Fantasizing – 48 States in 48 Months

Now that I had convinced myself that fulltiming was possible, I let my mind wander.  Where would we go? What would we see?

Like most fulltimers, one of our primary goals is to stay warm and avoid snow.  That means spending winters in the southern states and summers in the northern states.  And just because I like to be fair, maybe we should allocate our time to states in proportion to their populations.  I mean, why should the nice people of California get short-changed just because it is a large state?  And because I like nice, symmetrical solutions (Monk would be so proud), why not try to see all 48 states in 48 months?

So with those basic parameters – 48 months, all 48 states, summers north, winters south – I set out to solve that little routing problem. Plus, of course, we had to start in MA on July 1, 2012, and because gas is expensive we would like to keep the miles low. And let’s give every state, no matter how small and insignificant (this one’s for you, North Dakota!), a full week. And give every state an even number of weeks just to keep the accounting simple. Maybe try to hit VA and MA multiple times, too, as we have family in both places.

So here is the list of states that would be graced with multiple weeks of our presence:

CA – 23, TX – 16, NY – 13, FL – 12, IL – 9, PA – 9, OH – 8, MI – 7, GA – 7, NC – 6, NJ – 5, VA – 5, WA – 5, MA – 5, IN – 4, AZ – 4, TN – 4, MO – 4, MD – 4, WI – 4, MN – 4, CO – 4, AL – 3, SC – 3, LA – 2, KY – 3, OR – 3, OK – 3, CT – 3, IA – 2, MS -2, AR – 2, KS – 2, UT -2, NV – 2

All you states that didn’t make the list… you get one week each. The total (to save you the trouble of reaching for your calculator) is 208.  Given that there are actually 208.7 weeks in a four year span, we could add a week to some deserving state and still be playing the game by the rules.  No sense being anal about this (too late?).

So once I had the state allocations, I set out to map a possible route.  One winter in CA, one in TX, two in FL or somewhere along the Gulf coast.  Hit all the northernmost states in one shot when we were least likely to hit snow and move through quickly so we wouldn’t be attacked by Indians.  How would it go?

Here is one routing that fit the bill (sorry about the red and yellow – they didn’t scan very well):

48 Month Travel Plan

Start off in MA, hit my 45th high school reunion in Madison, WI, in late August, get to my sister’s place by Thanksgiving to have dinner with her family and my mother, then winter in CA.  Zig-zag north and south, moving generally west-to-east over the next three years, following the sun. Second winter in TX, third and fourth winters in FL. End back in MA.

It was all a silly sort of planning, of course, but just visualizing the possibilities was energizing.  In retrospect, I realized how similar this exercise was to a solitaire game I played when I was a wee lad.  I took an old 48-state Rand-McNally road atlas and, using a die to make decisions, went on a fantasized journey through America.  At each intersection, would I go left, right or straight? 1 or 2 – left, 3 or 4 – straight, 5 or 6 – right. The resulting journey was a jumble, of course, with lots of crazy meandering in some spots.  But if you play this game long enough, you eventually find yourself far from home.  And each step along the way I would wonder what I would see and what adventures I would encounter.  Would Keokuk, IA, prove to be a memorable spot?

And that is pretty much where my mind is at today: what will Keokuk have to offer us?