Well folks, the trip is officially over. After all the writing and all the typing, there are no more adventures to share with you. For those of you who followed along with us, I hope you enjoyed it. We had a blast on this trip and sharing it with all of you has been fun. Even thought you followed along, keep an eye on R4NT.com as I will be writing up some articles to share. I’m not sure what I’ll do with the site now. I guess I’ll leave it up for a while. Who knows… maybe The Vicarious Crew will brew up something new to share with you in the near future.

Total Miles: 12,400
Total Kilometers: 19,955

Total Number of States Visited: 23

Total Amount for Fuel Purchased: Appx. $1,600.00
Total Amount for Food Purchased: Appx. $1,200.00
Total Amount for Accomodations: Appx. $1,000.00 (includes hotel in Vegas)
Total Amount for Activities (x3 ppl): Appx. $950.00
Total Amount for Extras (ice, firewood, etc.): Appx. $100.00

Total Amount Spent: Appx. $4,850.00

Today will be a short post. Kelly and I awoke at 8:00am (well, Kelly woke up earlier, around 7:30am) then headed for Toronto. Once at Kelly’s house, we hung out for a bit while I attempted to copy some photos for her. After failing, we said temporary good-byes (as Chris and I would be returning in a week) and then I headed back to Sydenham for a week of relaxing and catching up with friends.

With a long day of driving today, we headed out at 9:15am this morning. I started the driving as we left from Beaver Pond Campground. Breakfast was dry cereal for me because our milk had gone long enough without ice. Oh well. Both Kelly and myself neglected to shower this morning as well since the showers at the campground weren’t the cleanest. Chris, on the other hand, gave them it a go.

Not much happened between breakfast and lunch. Just lots of driving. We had lunch at 12:30pm and switched drivers to Kelly. At 1:05pm we hit Syracuse and by 3:00pm we were back in Canada. Chris was driving for our second border crossing which went nice and smooth. At 3:30pm we arrived at Chris’ parents house where we chatted and dropped him off. Kelly and myself continued on to my parents’ house where we hung out by the pool, had lasagna for dinner, chatted with my mom, then finally headed to bed. The plan for us is that I will take Kelly home to Toronto tomorrow, then return and stay for a week. Chris and I have a wedding to attend on the 22nd, so we’re staying until then. On a side note, I read for 2.5 hrs tonight and finished my book Angels & Demons.

Another full day of driving planned for today. The KOAs we’ve been staying in have been fifty-fifty. Some are really nice and some haven’t been so nice. This last one we stayed at had their restroom cleaning at 8:00am. Who cleans restrooms at eight o’clock in the morning. Thats the prime time useage time for campers. We were’nt impressed. Anyway, we’re going by the campbook for our next night. Time to take a break from KOAs.

With Chris driving, we drove across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge/Tunnel. This is one hell of a bridge that spans 16 miles long. It also has two sections where it dips below the water and you go through a tunnel. These spaces are to allow ships and boats to pass that may be too large to pass under the bridge. It was really cool because we went through one of the tunnels at the exact time a large freighter was passing over. We went directly under a very large ship, which was very cool. We soon grabbed a couple of Gatorades (which have become our drink of choice) and entered into Maryland. We had lunch in Ocean City around 12:30pm and by 2:00pm we arrived at the Cape May-Lewis Ferry.

The ferry was really cool. It took around an hour and twenty minutes to get to the other side and we saw very large jelly fish in the waters below as we stood along the rail taking in the sun and the warm Pacific air. Tonight, we camped in New Gretna, New Jersey. Just as we got the tent up and a fire started, a nice 15 minute downpour hit. Luckily, I manged to keep the fire going while standing over it in my bathing suit. We had dinner and then spent some time in the tent mapping out our route for New York City, our destination for tomorrow.

Slept in today. The Schlitterbahn (or as we called it, “Schlitterback”, “Schitzenbootle”, “Schlackdaddy”, and any other random word we could think of) wore us right out.

Anyway, off to Louisiana today. I started the drive, and two hours later, we hit Houston. Now, we were informed to avoid Houston at all costs due to it’s insane amounts of traffic, but we figured what the hell, and ventured through. All was fine too, until they decided to close the main highway. All traffic was diverted off. So after some minor detours, we finally made it through.

We had lunch at Subway today. Not Subway itself though. No, no. We ate our own lunch right in the Subway parking lot. Meh. After lunch and after Kelly attempted to drive away with Ian only half in the door, we entered Louisiana at 3:00pm.

Tonight we got a campsite at Fishermans Wilderness Campground, not too far into Louisiana from the west side. What a change from the desert though. In a couple of days we went from burning hot and dead, to lush and green with swamps and bayous. It was slightly raining this evening, but we managed to get a fire going and cooked up some chicken and potatoes. Mmm, mmm, good!

Plenty of mosquitoes here, so we were into the tent once the darkness hit.