I seem to share a similar travel goal with many other road trippers.
I'm on an epic quest to reach all 50 states while road tripping. It's a fun goal that I set for myself six years ago when I started road tripping, and I've been making some amazing travel memories while trying to achieve my goal.
I find having a goal like this really helps motivate me to keep road tripping, and I've connecting with some other road trip enthusiasts who share the same road trip goal as me.
If you share a similar goal, whether you take off a few months to achieve this goal, or complete your road trip goal in several trips, one thing is certain; you'll have an amazing time doing it.
The image above is a popular map that many other road trippers share. If you're interested in road tripping the lower 48 states in 1 trip, this map shows you how to touch each state on your road trip in the shortest amount of time, while also hitting many of the large monuments and roadside attractions including Mount Rushmore, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., New York City, and the Grand Canyon. As many road trippers know, time is of the essence while road tripping, so if you want to reach all 48 states but are limited on time, this might be the map for you.
My beef with this map:
You miss some amazing attractions like Yellowstone National Park, Seattle, the whole Oregon Coast, Las Vegas, Key West and the beautiful beaches in Florida, all the delicious food in Texas, some great canyons in Utah, New Orleans, San Diego and much more.
Road trip tip: if you're trying to reach all these states in one trip, know what your purpose is. We've met people on a quest to hit every national park along their trip. Maybe you're just looking for the state signs; maybe you're on a national monument and landmarks trip, or even a foodie road trip. Knowing this ahead of time will help you plan your next road trip.
How our quest for 50 states began:
While road tripping across Canada six years ago, we chose to head home via the states. Our first stop was of course New York City. We found it a fun challenge to snap pictures of each state sign while heading down to New York City, and this kind of became a thing for us.
To be honest, I think this became half the fun or road tripping, looking out for state signs, having to turn around if we missed one, or parking and running across the road to get a picture of the sign. We even dropped our friend in a prickle bush while trying to get a picture with one of the state signs.
When we got home, it was exciting to count how many states we road tripped through; 21 states. This kind of sparked our travel bug, and thus our road trip goal began.
On our next big road trip, we chose to add a little something to our road trip goal, a challenge that we had to do an activity or something in each state we visit. Essentially make a memory of being in that state, and not just pass through to say we've been there. This made road tripping that much more fun.
During our last big road trip in the fall, we were able to knock off some of the states that didn't fit into our road trip map on previous trips: Rhode Island, Vermont, Louisiana, and Georgia. I'm now proud to say that I've officially road tripped through the lower 48 states! It's an exciting achievement for me.
Future road trip plans:
Now that we've road tripped through the lower 48 states, we just have Alaska and Hawaii to check off our list in order to achieve our goal of all 50 states. The plan this summer is to road trip Alaska and some of the Northwest Territories while we're up there. Once we've done that trip, we just have Hawaii left. My husband and I were talking about going to Hawaii for our one-year anniversary, fingers crossed!
Now let's hear from you. How many states have you road tripped through?
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