So after nearly one month and 10,485 miles, I'm home. It was quite a look at the country and lots of good time with family and friends. Here's the breakdown of where we went:

TRIP 1: Left WA and drove through Oregon, California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Memphis, TN, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and down to Central Florida where my family lives. (Stayed in Stockton, CA, Flagstaff, AZ, Albuquerque NM and Memphis.) Spent a few days there, dropped off the dog and then headed up north for a wedding in my father's family.

TRIP 2: Left FL and drove through Georgia, South Carolina (stayed in Florence), North Carolina, Virginia, Washington DC and spent the night with my cousin and her husband in Maryland. Then drove the next day through Pennsylvania and into Upstate New York for the wedding at Cooperstown.

TRIP 3: Left Cooperstown and drove through Massachusetts and into Rhode Island for dinner with my great aunt and uncle. Left RI that night and stayed in Connecticut. Continued the next day back into NY for a quick stop at the Orange Country Choppers retail store (got mugs! saw the choppers!) and then down through NYC (we got a wee bit lost....), New Jersey, Maryland, Washington DC, Virginia (slept at Richmond), North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and back to FL.

TRIP 4: After a week in FL doing all kinds of family stuff (the zoo being the big highlight) we headed back home with the dog back onboard. Drove up through Georgia and then into Tennessee, Kentucky (stayed in Paducah), Illinois, Missouri, Nebraska (stayed in North Platte), Wyoming, Idaho (stayed in Twin Falls), Oregon and back home.

Here's what I learned about America along the way:

1. Harley Davidson is taking over the country. At first we saw these huge Harley places along the interstates and thought they were cool but unremarkable. After you realize you have seen dozens of them though you start to wonder what the Harley people might know that the rest of us are missing out on. These are huge stores people and they are springing up in the most unlikely places. (We're talking every town with 20,000 people or more.) Maybe they figure all those baby boomers are getting ready to live out their Easy Rider dreams or something. Seriously though - Harley is everywhere!

2. A lot of people really think Walmart is as good as it gets. Okay, I grew up in the south and I get the appeal of Walmart. It's cheap and easy and you can find pretty much everything of a basic level that you're looking for. (movies, music, light bulbs, plant food, sweatpants - it's all there.) But we ended up stopping in a couple of the new superstores for breakfast and I was shocked by how little they really offer when it comes to food. We did not find a single store that had a bakery comparable to any grocery store and most of the delis consisted of lunchmeat and only a few hot items. At a store in Mississippi when I asked where the bakery was I was directed toward a few shelves of Hostess cupcakes. This would all just be funny except I can't help but think these people actually think what they have with Walmart is a good thing and that's a shame because they are missing out on a whole other shopping experience - not to mention a ton of tasty baked goods.

3. Southerners have some seriously complicated moral issues. So we go down the west coast and across the southwest and it is only when we hit Arkansas that we start to see billboards advertising porn shops. Not only are these "Truckers welcome: we go bare!!" type businesses, there are also "adult warehouses" with "tens of thousands of toys and movies". Now I'm sure you can find porn shops and strip clubs all across America but it was only in the south that we saw billboards advertising them and found them located nice and handy right off the highway. From Arkansas down to Florida and then back up to Virginia it was a constant parade of porn and churches (and Walmart, Cracker Barrel and Harley Davdison). Clearly southerners are very conflicted about how to spend their weekends.

4. Truckers are everywhere. The number of big rigs on the roads is far and beyond what I imagined. They are everywhere - hundreds of thousands of them - and when they want to change lanes, they just do it. We were driving an SUV and we nearly died a few times; I can't imagine how the folks in a Honda Prius would feel. Beyond the actual trucks though, there is a whole trucking support industry of gas stations, truck washes, truck stops with showers, stores and restaurants and repair shops, that exists. We can bash Hummers as long as we want but it is trucks that are sucking down gas in this country. We need some alternative ways to move things or its going to take a lot longer to go green.

5. South of the Border is the scariest roadside stop ever. When I was young I used to hear about South of the Border from everyone who took I95 north and it always sounded like a lot of fun. Well it has gone seriously downhill. The attractions are still there but now it is like a very gaudily painted ghost town. No one was even at the gas station. My brother stopped by there the day after us and called me to tell me where he was in case they were jumped by zombies or something (they changed drivers and never even turned the van off). Someone needs to write a horror story about this place; seriously. (Cherie Priest I'm talking to you!)

6. There are more dead people in New England than anywhere else. Anyone from New England knows there are cemeteries everywhere (there were even graves next to a stoplight at one CT town - like five feet from our car) and that most of them date back hundreds of years. What's interesting though is that they are on the side of the road and you can just step out and walk around in them. Everywhere else in the country they are back off the road, behind gates and less immediately accessible (except New Orleans of course). It's just the oddest thing to be idling in traffic and look over and see that someone who died in 1850 is lying there next to you. They live with the dead a lot more than you realize up there.

7. This country is way more diverse (in every aspect) then you can believe. The states all look remarkably different, the people all look remarkably different and on any given day in any given place you will run into someone dressed in a way that will make you shake your head in disbelief. There is everything from Jesus freaks to pitbull lovers to Bush bashers, Hilary bashers, Gore bashers, McCain bashers and on and on and on. Nebraska looks nothing like Oklahoma which looks nothing like Texas which looks nothing like Mississippi which looks nothing like New York State. The traffic sucks horribly in Atlanta but is a breeze in Manhattan (go figure). Washington DC is the poorest most decrepit and broken down place we visited (how utterly disappointing) and Cooperstown, NY was the most charming and classic New England village that you could hope to find. (It helps though if you love baseball - that's pretty much the only sort of thing sold there.) I had a really good but really exhausting time but most importantly I feel like I learned something quite valuable in this trip. I've been to America and now I know just how impressive this place really is.