|TRAVEL3

A summary of our American adventure

After 89 days (88 nights) our first part of our world trip in the U.S. is over.

A few facts and nice things to know about our trip in the U.S.

  • We drove 13.400 km (8326 miles)
  • We stayed with 22 host families (49 nights), 17 AirBnB’s (31 nights) and 5 motels (8 nights). We paid an average of €24,27 per night.
  • We drove through 24 states: Washington, Oregon, California, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio, West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine. We visited all of them except for Massachusetts.
  • We stayed with families with different believes and family structures: Mormons, Baptists, Prespetarians, Jews, Catholics, other Christians and non-believers. We stayed with traditional families, extended families, a single mom and a family with two women, 1 non binary person (a person who doesn’t identify itself as a man or a woman) and a child together.
  • We stayed with Democrates and Republicans, with Trump and Hillary voters and Trump and Hillary haters. We didn’t find any “lovers”.
  • We passed 5 timezones, but changed our clock 7 times. One week we changed it 3 times (because a few counties of Arizona don’t have day light savings).

And did you know that…

  • … American washers don’t have a heating element? So you can only wash as hot as the water from the tap.
  • …a lot of kitchens have a food in-sink-erator? So you just drop your food in there and it will grind your food when you turn it on. So handy, we want one!
  • …a lot of Americans don’t take the dog out? The dogs just play and walk in the yard and poop there. If they do go out with their dog, there are bags everywhere for the poop, so you won’t step in dog poop there!
  • …we got stopped by the police once? Our break light didn’t work 😉
  • …everything is big in America? And I mean everything!
  • ..everything is made for convenience and for having to move as less as possible? Drive through ATM’s, food, banks, you name it!
  • …every supermarket, but also every pharmacy, displays chips and pop first?
  • …all the healthy stuff in a supermarket is only in the outside lanes, that go around the junk? (Apparently this is the first lesson you’ll get when contacting a dietitian).
  • …most American houses are build from wood? And they don’t pile here.
  • …you don’t have to wear a helmet in Maine when driving a motor bike, but that children in preschool in Vermont cannot even ride a tricycle without a helmet?
  • … American people usually don’t wave goodbye? They hug at the door and close it before you even get to your car.
  • …in a lot of supermarkets you (still) have a person who puts your groceries in plastic (!) bags?
  • …you can get a credit card in almost every store (of this store)? Most Americans have around 10 credit cards. The more credit cards, the more important you are to a bank (of course when you pay them).

Personal message

What we mostly missed the last 3 months, is our bike. Besides that we missed our bread and terraces in auto free zones.

Liv also misses the bike a lot. If you follow us on Instagram then you might have read in our stories that we thought that Liv has motion sickness. Then we thought she made up her belly hurt, because she didn’t want to be in the car. We really are trying to find out what is it and what the solution could be. We bought a new car seat (a pink one) and we try to drive less a day. We also want to stay longer at the same place (what we can do in Canada, because we have more time) and to stop more often when we are travelling. The biggest problem is that you cannot do anything by foot, even if the only thing is going to the supermarket.

We try to talk to her as much as we can and try to give her enough space for her feelings and we try to explain as much as possible. This helps! We also downloaded audio books from Dikkie Dik and Jip en Janneke (both Dutch stories) and she likes this a lot. We hope that Canada will slow down our travel speed and that she will like the car a little more again. 🙂

* After I wrote this, we had another “vomiting accident” in the car. So we thought again about motion sickness. She only vomited for 24 hours, so that made us doubt again. She seemed just sick.

To make a long story short: we are still searching and hope to find the cause (and the solution). Everybody that responded on our stories: thank you! We’ve received A LOT of tips and we will start trying them!

Here some photos of our last weeks in America

 

 

 

 

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