Day 27: Back Home in East Windsor, CT

Twenty-seven days, 6,394 miles, eleven National Parks, one National Preserve, earned Junior Ranger badges at each park, several mini-golf courses, hotels, motels, airBNB’s later — at 5:24 P.M. on January 16, 2025 we arrived safely home!

The worst traffic was the last six hours coming home through New Jersey, New York (George Washington Bridge), and Connecticut. For most of the trip, the weather was very favorable on our side; no snow storms, no real heavy rain storms. We ate fancy, we ate local, we did MacDonald’s & Subway, and we had Cheerio’s - it was a perfect mix to balance our palette. We spent time with friends and family. For Christmas we spent a few days with Keara & Eli and our Grandson Ozzy, and Eli’s parents. In Georgia, we visited a dog rescue which Donna supports and saw the Air Force Base now turned Miller Brewery where Donna was born in 1960. In Florida, we saw Paul’s family and co-workers from Yale - Rod (& Bob), Rosalee (& Steve).

When we got home the next day Donna pulled the National Parks map down from over the fireplace and scratched off all the circles of the parks we visited. We are proud of our trip - and see we still have a lot more to visit.

We visited the following 11 National Parks in this order (6,400 miles of driving look at the map to see our route)

- Cuyahoga Valley - Ohio
- Gateway Arch - Missouri
- Hot Springs - Arkansas
- Mammoth Cave - Kentucky
- Biscayne - Florida
- Everglades - Florida
- Dry Tortugas - Florida
- Congaree - South Carolina
- Great Smoky Mountains - North Carolina, Tennessee (Drove The Tail of the Dragon)
- New River Gorge - West Virginia
- Shenandoah - Virginia (Drove Skyline Drive)

Also —

- Big Cypress National Preserve - Florida
- Indiana Dunes - Indiana (We did this in November when we went to Indiana for Thanksgiving)

The biggest regret is since we were on a tight time schedule - Paul needed to be back to Connecticut to start teaching Spring semester - we would have enjoyed spending more time at each park to really explore and check out more of what they each have to offer.

In all of our travels the most common question we are asked is “Which is your favorite?” While some places stand out there is rarely a favorite. The things which we ember the most are the people we meet and interact with - and how each National Park has its own special character. It is important we as a nation continue to preserve these areas.

For this coming summer - we are “thinking about” maybe pulling a small camper with the Mazda and staying inside or near the next set of National Parks we plan on exploring. So stay tuned for more information on this. We are in the market for a lite weight used camper - A-frame popup or feather weight. This next trip will be 8 parks and is an experiment to see if we can survive camping. We have never camped in the 30 years we have been together.

On Saturday we had tons of errands to run, one of which was to get 6,400 mile swarth of grime off the Mazda. Steve our friend from Elite Detail in South Windsor, told use to go to Two Brother Hand Car WASH IN Glastonbury, CT on Main Street. It was a well deserved “Spa Day” for the Mazda which treated us perfectly for the whole trip. We average 27 miles per gallon, not bad for the the of driving we did.

Thank you to those who have travelled along side of us on this and our other adventures. Your likes and your comments mean a lot to us.

Happy Trails,

Paul & DonnaLæs mere