Hey, just so you know ... this post is now about 13 years and 10 months old. Please keep that in mind as it very well may contain broken links and/or outdated information.

Today was the longest driving day of the entire trip … not in total miles, but because at this point we were just anxious to get back home!

It was Father’s Day and the ladies wanted me to have a special breakfast before we hit the road so we headed over to Sublime Doughnuts which was already hopping:

I had a mocha filled A-Town and we also picked up a half-dozen to take home (assuming they would make it the entire way). Back in the car we got back onto I-75 and continued south. Those last few hundred miles seemed to take forever as we got closer and closer to the Tampa area but finally made it. We got the car unpacked and cleaned out and then basically collapsed, sad that the trip was over but happy to be home.

Luckily I had the foresight to take tomorrow off so I have one more vacation day to recover from my vacation! 🙂

GPS statistics after Day 9:

We drove over 4,300 miles (which beats our 2008 trip by about 1,300 miles) through 13 states, spending about 73 hours in the car (3 full days!).

My nüvi (combined with our iPhones) was invaluable on the trip primarily for navigation but also for finding nearby cool places to eat or go (thanks to the POIs I had loaded before the trip). That being said, we still pulled out the road atlas a few times when we wanted to see the “big picture” so paper maps aren’t dead yet!

I was able to get some cool statistics out of Gas Cubby on my iPhone as well. No surprise that my best tank (27mpg) was through the flatter states like Indiana and northern Illinois on Monday, but I’m happy that I can still get an average 23mpg out of my 2003 Highlander with over 120k miles on it.