Last night we stayed at the most questionable hotel of the entire trip. It smelled like cigarette smoke, the pull-out couch was broken, and the whole room looked like it hadn’t been touched since 1982.

But we were exhausted, and only there for four hours, so we made do.

We left promptly at 5:00 this morning. Our final day of driving was – by design – 22 hours long. 22 hours of driving is a long time. We were all feeling pent up, uncomfortable, and otherwise wired by midday. A stop at Walmart for some traveling snacks and new movies, lunch at IHOP, and dinner at our last Man Vs Food destination (where we toasted to our successful trip) revitalized us all.

The hardest part of the drive – which was conversely also the most exciting – was the final 30 miles down into the valley. We’d gone 1160 miles in one day, and rolled into the driveway at 1:00 AM (which was actually 3:00 AM to our bodies since we’d crossed two time zones during the day)

Exhausted and grateful. Extremely, extremely, grateful.

Like the Path Less Taken on Facebook