Dateline: Raleigh May 8
Our plot so far: Nancy, Toast and I are lighting out across the country on Monday in our trusty rented minivan, with nothing to keep us from the elements but a brand new tent, two Target sleeping bags, and our ever-faithful MasterCard.

Enviable fun? Disaster in the making? Will we see it through, or resort to every pet-friendly motel from here to Seattle, or worse yet, come creeping back after some sleepless mosquito-ridden night of living hell in the fetid underbelly of some miserable backwater swamp? Or will we just be eaten by bears?

Dateline: Raleigh June 5

The official mile tally, taken just as we pulled into the driveway.

Dateline: Raleigh June 5

And just how does a marriage survive all that closeness? An unabridged audiobook history of the US - 20 hours of road soothing narration. Just the thing when conversation lags.

And how did we do? Well, we skipped camping twice for lousy weather, missed the mosquitoes and the fetid swamps, and avoided the bears (bearly). We saw natural wonders, museums, movies, tourist traps, wildlife and relatives. We had good food and bad, and while we tried to support Mom-and-Pop restaurants, we broke down from time to time and ate fast food. All in all, the weather was amazingly good to us, and camping was surprisingly relaxing - I didn't plug in the Playstation even once. (Oh, yes - the modern camp site has AC. My kind of wilderness.)

And for the future - would we do it again?

Oh, yeah. Gotta give those bears one more chance, y'know?