Done.

Results of the beard challenge (remember the bet from my very first post?) - Dev clearly has more follicles than I do, but my scruff is longer.

Ugh, the drive from DC to home. This whole summer I sat in very little traffic and paid only a handful of tolls - they are almost exclusively a mid-atlantic concept, it seems. However I sat in plenty of traffic and paid $12 ($12!) in tolls just to get from DC to Hatfield - welcome back, eh.

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The day before, I drove out of Asheville and north through VA. I stopped off in Lynchburg, VA for one last day on the snowboard I had been lugging along all summer. Liberty University in Lynchburg built the nation's only 'dryslope' - basically plastic carpeting on a hill that gets sprayed with a fine mist to keep it slick and rides kind of like snow - turning and edge control are reduced, but you can still hit park features like jumps and rails well enough. So I tried that out for about an hour (no photos because it really wasn't much to look at) and concluded that while it's better than nothing, it excises the soul from snowboarding/skiing, which is being in a somewhat natural environment and ripping some crazy turns on snow. Continuing north and coming off of pleasant central Virginia roads winding past small farms and on to the beltway, I was funneled back into the rivers of traffic pouring haltingly through the mid-atlantic metropolises. I stayed at Chase's house in Potomac that night, the last of my college friends I visited on this trip. We had a good night swapping stories and catching up, and in the morning I drove home.

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But Jessica almost didn't make it. The car's computer had been a bit glitchy for awhile, with various warning lights popping up and disappearing randomly, and the speedometer occasionally dropping to zero while I was driving (they're overrated, anyway). Also the transmission had been slipping and sticking recently. I don't how related the two are, but when I was at a stop light in my home town 2 MILES FROM MY DRIVEWAY and the end of the trip, the tranny wouldn't catch the gear to drive away from the green light. I shifted around a bit, restarted it, and finally crawled out of the intersection as the gear slowly caught. So I nursed it into the driveway and had a good long laugh. I almost broke down 2 miles from the end of this cross-country trip.

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14 weeks and 14,072 miles. HOW DID THAT HAPPEN? I thought I'd do 10,000, tops. Driving on winding state roads will rack up the miles, I guess. But I made it with no accidents, speeding or parking tickets, complete breakdowns, etc. - incredibly fortunate. Jessica made it over numerous mountain passes, two of which went to about 11,000 feet elevation, as well as miles of terrible logging and 'jeep' roads that included the occasional small creek crossing and various other obstructions. I think my roadkill tally was three - I felt really bad about the turtle but hey, what can you do.

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I also gained an appreciation for all the national lands this country has - most of them are out West, of course. It's not hard to understand why early naturalists campaigned for the protection of these beautiful places, but it was a rare bit of brilliance by the politicians who officially set them aside through legislation (probably the only time in my life I'll use those two words in the same sentence). The fact that these places are protected in perpetuity as a birthright for all Americans is an amazing concept. The lands are either free or cheap to see; they are something the government got right and continues to manage reasonably well.

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Okay just a few more cheesy quotes and final thoughts then I'll call this a wrap. The overall cost of the trip wasn't as much as one might think, so if anyone's reading this and thinking they can't afford to do it themselves or I must have spent a ton - that's not really the case. Yeah, I spent a lot on gas because I drove so much and didn't have anyone to split it with, but other than that my expenses were low - I spent time volunteering at places that fed me, and when I wasn't doing that I ate simple cheap food, bummed around on friends' couches, camped, or slept in the back of my car in supermarket parking lots. Not classy, but free. Speaking of friends' couches, I am incredibly grateful and indebted to all my hosts and friendly strangers along the way, without whom this trip would have been lonely and downright boring.

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"Will you seek afar off? You surely come back at last, In things best known to you finding the best or as good as the best" (Whitman), and

"The infinite freshness, the spendthrift variety of form and species and foliage... make[s] an Eastern landscape a vision of paradise itself." -Twain

Oh, and this one's mine: gas is always cheaper at the station after the one you decide to fill up at. Thanks for reading.