How the heck are you guys going to pull this off?

So, two things have recently occurred to me: One, I need to start blogging more to gear up for the 50 posts I will be writing during the course of our journey. This is terribly intimidating! I envisioned that I would sit here and my thoughts would effortlessly flow from my mind to the page, each word wrought with significance and clear, concise intent. In reality, this is a really “exposing” experience. So please, friends and soon-to-be loyal followers of this blog, bare with me while I find my voice. Two, I think we need to talk logistics. What Tim and I have set out to do is fairly daunting. To be honest, it is completely overwhelming when we consider it at any length. I think an explanation of how we will execute this odyssey of this nature is necessary, especially because Tim and I get a lot of crazy looks when people realize our journey does include Alaska and Hawaii (and, no, we won’t be driving to either location…I know, I know, bad joke).

So how do you go about traveling to 50 states in 50 days? How do you do it while keeping your sanity, your health, and some semblance of routine? And how do you not only get to every location, but also have time to volunteer?

Well, we aren’t completely certain, because this is the first time either one of us have attempted anything like this, but we have spent quite a bit of time talking about it, google-mapping it, and consulting others who have ventured to all 50 states in 50 days to fish, hike or what have you. Our goal is to maintain somewhat of a routine – to begin driving at approximately the same time every evening, to go for a run every morning (wishful thinking), to blog everyday. It is these little things that will help us maintain sanity.

So, here’s the plan folks: we begin in the northeast, moving west by zigzagging up and down across the nation (see logo for our route - the yellow line is our actual path. One could say “just follow the yellow brick road”, but one will refrain from doing that in order to avoid looking foolish). We will leave each destination in the late afternoon/early evening, driving to our next location the night before we are serving in that state. Our longest drive time is approximately 7 hours, the average is around 3 hours – not too bad at all. On February 20^th, after 48 days of driving, we will serve in Seattle before flying to Anchorage. We will serve in Alaska on February 21^st and catch a flight to Honolulu that evening, where we will end our journey on February 22^nd. This is going to be whirlwind adventure, to say the least.

Now that we have covered travel, lets move on to other needs – lodging and food. We are very blessed that Tim’s mom knows a kind person in almost every state who is willing to house us (thank you for all your help Mrs. Malcolm - You have definitely made this trip seem a lot less daunting now that we are able to stay with friends and family rather than in the car!). For those states where we do not have the Malcolm connection, we are relying on the generosity of friends, both new (thank you Jess, you are awesome!) and old (you know who you are!), to put us up for the evening. And for those states where have yet to find accommodations, we are contacting churches to see if we can camp out in their rec rooms. We were going to try to camp for a portion of the trip, but we seemed to find housing in most of the “warm in the winter” states, and we are not ready to experiment with snow camping in the northern states.

A lot of people have been asking us how we are going to eat on this trip…umm, we are going to eat how we normally eat (insert shoulder shrug here). Though I may joke about Tim’s penchant for Quizno’s, we are actually going to attempt to be healthy eaters and avoid surviving off of fast food and gas station snacks (this is were we touch upon “keeping our health” during the journey). For all those who thought I was silly for buying a dehydrator, I will now have the last laugh - we are researching various nutritious meals that can be rehydrated (think camping food…anyone have any recipes?). We will also travel with a cooler so that we can hit the grocery store on our shorter drives and indulge in some fruits and vegetables.

So, that is a very generalized description of the main logistics of our trip (travel, lodging and food), answering the questions we are most often asked. There are so many other logistical considerations, but we will address those over time (like, how we will do laundry – stay tuned!). All I can say is that it is coming together and we are so excited to get on the road. T-minus two months and two days…