Here’s the breakdown:

• One-Hundred Thirty-Two days
• 17,392 miles
• 30 states – counting ones passed through in the car or on the train. And one foreign country – not counting my European travels.
• Visits to Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Savannah, Tampa, Mobile, New Orleans, Houston, Austin, San Antonio, Tucson, Phoenix, Flagstaff, Los Angeles, Sacramento, Denver, Omaha, Chicago. And that’s just the short list.
• I crossed the Mississippi, the Missouri, the Wabash, the Rio Grande, and countless other streams and tributaries.
• I dipped my toes in both the Atlantic Ocean – off Nags Head – and the Pacific Ocean – off San Clemente.
• I drove through all four American deserts: Chihuhuan, Sonoran, Mojave and the Great Basin
• I crossed the Rockies, the Sierra Nevada, the Appalachians and innumerable other smaller mountain ranges.

In short, it’s been a hell of an adventure. I haven’t even begun to process the magnitude of what I’ve done. Europe feels like it was a lifetime away. Hell, my August travels through Florida feel like a lifetime away.

Guess I’m ready to go again. Maybe I’ll wait until the weather breaks then head out north and west. Lots more to see.

I also passed through Des Moines, Iowa so I could set foot in yet another State Capitol. That was fun. The highlight of the visit, however, was the extremely suggestive Iowa Soldiers and Sailors Civil War monument. I don’t know which I like better, the stripper Columbia, the cheering cavalryman or the hippie infantryman complete with flower. I had to double-take to make sure we were dealing with the 1860s and not the 1960s. Highly recommended.

Closing the accounts is like the close of the Rebellion. — Gen’l Grenville M. Dodge, quoted in “Nothing Like it in the World”

Tonight I made what are – theoretically – the last two hotel reservations I’ll need on this transcontinental circumnavigation. By Sunday I should be visiting friends in Chicago, then with family in central Indiana and then back to familiar eastern confines by Wednesday night. Things are winding down. The mad dash is still in full force but my mind is turned to the future again. Harsh reality is closing in. The idea of not living life – pissing it away at work – is particularly revolting, while, at the same time, a little bit of routine would be entertaining for a little while.

After four months of tracking pioneers, I’d like to do a little pioneering of my own. I’d like to walk across the Great Plains. I’d like to ride horses through the Davis Mountains down in Texas. I looked at the Union Pacific website yesterday and saw some job openings in Green River, Wyoming. Maybe I’d like to spend some time fighting the clock and mother nature out in the alkali desert?

Or maybe I ought to just swallow hard and get a job and shut the hell up. Maybe I ought to finally become a teacher and use the extended vacation to do some modified version of my travels every year? Christ, I don’t know. I wish I had a week or two to stand on the bridge over the Missouri River and look for answers in the muddy, swirling waters. I wish I had a month to watch the seasons change back in the American River valley in California. I wish I had a stocking cap to keep gravel out of my scalp so I could stand on the windswept Wyoming plains and seek answers in the broad sky. But I don’t. So, that’s that. Now what?

One week ago I awoke in a snowy Salt Lake City, bound for Ogden and from there east through Weber and Echo Canyons to the plains of Wyoming, across the Green River and past Citadel Rock to Rawlins Springs.

Seven days and, let’s say, twelve hours later I am on the other side of the Missouri River from Omaha in Council Bluffs, IA.

For those who don’t know the importance of Council Bluffs, or Omaha or the preposterousness of last week’s mad dash; allow me to enlighten you.

Council Bluffs is where Abraham Lincoln set in his mind the origination point for the Transcontinental Railroad. Omaha is where that railroad actually began. Council Bluffs and Omaha are also where Lewis and Clark began their great expedition up the Missouri and where the Mormons began their great trek to the Salt Lake.

Right. So, in one week I’ve done what took the Mormons four months. I’ve done in one week what took the Union Pacific Railroad the better part of four years.

Eleven-hundred miles in seven days doesn’t seem like much to our modern ears. At a flat-out burn that’s a good solid day and a half of driving. But when considered on the scale of the pioneers it’s a fantastic achievement. Beyond imagination. And oh! the things I’ve seen and experienced along the way. Boggles the mind. Defies description.

The problem is that I’m moving so fast and covering so much ground that when I try to record my daily achievements I can’t even remember what I’ve done for the last ten hours. It all blurs together. I’ve seen pioneer wagon ruts from the 1850s. I’ve seen more locomotives than I thought possible. I’ve seen two trains heading in perpendicular cardinal directions pass one on top of the other. I’ve seen the home of Buffalo Bill and the birthplace of Andrews Jackson Higgins. I’ve seen the Green River, the North and South Platte, the Loup River and the Missouri River. I’ve seen the snow-capped Wasatch, the likewise snowy Rockies, Sherman Pass and the Great Plains.

I hope I’ll have time to sit and think for about a week some time soon. To begin to digest all that I’ve seen and done is well beyond my comprehension right now.

And I can’t wait to do it again.