So we started our adventure with a road trip of the mighty USA. We had been to the States a few times so knew the main tourist hot spots (New York, LA, Los Vegas and San Fran). However a road trip would show us a lot more.
So we hired the cheapest van we could find (picture below) and started our journey. As you can see, it is just a van, and that is all. No mod cons here. Most nights we camped in the car park of Walmart. Free accommodation, security, food right there, toilets too and all we had to do was look out the window and watch the people who walk in and out of Walmart and we had entertainment too! Interesting folk those Walmart people.
Driving on the right hand side of the road was fun. Sometimes I made it fun for the other people by trying to drive down the left hand side of the road. Anyway, we survived.
We traveled 12,000 miles in Gracie (the vans name) and treated ourselves to a motel every 5 to 7 days (tried not to spend more than $50 per night). As you could imagine after a week on no showering we stunk and it was a necessity.
The map below shows the route we took. I did all the driving, my gf did all the navigating. We only missed like a million turns. “Oh, you need to turn right” “When?” “The last exit” “Grrrr”
Highlights of the trip were:
• Colorado – beautiful area even outside snow season
• Florida – We love beaches and their beaches are awesome. Helping the matter was it was spring break and girls tend to like to wear their bikinis to the beach at this time of year…
• Arizona – Grand Canyon and heaps of big red rocks. Bit of a nerd when it comes to this stuff.
• Louisiana / Alabama area – very green and big beautiful trees. Also love the way people talk down there. Could just sit there and listen to them read the newspaper.
• Yellowstone Park – Awesome. Weird stopping your car and then having a few dozen buffalo walk past you.
• San Fran – Always loved this city, still do. Could live here if it wasn’t so cold.
Lowlights:
• **** the drive through Nebraska was boring as bat ****
• Having to use public bathrooms is always fun
• Not showering makes you feel icky
• We went out of our way to see the Augusta Golf Course and you can’t see **** unless you go in to the golf course, and you can’t just go in. We saw someone drive in and the security checks the cars trunks.
Ask any questions you like. I have nothing to hide.
Here is a bunch of random photos...
Easily my favorite photo we took. Yellowstone Park
A place to crash if you don’t mind confined spaces
Walked past the car close enough to touch
California sunset
My sport idol. One of my biggest unserious disappointments in life is not seeing him play live.
Florida Beach
Also there is no chance that you are getting pics of my gf so don’t bother trying. All other photo requests will be taken seriously. We took thousands of photos.
Poker bit:
I played some poker when we were in Vegas. We stayed for two nights.
Brags: Won $300 and plenty of free beer.
Beat: Gf lost $400 playing slots and blackjack.
Variance: Sat next to a bloke who I started chatting with and he actually said the word “lol” when I said something funny. I think he realized what he did was stupid pretty quickly and started talking about something else straight away.