perfidy

I think my "record" is ten states in one go, driving back to MA from Ft Benning (Columbus, GA) and after a stop in Atlanta.

That's counting originating and terminating states, so I think it went GA-SC-NC-VA (Chesapeake Bay Bridge/Tunnel for ha-has)-MD-DE-NJ-NY-CT-MA.

I think in the same 24 hour period we did stray over the Eufala River and set foot in AL, but it wasn't strictly speaking part of the trip home so I won't count it.

Anyway it took about 12 hours, overnight. Longest stretch: DE, which seemed composed of little more than self-storage units; and CT, which at the end of the trip felt about 600 miles across.

Wait...that's not adding up.

You know what, I think we stopped in Greensboro for the night, then drove straight up the next day. Originally I thought that was on the way down, but now I think it was two different stops.

So, nevermind.

I definitely DID drive straight through from Texarkana back to MA once. THAT took me...I don't even remember. Something like 24 hours, including a stop at the Antietam battlefield: TX-AR-TN-VA-WV-MD-PA-NY-MA.

I swore I would never,ever do that again, especially drive through that remote eastern edge of PA. It's like the fucking moon, with trees. But I forgot my pledge and did it again anyway driving home from your place. It was sort of like, "Oooooohhhhhh yeeeah, I remember this stretch...right, this really really sucks."

According to google maps, that's 1130 + 428 mi. Or, for those who are adding impaired, 1558 miles. So you've got that guy beat, and you visited a Civil War battlefield. From Texarkana to Antietam is pretty much the same trip I did for my 1288 - except I started a little further into Texas, and didn't go to Maryland - just to my house in Springfield, Va.

If you had taken a slightly different route, you would have added New Jersey and Connecticut on the second leg. That would have got you to eleven. Very short detours would have added Mississippi and North Carolina.

Well to be fair, I'm not 100% on the 24 hour timeframe. I just know that I spent the night there in Texarkana, so left sometime the next morning, and didn't sleep again until I got home, sometime early the next morning. Coulda been 24, coulda been 27; we're going back the better part of 14 years, here.

As for the Antietam side trip, I'm fuzzy on how long the excursion took. By the time I found the visitors center they were closing it, so I just sort of walked around a bit and took in the obelisks and tried to let the scale of the place sink in. Then back to the interstate; I dunno, best guess for total time commitment is under 2 hours.

And I feel it should be said that, for people who have never been to TX, it is bigger than you think.

It took me about 6 hours to drive from Ft Hood/Killeen to Texarkana. From where I live, I can go south and be in DC (heh, well ideally) or north and be well into ME in 6 hours.

Or off the continental shelf if I drive off Cape Cod and keep going east.

I think you could add South Carolina or Indiana. That would add about a hundred miles for either one. I also think that you could add DC at not much additional cost of miles - though you'd have to make a short out and back on VA55 to keep WV on the list.

You'd have to average a little faster than he did, and you couldn't afford any delays. I think I would plan to do DC, and Indiana. Indiana would be near the end of the trip - and you could sacrifice it and still get all the states he did, and still beat him with DC if you were behind schedule. If you tried SC, and then got delayed, you could end up short.

Adding two extra states would be pretty much impossible.

I don't think I've ever been in more than 10 states in a day.