Our wonderful trip together has come to an end, as I am writing this from a nice hostel Mexico City and Lucy is in the sunny Australia, relaxing (hopefully) with her mom. We had a great time together, traveled a lot, met very nice people, seen amazing places, and had to go through the stressful roads of California with their frustrated and crazy drivers that have no clue about the car’s lights or turn signals, or speed limits. I appreciate all the time spent traveling with Lucy and I learnt a lot about not spending my money on fast food, missing some of the pricey tourist traps and staying health with vitamins and fresh veggies. We’re grateful we didn’t get any disease, or flu, or had any health problem on this journey.

The second part of our trip (the West Coast), was more about the natural parks and less about the cities. We fit most of them on our trip, except for a few we though worth visiting: Zion and Bryce Canyon in UT, and Glacier NP in Montana. Maybe some other time, on some other occasions. We also skipped the Southern States, which I would love to see some day (thinking here mostly of Louisiana for New Orleans, Florida for Key West and Miami, and Texas for San Antonio).

The road so far(previous statistic here):
– drove more than 15000mi (7500+ on the East Coast and Canada, 7540 the loop from AZ)
– spent 19 days in Canada and 147 days in the USA
– drove through 31 states of the USA (NY, NJ, PA, MD, DE, VA, NC, TN, KY, IL, MO, KS, NE, IA, IN, WI, MI, ME, NH, MA, RI, CT, AZ, UT, CO, NM, WY, ID, OR, CA) + Washington DC
– spent about $3700 each:
in the first part of the trip it was mostly for gas, but now the expenses for food are only $30 behind. Surprisingly, we had a lot of other expenses in total of $700 – plane tickets to AZ, National Park pass, other transportation fees or taxes, and a lot of little things we needed
– we bought the car for about $1200, added spare parts and other necessities up to $1750, and barely sold it for $530. The total cost of only the car (without gas, insurance and parts included) was $1230, about $200 cheaper than a compact/eco rental car for the same period of time, minus the risk of paying outrageous money in case of a failure of accident
– on average we spent about $20/day/person for the first part of the trip, but for the second part it was $33.3/day/person, or $22/day/person without the car costs

We met a lot of welcoming and amazing people who helped us on the way and took their time to show us around their cities. However, the USA people in general are keeping to themselves and maybe shy at first, or distant. But only till you know them, and then it feels like they’re taking you into their family, with equal rights. We want to personally thank everyone who hosted us, or gave us tours or helped us even with the smallest things (that can mean a lot when you’re on the road).

PS1: I will be moving all the pictures from the previous posts to Google / picasa. Extra storage is quite expensive
PS2: The following posts will be more rare due to the lack of internet, the risk of pulling up the tablet in the public, and the more time I will use enjoying myself. That also means there will be more pictures, probably unsorted.