Road Trippin'

I found this cool site tonight that lets you make a map of all the states you've been to. I have a running list in my head, but I never realized that I've been in every state west of the Mississippi until I saw it on the map!


Looks like I need to head east, doesn't it? Try it yourself!


It's kind of cool to think that all of these states have been clocked on my adult tripometer. Darren and I are both Road Trippers. If we can drive it, we will. It started in college. Every once in a while, we'd close our eyes and put our finger on the Texas map... and that would be our destination. One time, we saw Waurika, OK on the map, and started wondering what the town's daily paper might be called. This was pre-Internet. We couldn't just Google and find out. The only way to get our answer that night was to hop in the car and drive. So we did. On the way, we stopped for our favorite road trip snacks: "party dried apricots" and Twizzlers. We arrived in Waurika in the wee hours of the morning, found a coin-operated newspaper stand, and were dismayed that the Waurika News-Democrat was sold out. But we had our answer, and that was enough. We turned around and drove the 3 hours back home.

Darren once drove from Casper, Wyoming to Denton, Texas in one 19-hour stretch, stopping only for gas and food. Last summer, we drove to Winnipeg, Manitoba and back in 5 days. We drove straight there, visited a dear friend for fewer than 24 hours, and drove straight back. About 12 years ago, we were camping in New Mexico when we decided that, what the heck, we'd go camp at the Grand Canyon. We left Holy Ghost Canyon (up above Santa Fe) at 8 o'clock in the morning, drove across New Mexico, through the Painted Desert, into Flagstaff and up to the Grand Canyon. We arrived just before dusk, and had roughly 45 minutes to see what we could see and set up camp. Only there was one major problem: no camp sites. They were all taken. How silly we were! So we snapped a few pictures, and found ourselves back on the road, looking for a motel vacancy. By the time we found one, we were 150 miles down the road, and almost in Colorado. The next morning, we decided to visit 4-corners and head into Colorado. All that driving for 45 minutes of Canyon. And yet, we didn't regret it.

We once flew to New York City, rented a car, and spent 7 days doing a Fall Foliage Tour through New England. Had time permitted, we'd have driven to NYC to begin with. Another time, we flew into LA, rented a car and drove down to San Diego, then up the coast to San Francisco, then out to Yosemite and back to LA for the flight home. Awesome trip. In college, I took a road trip with friends from Denton to Seattle. It took us 3 days to get there. It was while I was in Seattle and Darren was back in Denton that he first told me he loved me. I was on drunk on love for the rest of that trip. My great affection for Seattle probably has more to do with Darren that it does with the city itself!

I have the itch to drive again after traipsing down Memory Lane tonight. We'll sorta do it this summer in Ireland. We're flying into Dublin, but then we'll spend 2 weeks in the car, driving from town to town, Road Tripping like we always do. I wonder if they sell party dried apricots and Twizzlers in the Emerald Isle