The entire trip with all the stops

this is it:


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that's about 16.000 km. if i were to drive 400 km per day, that would amount to a full 40 days of driving. full holiday is some 63 days long so that would amount to 23 visiting/touristing days.

travel stops (all other places we'll sleep over or stop half a day and drive the rest):
san francisco: 2 days
oregon + seattle: 3 days together
utah: 5 days (VEST & sightseeing)
chicago: 6 days (including visit to brenda) (VEST)
londone canada: 3 days
nova scotia: 3 days
new york: 3 days
washington: 2 days
savannah: 4 days (including visit to kate) (VEST)
new orleans: 5 days (VEST?)
sedona area: 3 days
total: 39 days!!!

that's certainly not going to work.

okay, we'll definitely have to drive longer distances in one day. perhaps stop shorter one or two places. Or, we can cut out the drive to halifax and fly/train there (as we initially planned), cutting out a long drive and also cutting out the drive through maine & vermont. as far as i'm concerned, we could even cut out new york (fly halifax via new york back to chicago, perhaps?)

then we'd have this trip:


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13,134 km which amounts to 33 driving days, leaving 30 visiting days. that's still nine days short but if we choose to combine some driving days into very long drives, we could fit everything in.

only other alternative i see, is to swing towards utah straight from san francisco. that would result in a total journey of 11,197 km - 28 days driving, which would leave 35 visiting days. we could use chicago as a base and fly-visit in two directions: seattle, and halifax. we'd have to stay at least one day extra in utah so we could visit yellowstone!


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that would result in this stop planning:
san francisco: 2 days
utah: 6 days (VEST & sightseeing)
chicago: 12 days (including visit to brenda 2d, fly to seattle 3d, fly to halifax 3d) (VEST)
london canada: 3 days
washington: 2 days
savannah: 4 days (including visit to kate) (VEST)
new orleans: 5 days (VEST?)
sedona area: 3 days
total: 37 days

This way we come two days short but it would be simple to catch up that time with longer drives.

okay, i'm off to research flight prices. this should work. in fact, options two and three would both work, with longer drives (400km is not a very long drive i know - but i'm assuming quite a few stops along the way to stretch our legs or investigate things & get sidetracked a little bit).