Boxster Road Trip

I wanted to share with you all the “stats” from our 81 day #BoxsterRoadTrip.

We actually did get to all 48 contiguous US states.

We also went to two Canadian provinces (British Columbia and Ontario).

We drove 15,745 miles and averaged 26 miles per gallon.  And we spent $2,024 on gas, plus one oil change and service (in Hilton Head) costing $310.

Our longest driving day was 537 miles (from St George Utah to Ventura California).  I think we were getting anxious to get home!

We stayed in 19 Airbnb’s, most for one night and several for 2-3 nights.  Each and every one of them was very nice and we would definitely do this again.

We stayed at 7 Marriott’s, 1 Best Western and the Thunderbird Lodge at the Grand Canyon.

We also stayed at two Marriott’s Timeshares, one week at the Custom House in Boston and one week at Marriott’s Harbour Point in Hilton Head.  Both were lovely!

We stayed at another timeshare in Wisconsin Dells.  I would not recommend the Dells unless you have kids.  Enough said!

I should also mention that we mooched off of a number of friends and family (thank you all so much), where we could get free food and do laundry!  Gotta love our friends and family for putting up with us.  Big hugs to you guys!

We spent $5,780 on accommodations, averaging $71.36 per day.

We spent $4,161 on food, averaging $51.37 per day.  Keep in mind many of the Airbnb’s and hotels included breakfast.  And, as I mentioned, we did mooch off of friends!

We had “miscellaneous” costs of $1,622 for things like bridge tolls, wine, entrance fees, wine, gifts, wine, etc.

The total trip cost was $13,587 for 81 days, averaging $167.74 per day.  Pretty darn good, if you ask me.

Many have asked the question “Would you do it again?”.  In a heartbeat!!!  We live in a breathtakingly beautiful country, filled with great people.  Everyone we met with was friendly, welcoming, and curious about our adventure.  We saw beautiful places and met beautiful people all across this nation.  And if you get the chance, DO IT!!!

Our thanks to everyone who hosted us and helped us along the way.  And thanks to the 5,674 people from around the world who followed us on our blog and shared in our adventure.  And, finally, thanks to our 1998 Porsche Boxster which performed flawlessly, was amazingly comfortable, and which got us home safe and sound.

The trip is over, but the journey continues . . .

With only five days to go, we are down to the last minute thoughts and things to do.  We decided it would be a good idea to put a coat of wax on the car before we leave (knowing we will encounter a few bugs along the way)!  Stopped by America’s Tire and had them check the tires (including the spare).  Tires are good to go!

We have been watching the weather and that seems to be hubby’s biggest concern.  He has only lived in the Bay Area and in Maryland, so the rest of the country’s weather is a mystery to him.  He is convinced we will be chased across the Midwest by tornados and that we will have to park the Boxster in high-rise parking lots to avoid the floods.  I just chuckle.  He is in for the trip of his life!

We decided it would be prudent to actually pack our bags and see if they actually fit into the Boxster.  If we were traveling in an RV or even an SUV, space would not be a problem.  But we are traveling in a Porsche Boxster, with limited trunk space (and even more limited cabin space), so testing to make sure it all fits was worth the effort.

This is what it looked like before we started loading.

Front Trunk aka The Bonnet. . .

Rear Trunk aka The Boot. . .

A year or so ago I bought luggage (as a birthday present for hubby) specifically designed to fit in the Boxster from RoadTrip Luggage.  The luggage is well designed and well made; however, in our case, it does not fit the Boxster as shown on their website because we have a spare tire.  I believe that Porsche removed the spare tire in later years, but since our car is one of the very early Boxsters (I bought it in 1997), it does have a spare.  We considered removing the spare to allow for more luggage space (and just carry a can of fix-a-flat), but decided the safety factor of having a spare outweighs the space we would gain.  And we want to keep the car in its original condition!

So we packed our bags and they fit!  However, we could only fit three of the four bags we bought from RoadTrip Luggage and we had to be creative on how to make them fit.  We even have room for our pillows!   But I’ve been told there is no room for any purchases, so no shopping allowed.  Ha!  There is always the option to ship things home!

This is what the front trunk (bonnet) looks like packed, with and without the pillows!

And the rear trunk (boot) . . .

Looks like we are gonna make it after all!

And the count down begins . . .

I wanted to put together a summary of prior posts because I’ve finally figured out how to link this post to Facebook (I know, I am sometimes technically challenged!).

The Dream

Going on a 48 state (and 2 province) road trip in our 1998 Porsche Boxster and taking our own sweet time seeing our beautiful county.  The plan is to take the northern route from the Bay Area to Boston, timing it so we arrive in Boston in mid-October, to experience the autumn colors.  Then we take the southern route home.

Haunted on Halloween!

We traded our Marriott Kauai Beach Club timeshare week for a week at Marriott’s Custom House in Boston and, lucky for us, we got the week of October 10 through 17.  During our planning, we discovered airbnb and we have now booked almost our entire trip staying at airbnb places.  Our belief is that we can get a much better experience of a local area by staying with the locals.  In the case of October 31st, it turns out I booked a room in a haunted house (the house is actually on the hanted house tour that evening).  How fun is that?  Needless to say, I will be sharing our experiences in the daily blog (once we hit the road).

Getting the 1998 Porsche Boxster Ready for a 15K Mile Trip

There are things you must do (like getting the car serviced, getting new tires, replacing front struts) and things you just want to do (like replacing the sound system).  We did do all of the mandatory stuff and then moved on to the fun stuff.  We drove up to Car Audio Innovations in Roseville where Rod and his team did a significant upgrade to our sound system.  We now have a Hertz Amplifier and Focal Speakers, and this breathes life into our awesome Kenwood Excelon KDC-X997 Receiver.

I also bought some great after market cup holders from Mike at Ultimate Cupholders (this was a shortcoming in the early Boxsters).

Software, Hardware and other “Techie” Stuff

We chose My Scenic Drives to do the trip planning and we bought a National Geographic Road Atlas (Adventure Edition) for a hardcopy.  I still like something I can write on.  We bought a Garmin nüvi® 50LM and then replaced it with a nüvi® 3590LMT (because the 50LM only allowed for one waypoint).

Put Another Nickel In . . .

Music, music, music!  We have all of our music in MediaMonkey and we have spent the last three months rating it, so we could put the best of our library on a “stick” (or thumb drive, for you techies).  We finished that project today.

So that is about where we are with less than a month to go.

I’ll be blogging about the packing (and seeing if it all fits) next.

Stay tuned . . .

The software we ultimately settled on for managing our trip is MyScenicDrives.  We’ve built our trip in two sections: the trip from the Bay Area to Boston and the trip from Boston back to the Bay Area.  It could have all been done as one trip but, since we are taking a one week break in Boston, we really see this as two trips.  MyScenicDrives can give us advice on scenic drives along the way, which is a nice perk.  It allows me to put in my estimated MPG and average gas price and then it calculates the cost of the trip.  To date, the trip from the Bay Area to Boston is 7,179 miles, about 160 hours 7 minutes of driving, about 46 days, and $1,225.60 of fuel.  The trip from Boston to the Bay Area is 5,678 miles, about 116 hours 48 minutes of driving, about 37 days and about $968.87 of fuel.  In addition to this great information, MyScenicDrives allows me to download the trip into my Garmin and my trip is now available on our GPS (and we hopefully won’t get lost)!

We upgraded our Garmin to a nuvi 3590LMT after having purchased a nuvi 50LM and learning that the nuvi 50LM only allows for one waypoint.  Clearly, one waypoint on a 7,179 mile trip is definitely insufficient!  So, my advice to anyone buying a GPS device, whether it is Garmin or another brand, is to make sure the GPS will allow for multiple waypoints.  A costly error on our part!

Then there is the blog.  I stumbled a few times on this endeavor because, as I mentioned in an earlier blog, I was learning as I went along!  And, WOW, is there a lot to learn and a plethora of choices to be made.  I settled on WordPress as the blog foundation and have added a few Plugins to help me manage the blog.  The plugins I am using are Akismet (to manage spam), My Calendar (for an easily maintainable calendar), Visitor Maps and Who’s Online (so I can see and share who has visited the blog), and WP Backup Plugin (so I have backups).

I wanted to be able to show the trip on the blog and that is the one “upgrade” I would request from MyScenicDrives:  the ability to import the map into a blog would be an awesome upgrade!  But, since it is not a current feature, I found Blogabond, which allows me to build a map and use their blog template (which is what you see when you are on this blog site).  It is a fairly easy way to build a travel blog and, if you plan on blogging a trip, you should take a look at it.

We have 6 weeks until we leave and I’ll be blogging a few more times before then.  However, once on the road, I’ll be keeping you up-to-date daily (when we have a connection).

Stay tuned!