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Miscellaneous
    Lessons learned, most & least favorites and other tid-bits.

Lessons Learned:
  • Have some sort of theft protection for your car.  We found out the hard way about this in St. Louis.  Imagine being 4 days into a 3 week trip and having your vehicle and everything in it stolen!   We were VERY fortunate. (We bought 'The Club' for the rest of the trip!)
  • Don't sweat the delays.  On a trip if this magnitude, delays are inevitable.   At first it was hard to accept but after the first week when we experienced 2 major delays (St. Louis & New Jersey), we learned that being flexible and accepting delays made for a much more enjoyable time.
  • Because of the possibility of delays, a day or two of buffer should be planned in at the end of the trip.  We had one day and we used it.  Without it, we would have been much more stressed about getting home.
  • Plan lots of things to do in the car while driving.  We had a TV/VCR, CD players, books to read and draw & color in, activity books (which Becky made to be specific to our trip), snacks, drink cups for each person, etc.  We also rotated seating arrangements often.  Anything to break up the monotony.
  • Vary your accommodations.  We had a good mix of hotels, camping and staying with friends & family.
  • Vary your activities.  Don't always take the tour that is offered.  If possible, go on your own and at your own pace.  Include some 'fun' things (like us going to a baseball game) along with the sightseeing, etc.
  • Reserve your hotels through Priceline.com!  We stayed at the Hilton Hotel in St. Louis for $35 a night!  We paid no more than $50/night at any of the 3 and 4 star hotels we reserved through Priceline.com.  The downside to this is that they are pre-paid so plan this into your 'buffer'.  If we had not had a pre-paid reservation in New Hampshire, we would have stayed another night at Ron & Jean's in Massachusetts.  Another good reason to vary your accommodations.
  • Along with the sights, make sure you take pictures of friends & family you might stay with.  For example, we just can't believe we didn't any pictures with Brian's childhood friend in Iowa!  Really dumb!
  • Above all, plan, plan plan!  We spent 6 months planning this trip and even though we learned some lessons along the way, the planning paid off.  If you know what you're going to do and when (being flexible, of course), you won't be wasting much of your time trying to decide what to do.
The Marathon Drive
The drive from St. Louis, Missouri to Washington D.C. was a long one.   16 hours.  We left on the afternoon of July 8th, drove through 7 states, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia, Pennsylvania & Maryland and arrived in the morning of July 9th at Allison & Shane's in Gaithersburg.   Although it was long, since we had 3 drivers it wasn't as difficult as we had imagined it would be.  It just left us exhausted for our day in Washington.
Things we wished we had done:
  • Go to the top of the Gateway Arch.  At the time it seemed too much money but later on we wished we had done it.
  • Visit the Canadian side of Niagara Falls.  We were not able to pull together all of our birth certificates before we left.
  • Arrived in time to go in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
  • Had time to drive to Maine.
  • Took (more) pictures of friends & family we visited.
Favorites:
Least Favorites & Bad Memories: