Day 19 - July 20, 2020

Ah, home is where the cat is. And he was very happy to see us.

Today, we started out on the east side of Louisville, which gave us an advantage for the drive home. Unfortunately, the people above us enjoyed stomping around all night - making it difficult to sleep even with our sound machine on. Oh well....we thought getting a first floor room was a good idea, but I guess it has its downfalls. At least we didn't run into any people on the way out.

Our only real stop today was in Lexington, KY. We liked it better than Louisville, but to be fair to Louisville, we didn't see it in the daytime. We stopped at Mary Todd Lincoln's home and then headed to a brewery - those were the only two spots on Trip Advisor that seemed good to me. We just took outside pictures of the home and we split a flight at Ethereal Brewery and all their beers were great! They were also super cautious with COVID - wearing gloves and masks and using sanitizer when preparing a customer's order. Now that we are at the end of our trip, we are seeing stores require customers to wear masks regularly - even WalMart did today during one of our pit stops! It doesn't seem like anyone was enforcing the rule at WalMart, but it seems people are finally starting to relent and give into wearing masks.

After the brewery, we went to Joella's Hot Chicken - which had a vegan chicken plate. I rarely get to enjoy chicken restaurants with other meat eaters! It was pretty tasty. You get to choose the heat level of the chicken. I picked one of the spiciest ones and I think I could have gone hotter. The mac and cheese was also good. I would recommend it to anyone wanting to try spicy chicken in Lexington, KY.

The rest of the ride home was mostly driving, with a few pit spots to break up the driving. Amazingly, it rained more today than it did on the whole trip! We were very lucky to have sunny days for almost the entirety of our trip!

We avoided West Virginia on the way home (we've already been there and they charge tolls) and saw more of the Appalachians in Kentucky and Virginia. We got home around 9:15 pm - just before it got dark.

If you were wondering why we visited the states we did, it is all so that we can officially say that we have been to every state in the country! Would we say that we have really VISITED every state? No, but we have at least passed through every state. I would say that I still need to visit: Delaware, Mississippi and Kansas. Ian still needs to visit these states plus Michigan.

Both of us were really amazed at how awesome Utah was. I lived in Arizona most of my life and never even thought about Utah. I would definitely go back there and take my time visiting the National Parks. We also thought Wyoming and Montana were surprisingly beautiful. We considered visiting Glacier National Park in Montana, but it would have been a substantial detour and we saw so many glaciers in Alaska.

Neither of us experienced any COVID symptoms and we strongly believe it is a result of keeping to the rules we set out at the beginning of this blog. Yes, we didn't go to museums and other places that would require wearing masks for a great length of time, but we saw some amazing sites in the great outdoors. We got some amazing tans as a result!

These our some of our favorites on the trip:

Favorite state: Utah (Runners up: Montana and Wyoming)

Favorite attraction: Arches National Park (Ian) and Yellowstone (Amber)

Favorite big city: Milwaukee, WI (Runner up: Boise, ID)

Favorite unplanned stop: Arches National Park and Bonneville Salt Flats

Tomorrow, we plan on going through all the pictures and will report some more reflections on the trip - including calculations of the total cost (because I'm always curious about those things and maybe you are too!)

But for now, here's one little factoid from our trip - total miles driven: 7,698 (from pick up at airport to arrival back home). Good thing we got a car with unlimited miles!

Lexington, KY:

On the road, heading back home:

Home:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AM8zLKmFBL0