And while we’re on the topic of statistics, although it started off as a kind of sad commentary on modern life, it’s actually becoming a road trip tradition in our family to count Walmart trucks. One which began on our honeymoon. The funny thing is we only saw 51 on our entire 4,365-mile honeymoon road trip. Last weekend, we saw 55 on our little 574-mile road trip… and 35 of those were on the way there!

Pictures after the break.

[View with PicLens]

Pictures are here.

Our approximate route is here.

Day 4 brought us up to St. George, UT. On the way, we visited another cool little city, Mesquite, NV. Today, the plan was originally to visit the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. That was before we saw that the drive is over 5 hours… each way! Obviously that’s why most people visit from the south side.

So we decided to alter our plans a little and hit the Grand Canyon on the way back into AZ. Instead, we made our way to Grand Junction, CO. On the way, we saw Zion, Bryce Canyon and Arches National Parks.

• Total distance driven: 4,365 miles.
• Number of states driven through: 17, not including the District of Columbia (MN, IA, MO, IL, KY, TN, GA, FL, SC, NC, VA, MD, PA, NJ, OH, IN and WI).
• State capitols driven through: 7, once again not including D.C. (Des Moines, IA; Nashville, TN; Atlanta, GA; Richmond, VA; Harrisburg, PA; Madison, WI and St. Paul, MN).
• Most expensive gas seen: $4.19 somewhere in PA.
• Number of Wal-Mart trucks seen: 51.
• State with most dangerously conservative drivers: Iowa.
• State with most dangerously insane drivers: Florida.
• Money spent on tolls: somewhere in the $30-40 range… stupid northeast.
• Philly cheesesteaks consumed by yours truly: 2.
• Number of viscious sea gull attacks resulting in loss of pizza: 1.

Our full approximate route can be seen here.

Pictures can be seen here.

Similar to the Batman ride (which we rode on twice and loved), where you’re hanging from the track, the Superman ride throws in an extra twist. Just before it starts, the chairs spin you forward 90 degrees so you’re facing the ground which, as the name would indicate, gives the illusion that you’re flying like Superman. I thought it was a blast but Denise, not so much.

And as long as I’m apparently reviewing rides, the Raging Bull has to be the freakiest roller coaster I’ve been on so far! The only disappointment of the day is that the new Dark Knight coaster was just days from opening! We’ll have to come back for that one.

Anyway, we left around 5:30pm and drove a few hours up to Baraboo, WI, near the Wisconsin Dells.

Day 14 Route

The big highlight of the day is that I got to cross another fast food joint off my list of chains that I had never been to, Fatburger. All in all, quite tasty.

Day 13 Route

We spent the afternoon today touring the Gettysburg battle site. The overcast, rainy weather matched the eerie feeling I got. The entire battlefield area seems virtually untouched since 1865 except for the monuments littered everywhere. It looks exactly like every picture/painting/movie I’ve ever seen of it. It sounds very corny and cliché but walking around out there you can almost see everything happening before your eyes and imagine what it must’ve sounded like.

After spending a few hours there, we headed west on a very picturesque drive through the mountains of western Pennsylvania. A few hundred miles later and we’re in Cleveland, OH.

Day 12 Route

We spent the day and afternoon hanging around Atlantic City. Among the highlights, Denise getting attacked by seagulls! Turns out the seagulls on the Boardwalk are fairly aggressive, to say the least. This is mostly because the little old ladies (which AC is FULL of!) insist on feeding them, despite the signs posted everywhere that explicitly instruct you not to!

Anyway, I unfortunately missed this whole episode but here’s how it was described to me. She was bringing her slice of pizza down the Boardwalk to meet up with me for lunch when she felt a tapping on her shoulder. She thought it was either somebody or something bumping into her shoulder but she turned only to find a very gutsy seagull sitting on her shoulder! Before she could react he had made a grab for, and got, a pepperoni off her slice. When she got to where I was, she was almost in tears. Don’t worry, she and I can laugh about it now. Well, I do anyway…

When we’d had enough of AC, we took a long leisurely drive (partly to avoid tolls) up to Philadelphia and across half of Pennsylvania to Gettysburg.

Day 11 Route

After walking what had to have been at least 5 miles yesterday, we got kind of a late start today. Once we got going, we headed towards Independence Hall. Since we were in Philadelphia and in need of sustenance, I just had to have a real authentic Philly cheesesteak. And there just happened to be a famous place right across from the parking meter we found called Sonny’s Famous Steaks. I ordered up a “Classic”… a cheesesteak with Cheez Whiz and fried onions. It was absolutely delicious!

After lunch we walked a few blocks to check out Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell. This kind of stuff has been especially interesting to me since I finished watching (and really enjoyed) the HBO John Adams mini-series right before the wedding. Before heading out of Philly, we just had to check out the Rocky statue. Ok, that was totally my idea but I dragged Denise along. We got our pictures with it too but I can’t really upload it yet since we’re once again without highspeed internet access. What is this? The 90s?!

Tonight we’re once again looking out on the ocean from a top-floor room. This time we’re at the Showboat Resort & Casino in Atlantic City, NJ.

Day 10 Route

We had an exhausting day today. After grabbing some food, we took the Metro down to the Mall. Our first stop was the Museum of Natural History. But we were very disappointed to find out that the Museum of American History was closed. I had been telling Denise about it–and had gotten her plenty excited about it–since it’s the museum that has a whole bunch of pop culture artifacts. But fortunately the site told us that some select exhibits were currently on display at the Air and Space Museum, which we were planning on going to anyway. However, our hopes were once again crushed when we found out that, in preparation for the Museum of American History’s reopening this fall, they had taken back all of their exhibits so we were completely out of luck. Oh well, we’ll have to come back.

Afterwards, we walked to the U.S. Holocaust Museum, we walked past the Washington Monument to the new World War II Memorial, alongside the reflecting pool to the Lincoln Memorial and then past the White House (we also walked past the Treasury building and Ford’s Theatre).

After having a free drink and appetizer (thanks to horrible service at the hotel sports bar), we embarked on what proved to be the longest, most annoying 120-mile drive before we FINALLY arrived at our hotel in Philadelphia at close to 1am. We got stuck in what had to have been the worst traffic jam either of us has ever been in thanks to some construction in Maryland. And that includes the traffic we had to deal with back home when the 35W bridge fell!! It had to have taken close to two hours to finally get through! Not only that, we hit another one (although not as bad) in Delaware. Does the northeast not know how to do road construction without completely shutting down interstates?! Between that and $4-5 tolls, driving up here is proving to be a pain in the a**!!

Day 9 Route