wrong yesterday when he looked it up- he thought the last time was 2:30 but it was actually 2:00) but we felt the guided audio tour was necessary to really enjoy the cave.  Also, we both agreed that Linville Caverns outside of Boone, NC is a more interesting cave to visit.

Our new estimated arrival is December 17th – we keep finding ways to shave off days since we are just about ready to get home.  Tomorrow, we hit the road to Austin and San Antonio, and then, we’ll drive all the way to New Orleans where Hotwire.com currently has some pretty sweet deals.

And, thanks again to Kathleen’s dad for donating more of his hotel points tonight!

Another ho-hum day of picture taking.  Its not for a lack of effort, but rather very very cold temperatures.  Frozen fingers are a strong motivation to take less pictures.  Regardless of the lack of pictures (there are 19 ) we had a good time in frigid Santa Fe.

We woke up and drove to the train depot where we bought our niece a Christmas present (good thing she can’t read yet – or, she couldn’t when we left).  Then we drove to Canyon Road.  This has the most art galleries per square mile in the country besides New York – 240 we think.  It was neat seeing the different sculptures and paintings that looked like photographs.  After about 45 minutes of walking around, Will quickly became tired of looking at $6,500 paintings and sculptures worth more than $120,000.  After the short walk back to the car, we drove to the Plaza area.  Here, we ate at the San Francisco Street Bar and Grille.  We split some chili hummus for an appetizer then had one of our favorite sandwiches of the trip: a turkey club with avocado and a ground chili spread – it was so good.  From there we stopped at a trading post as well as a strip where some Indians / Native Americans were selling some of their wares.  We were amazed they could withstand the temperatures in the teens.  Kathleen also bought some more presents for the holidays – but we can’t elaborate…

From there, we drove to two different stops on the unofficial chocolate tour: Kakawa Chocolate House and The ChocolateSmith.  At Kakawa, we ate two truffles (chai dark chocolate & Bailey’s dark chocolate) along with 2, 3 oz mugs of hot chocolate.  Will thought everything was great and Kathleen agreed (except she isn’t a big fan of truffles).  The hot chocolate was called “Zapote” and was unlike any hot chocolate we’ve ever had.  It was a mixture of unsweetened cocoa, honey, and ground chilies.  It was mixed with a bit of water and was very thick – almost like “drinking a brownie” as Will would say.  It also had just a hint of heat to it…very good.  At the ChocolateSmith we just tried a small piece of dark chocolate and a dark chocolate truffle.  Both were very good, but we enjoyed the chocolate with the Meso-American twist to it more.

After sustaining a nice chocolate buzz, we hit the road to Roswell.  On the way we drove through what looked like a blizzard but was really just the wind blowing the snow from the fields – reminded us of the Arizona dust storm we drove through.  Tomorrow, we plan to hit an alien museum and then see Carlsbad Caverns National Park.  Hopefully, we’ll be able to find a bar that is showing the ASU vs. Richmond playoff game (its on ESPN Gameplan and 7 pm ET for anyone who may be interested).