Well this will be a little different for a trip report for me in a little while. I am going to try to update on a daily/bi daily timeframe. I am about to set foot on what some would think would be a stupid trip. I have a goal to visit all 50 states in the USA and over the last few years i have slowly ticked off quite a few. As they dwindle down it gets a little harder each time. These days I am down to single digits and it makes it difficult to get them. They are kind of spread out and they are also the states that are not that interesting to me. I like to think of them as the flyover states. So i tried to look for a way to get as many of them as possible. I also promised a friend I would come visit him out in Raleigh in 2016, so a plan started to happen.

Originally I was going to fly into Raleigh and take my time driving up to Cincinatti. Why? Well Cincinnati’s airport is in Kentucky, one of the states I have not been to. Then add on the fact that between Raleigh and Cincinatti is West Virginia, another states that I need and a plan was set. However when time came to book all this, i couldn’t get flights to work to get me home from Cincinatti, so I took the option of expanding out in a circle the drive. First it was the surrounding cities.. nothing. then i went out further, nothing. I stretched out to Chicago and it was bare. So I started to think, what if I took it and did something Crazy? I could add two more states by driving to Omaha in Nebraska (adding Iowa on the way). It was possible (not great, all day driving) but it could be done. It would be just me, 8 hours a day in a car but I could do it and get 4 states out of the way dropping me to 6! It was stupid, but why not!

I tagged on a trip to Southern California with the wife for Mid winter break and I added in some fun for myself in the process. Flights to SoCal were horrific (hello holidays) but I found cheap fares to Orange County. They also had availability for an AA F redemption to Raleigh, allowing me to add a new airport a new carrier (since I haven’t truly flown AA yet on RPT) and also a new aircraft, for me, the MD-80. Plans were in motion. I booked the car turn around from SNA and kept my eye on it for a while. By the time the trip came around I had all the hotels worked out and everything neatly in its place.

It would be a messy trip but this is what it would look like for me:

My trip to add 4 new states

The big gap in the middle will be me in a car! Here I sit in SeaTac airport getting ready for the first segment So keep an eye on the website, my facebook/twitter and this is going to be interesting!