R and J in the USA

We are sitting in our van on the shores of Lake Erie in Erie Pennsylvania. It is our last stop in state number 49 of our 50 states tour. Tomorrow, we enter into our 50th state and it is hard not to start to feel the rush of emotions and sentiment of something coming towards its natural end. Like all endings of something you have loved, it has a bitter sweetness to it. What is it about bitter sweetness that feels so good?

This has been the adventure and the experience of a lifetime. Every day has been a pinch me moment of, “I can’t believe we get to do this”. To bring that to a close is a bit more on the bitter part than the sweet part – but it has just the right amount of sweetness to it also. Part of what makes it feel like such an amazing opportunity is that it is a special experience that we always knew would come to a close at some point. It was never intended, for us, to be a lifestyle, but an experience and a memory we get to treasure and carry with us as an enrichment of our lives and lifestyle that follows.

And, it is also worth mentioning that it is, by no means, over yet. Even after our 50th state, we will close up our trip in our nation’s capitol of Washington DC, even though, route-wise, it is a little out of our way. We started our trip there for 2 days and we wanted to finish our trip there. There is so much of DC to see and there will be much of the trip to write about and reflect on, so we will have a very luxurious 4 days in one place there within which to do as much of both as we can. 

We have a tour of the Capitol Building scheduled. Even though we visited the Capitol Building on the first day of our trip, we didn’t go inside. We thought it would be neat to earn that by stepping foot into all 50 state capitols before. This is, after all, the United States of America, the nation’s capitol being a central spot of government for all 50 sovereign and united states, something we just learned (or perhaps, relearned) at Independence Hall in Philadelphia was a central component of the original design of the country in the eyes of its founders. 

And, we still have one more state to go, state number 50. It is a state that we happen to know quite well, it being the state that is our home state. But, like every other state we’ve visited and the people inside it we get to meet, just because you are from a state doesn’t’ mean you’ve been to all the places in it or even the places that tourists might make a point, specifically to visit, when they came through. There have been so many states we’ve visited where we’ve talked to local people about places we’ve been in their home state and their eyes have lit up with eagerness, “Oh, I’ve never been there!”. We know that to be the case in our own state too. Plenty of people from Rochester, NY have never been the 1.5 hours west to one of the wonders of the world, Niagara Falls. Just as many, if not more, have never traveled the 5.5 hours southeast to our world famous city. Just as many have never traveled the 3 or 4 hours to the Adirondacks or the 4.5 to the site of the 1980 Olympic Games, Lake Placid (one of our favorite spots). And, even though we have both traveled through the corners of our home state many times, we both have plenty of nooks, crannies and visit-worthy sites that we’ve never seen. Ryan has never been to the Thousand Islands on the St. Lawrence river at the northern tip of the state. For all of the tons of trips Julie has taken to Manhattan, Julie has never stepped foot on Long Island or seen the ocean at Montauk. There is plenty for us to discover in New York State, not to mention, a hope and an excitement to be able to see New York through new eyes. After traveling for almost 11 months, we hope to be able to lay our eyes on familiar sites but with the same mindset of curiosity, observation and discovery that we have brought to all of the other small towns, country roads and big cities we’ve seen across the country.  

But, still, with two weeks of the trip left to go (and another month after that before our renters leave and we can return to our house, a month we intend to spend decompressing and writing and reading on a beach), we still find ourselves starting to get reflective and sentimental about the impending close to this wild and wonderful adventure.

And, state 50 does feel different, not just because it is the last one of the trip, but, because, in many ways, there have been other “state 50” moments. In terms of states we had physically been in before this trip, well, Ryan checked state 50 off of his list when we entered Nebraska, our state number 25. Coming into this trip, he had already stepped foot inside of 46 states at one point or another. Of course, this trip was about more than just having been to each state, but having really gotten to know as much of the state as we possibly could. For Julie, she checked her 50th state to step foot into when we left our state 48, West Virginia.

Then, as far as this trip goes, state 49, in a way, was state 50. We started the trip leaving from New York and driving through it (and a handful of others) on our way to our official first state of Virginia. 

But, in the purest sense of what this trip is and what we are doing, we have only done 49. We have yet to discover the undiscovered parts of New York State. We have yet to run our 50th 5K or see our 50th state capitol. There is a caveat to both of those things. We will celebrate our New York 5K as our 50th even though we intend to redo our Maryland 5K. The race we signed up for in Maryland, we didn’t realize until we got there, was, technically a 3 miler. So, we’ll do another race in Maryland when we are in DC, just to make it officially 50 5Ks. Still, our NY race will be our 50th State race. As for state capitols, we only saw the outside of Connecticut’s. Before we land in Washington DC, we will swing back through Hartford to get inside, and we’ll probably swing by New Jersey’s too, since we only saw a teeny part of the inside of that one. 

It is bittersweet to look in front of us and see the end of the trip.

Julie LOVES living in the van. Ryan enjoys it, sometimes really enjoys it, and to some degree, is simply happy to have the experience for a short time. Ryan enjoys rooted living and the spaciousness of our home. We originally thought he would max out at 9 months in the van. We planned a 10 month trip. That 10 month trip turned into an 11 month trip. Ryan is still loving the trip and having a good time in the van, but he is also ready to be out of the van. There is much of van life that is modular. His “office” is a space that he has to turn into his office space every day. He is looking forward to simply walking into his office that is always there in our house. He can walk in and out of it and never need to put it in place or put it away. In a van, there are a lot of things that, to use them, you have to get to them by moving other things out of the way. He is looking forward to not needing to do that anymore. There are moments of accidentally misjudging the necessary bend between the house part of the van and the driving part of the van. He will not miss the expletives that burst out of him as another misjudged bend produces another thump of a cranium. There are moments of climbing over each other, leaning into each other, squeezing by each other, all of which are fun if the person you are squeezing by is someone you happen to quite like being close to, but Ryan will enjoy being able to stretch out and only squeezing together during moments of choice rather than necessity. 

Julie is more at home in a modular and small space and isn’t as much bumping into frustrations that have reached a time limit of tolerance as Ryan.  But there are still features of home and the stationary life that Julie is looking forward to again – her garden being number one, two and three on that list. 

And of course, friends and family, the space and time to stretch out for routines, the freedom from needing to drive somewhere between 1 and 6 hours most days of the week. There are lots of things to look forward to on the other side of this trip.

But, the thing to look forward to the most, perhaps, is getting to have the memory of this trip, in its entirety swimming in our brain. At every point on this trip, we have the joy of being on it, and that has been pretty great, and not something we have particularly wanted to end. But there is a new and special something produced by getting to remember the trip as a whole that requires finishing it to truly savor.

This is one, among many reasons, we (especially Julie) wanted to have this trip happen all at once. Julie wanted to be able to have a muscle memory of the entire country as part of one whole memory and experience. It is a particularly special viewpoint that, perhaps, at one point in our post trip writings, we’ll get around to attempting to articulate. It is different than just having been in each state at one point throughout our lives as we’ve experienced to lesser degrees before this trip. Coming into this trip, Ryan’s tally was 46 and Julie’s was somewhere in the mid 30’s. And having had those experiences were great, but this is different. To get to experience the country as one whole place, to actually have a physical and connected memory of it in that way, well, it’s definitely one of the sweetest parts of the bittersweet time of bringing the trip to a close.

We know our blog is mostly here for our own ability to savor and remember the trip long after it is done. We know there are not a ton of folks reading it, but for those that do, we wanted to be able to share our good fortune of being able to have this experience. Everybody’s life circumstances are different and afford them different opportunities and limit them from others. We feel fortunate that our life circumstances have allowed us to have this experience. While traveling the country, it seems that near everyone we met has been, at least, enchanted by the idea of traveling all 50 states and, at most, expressing their own desires and hopes and dreams to someday do the same. We are hoping that, though our reach is small, that documenting as much as we could manage of our travels might give a vicarious experience for those that might want to have this experience themselves but, for whatever set of reasons, it hasn’t been in the cards.

It is not time, yet, to feel fully reflective and fully nostalgic, but here, sitting on the shores of Lake Erie, having already closed the loop of our driving path on the first days of the trip towards Virginia, here just outside the western tip of our home state in a place where, the last time we were here, we were pointed west with 40 states to go, here at this place where we once were headed west and are now headed only east for the rest of the trip until we close it up in Washington DC, there is a realness to the proximate end of the trip where nostalgia and reflection seems appropriate and inevitable.

Tomorrow, we head to state number 50. We are no longer pointed west. We are on the homestretch and headed home.