Before I continue on to the rest of my trip in the US, I thought it would be good to look back at the time I spent with my friends. It's been almost four months since we split up so I've had plenty of time to digest our experiences. This is a bit of a critique of the trip so while it might end up sounding a little negative, the intention is only to point on what could be better next time. I think I've spend the last six months writing about all the positives! I've ended up writing less than half as much about half the things I intended to write about, and more than half as much as that on things I didn't plan. I might update this from time to time as things pop in to my head. No doubt I'll keep thinking things over for many months (years) to come.

I had planned to write this blog as it happened, with a entry each day. As you can tell that didn't quite work out. In hindsight though I think that that has actually been a really good thing. Our schedule was so packed that it was hard to really absorb each place right away. I've realised that I really didn't appreciate a lot of what we did fully at the time. Thinking back as I've written this blog has allowed me to have a much better perspective for each place and has made me realise how special the whole experience was. I don't think you can really feel that way about something while you are still experiencing it.

I think that all of us would agree that we ended up spending too much time driving. No matter how hard we tried we always seemed to end up driving for at least two to three hours on travel days, and very often far more. In places where we only stayed for one night we often had little time to really explore before having to leave to drive to the next stop. Good examples of this would be Monument Valley and Santa Fe This was an unfortunate reality that was the result of wanting to see as much as possible within the six weeks that we had available.

As a group I think we did really well in terms of living and travelling together for so long with so little personal space and time. We were always squashed into the car whenever we drove anywhere. Every night we would be sharing a tent or a room somewhere. We did really well as a group and although I know everyone was ready for a bit of downtime and space by the end of it we'll always share a special bond.

The reality is that the country is absolutely vast on a scale that is hard to comprehend. We covered close to 7000 miles in six weeks which averages out to be around 270km per day. Keep in mind that we had several days where we did not drive at all. Our biggest single day's drive was from Santa Fe, New Mexico to Austin, Texas in which we covered over 750 miles/1250 km. To put that into perspective that is like driving in a straight line from Auckland right up to the end of Stewart Island. In one day....

Remarkably we managed to visit pretty much everywhere that we had on our initial plan. We did change some dates and added a few destinations along the way but with the exception of Maine we got to every state and major city that we wanted to see. We also experienced a huge variety of biomes and subcultures. It made me realise that it's very hard to talk about the country as a whole. There is just too much diversity to be able to make any reasonable generalisations about it in most cases.

I got a bit carried away while trying to quickly sum up the vastness of what we saw. Even writing this now I don't think I've quite appreciated just how much we did.

Quirky liberal San Francisco, arid and hot in the Bay Area. We headed east into the soaring forests and mountains of the Sierra Nevada mountains. Crossing the range was a true alpine experience with bare peaks and icy mountain lakes. Down the other side took is into a very different environment with the hot, dry desert of Death Valley and the sleazy glamour of Las Vegas. North was Utah, empty and green, with Zion National Park and a different kind of desert. Southeast was the Grand Canyon, huge, impossible to comprehend. Thunderstorms and a very wet and green desert were the features of Arizona. Santa Fe, New Mexico was arty and quaint, the road to Texas was long, straight, the landscape more of a scrubby grassland.

Into the South. Texas was greener and more liberal than expected. No cowboys to be seen. Plenty of forest though. Swamps and Bayou in Louisiana, vibrant and fun in New Orleans. Alabama and Florida; green, hot, and wet. Montgomery was grand and empty. Georgia was lush and stormy too. Charleston, hot and historic. Tennessee, North Carolina, and Virginia; The Blue Ridge Parkway, friendly simple locals, smoky vistas, winding roads. Washington DC was grand, busy, civic.

Onwards and into the North. Less relaxed, more accessible. New York was fast, multicultural, a little bit gritty. Boston; hot, tired, baseball. Into the (relative) wilds of New England. Mountains, and forest, cooler and older. Buffalo, New York, rust and decline. Niagara Falls were a wonder. Indiana; beautiful is a rustic and primal way, completely unexpected. And finally Chicago, huge with a skyline to rival New York, parks as good as any, and a very cultured downtown.

Finally I will say thank you to my amazing friends for sharing this with me! It would not have been anywhere near as much fun without you and I love you all more and more each day. The time we spent together has slowly been sinking in, the memories becoming distilled, and the growing feeling that this has been the best thing that I have ever done, the time of my life, with the best of friends in an amazing country.

PS: Pav2015 was what we decided to call our trip. There's a long story behind it but basically the car was named Pavel. Pav2015 was also our hashtag on instagram which you can see here. There are a few things there which aren't from us.