Road Trip, 2002

One day in late September, a friend of mine from Denmark calls me up on the phone. He tells me that he'll be attending a conference in Roanoke, VA in late October and is thinking of driving across the country to visit me in Seattle. He also notes that it would be a lot more fun if I flew into Roanoke and joined him on the trip... So about a month later, I landed in Roanoke, VA and the following day we began our transcontinental road trip.

We quickly realized that there wasn't much we wanted to see back east, so after a day of trying to see through the heavy fog in Blue Ridge and Great Smoky Mountains, we stomped on the gas and headed west in a hurry. Two-and-a-half days later, we arrived in Williams, AZ (about 50 miles south of South Rim, Grand Canyon). I must admit that it did seem like we were running on a quite tight schedule... ;-) In hindsight, I realize that I would have liked to spend a lot more time in the midwest. But obviously hindsight is always 20/20, and my friend had a plane to catch from Seattle, so we had a pretty hard deadline to meet. The rest of the trip was a bit more relaxing with an average of "only" 3-400 miles per day. But what a great trip. It was awesome. An excellent idea.

Trip stats:

    Days traveled: Oct. 25 - Nov. 5.
    Miles traveled: 5600
    Number of states visited: 15

The route we traveled is outlined below.