6,584.4 miles later...

Our Kia Optima's odometer

You read that right. Six thousand five hundred and eighty four point four miles. We reset Trip A upon leaving our garage on July 1st and took that picture upon pulling in on August 2nd. The car started with 247 miles on it and now has 6,832. I can't imagine Hertz is too thrilled about that (although I'm sure they're ok with how much we paid for the rental)!

Our drive back was largely uneventful. We left the Cleveland area at about 8 PM and stayed over in New Columbia, PA, which was 4+ hours away. We then got up the next morning and headed for home, making one pit stop, which I'll get to in a bit.

First, a picture of a road sign we took on the border of Pennsylvania and Ohio upon getting on I-80.

Next stop...NYC! 390 miles away!

Apparently the government agrees that there is nothing of major importance between Cleveland and New York City off of I-80 either! 7+ hours away and New York City is the next major stop. Unbelievable!

Now as far as our pit stop went...have you ever been to a Sonic?

I always see commercials for Sonic on television, but there are none in NYC and I've always wanted to see what the fuss is all about. During the trip, I had a goal of stopping at a Sonic along the way (I know...I reach for the stars), but every time we passed one, we weren't hungry or just had lunch or didn't want to go there for dinner...whatever. But on the way home, we found one! And we got a Hot Fudge shake!

Excited for my first Sonic shake

That was the pinnacle of the ride home until we went through the Holland Tunnel. If you've ever driven on I-80 for awhile, you know what I'm talking about.

It didn't take us too long to get from the Holland Tunnel across to the Brooklyn Bridge. Upon getting onto the bridge and looking up, we couldn't believe what we saw!

Check out the warm welcome we received!

Ok, fine...it didn't quite go like that, but it was nice to be home.

Pier 6, Brooklyn Bridge Park - Right around the corner from our apartment

It's hard to believe, but after all of the talking, planning, packing and preparing, it's now all just a memory.

We know some of our family and friends questioned whether this was a good idea, from the enormous amount of driving, to us possibly killing each other along the way, to me taking a month off from work, but at the end of the day, you only live once and a trip like this was always something I wanted to do.

Notice the word choice there...a trip like this was always something I wanted to do.

I think it's pretty obvious to everyone that Heather wasn't too excited to visit 8 baseball parks in a month, but soon into the trip, she felt that going to the games was just a small part of the trip.

If you've been following our adventure along the way, you know we don't hold back from seeing as much as we can when we're visiting a new place. Why? Our philosophy is we don't know whether we will ever be back so we try to maximize our time. If you know me...that's a lot different than my philosophy when I'm at home.  :)

We know when we start seeing our family and friends we will be asked a lot of questions about the trip (ask away!), but the one question we discussed on our way home was this: what was our favorite?

With seeing so many things and visiting so many different places, that's obviously a tough one, but I think we have a good answer.

In the end though, one thing we do know is that this was a trip of a lifetime and one we will never forget.

To all of our family, friends and my co-workers who checked in with us along the way, supported us and allowed us to take the trip...thank you!

And of course, if you've been following along on the blog, we really hope you enjoyed it as much as we enjoyed writing it and sharing our experiences with you.