When we started talking to friends and family about our idea of driving through all 50 states, we fielded many questions. Here are a few of them. If you have more, be sure to ask us!

• Are you going to have a blog? This had to be the most asked question, and one I was unprepared for at first. I have never blogged and beyond knowing what a blog is, don’t know anything about it. Larry is the social media guy and I knew he would post along the way with updates. But many people have given up on social media or never used it in the first place. It got me to thinking about a blog. It could be fun! So for those of you that follow Larry on Instagram and/or Facebook, there will be overlap on some pictures and content. But I will try to keep up with this and post things here as well.
• How long will this trip take you, and when will you be back? We have planned to be gone about 6 months. We will return at the end of June.
• Do you really mean all 50 states? How are you going to get Hawaii and Alaska? This was an interesting one. We really wanted to do all 50 states! We could have shipped a car over to Hawaii and back, or not included the car in this part of the trip, but neither of those options felt right. Go big or go home, right? We wanted to drive the same car, (a MINI) to all 50 states. That was the dream. To accomplish this, we ordered and bought a car online through MINI of Hawaii. First state, done! We are then having the car shipped to the mainland to continue on our journey. It takes a couple of weeks to ship the car, so we have to stay in Hawaii so we can arrive in California the same time it does. Darn! 😉 To include Alaska, we will drive the Alcan highway, travel through Alaska for two weeks, and return home on the ferry to Bellingham.
• How many miles do you anticipate driving? According to the spreadsheet, about 19,500 miles, not including side trips.
• What “counts” as being in a state? Another interesting question that we did some research on. If you Google this question, you get a very wide variety of answers, from spending a week in the state, to crossing the border and taking a picture of the welcome sign. We thought about what sounded reasonable to us and came up with, we need to at least get out of the car and purchase something. Gas or a snack, etc. Most of the states we will be spending at least one night in, but there are a few that we will need to make sure this happens. We also will keep a log of miles traveled in each state.
• Did you think of buying an electric car? We did think of this! Even though MINI doesn’t have an electric version of something we could use yet, we thought about a Tesla Model Y. You can look and see what kind of charging station network is available across the country. It all looked doable until the Alcan highway. There are not a lot of charging stations (or any really) along that stretch. That made the decision for us.
• Are you going to travel in an RV? This might have been the second most frequently asked question. The answer is no. This actually might have been an easier route to take, eliminating the need to pack and unpack frequently, but back to the MINI idea, towing any sort of RV would be difficult. We are mostly staying in Best Western or Holiday Inn Express type lodging, with friends and family, and with a few splurges along the way.
• Will you be able to get along with each other for all 50 states?! We think so! Larry is the organizer, planner and spreadsheet keeper. I am the chill passenger, navigator, back up driver, and finder of cool podcasts and audible books.
• What happens if you can’t complete the trip? We are optimistic about being able to pull this off. But if something happens that we need to return home, we will bookmark where we left off and hopefully return and complete it sometime soon. The dream is to drive to all 50 states in a MINI, it doesn’t have a timeline or expiration date. 🙂