Day 116 (October 16): The Long Haul
On a different epic adventure, Elise and I discovered that bicycling across the United States was more about mental and emotional endurance than physical strength or stamina. We were in our early twenties then and falling in love in increments of roughly 90 miles per day. We're a week away from arriving back in Portland and those lessons are flooding back to us, even though they have been with us throughout the last two months of this odyssey. This has indeed been a long haul. We have two main set pieces remaining: visit the twin National Parks: Sequoia and King's Canyon; celebrate my grandfather's 99th birthday in the Bay Area. First, though, we had to cover about 10 hours of driving in two days to bridge the Grand Canyon to Sequoia/King's Canyon. In doing so, we added the last two states to our road trip list: Nevada and California, bringing out total to 30. (We've seen every state's license plate except for Hawaii but including the District of Columbia.) ...