For the last few years, we (Jacqui and Chris) have been thinking about travelling to different places, and our first goal was America. But where to go? New York? LA? Wyoming? Missouri? We couldn’t decide. So, we bought a map, stuck it on the wall and put pins in the places we thought about going… and that was what started our 80 day trip plan. Firstly, we wondered how we would decide where to go, in what order and when? I had visions of taking a piece of string, tying it round the pins and seeing how long it was. Then trying a different way… maybe that’s age for you, thinking of visual options. I loved the idea of seeing the string between the various points. SO much easier just to google the distances between places, though, create a spreadsheet and then plan from the answers. So that’s what we did.
But then… where was the first place to go? Instinct said New York – it’s what everyone does, isn’t it? But why do we have to do what the most popular thing is? This was going to be a big trip – we didn’t want to do it on a shoestring, but we didn’t want be be spending every last penny either. And the weather – 80 days is nearly three months and with America having such different weather we needed to be able to take jumpers, boots and swimwear… so here goes, another chart of temperatures, rainfall and sunlight hours.
Then… go clockwise, anticlockwise, zigzag or some other way? Google really was our friend. Having decided roughly where we wanted to go, we checked to see what was the cheapest place to fly to from London. And this is how we decided Baltimore, not even on our original list, was the first place we would visit. We chose the cheapest flights (economy) with a layover in Iceland (does that count as visiting?!) and booked them. A big sigh of relief. Our epic journey started to become real.
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