Let’s look back at our coach travel in 2024. You may also want to check out the 2023 travel summary, the 2022 travel summary, and the 2021 travel summary.
We bought our 2017 Tiffin Allegro Bus 40SP diesel pusher motorhome on September 2, 2021, and other than a few times when we’ve been out of it during servicing appointments or flying vacations, we’ve lived in it full-time since then.
When we bought the coach, it only had 5,161 miles on the odometer. In 2021 we drove it about 2,300 miles. In 2022 we drove another 8,772 miles. In 2023 we added 9,945 miles. In 2024 we added 12,248, so have driven it 33,265 miles on our adventures so far, for a grand total of 38,426 on the odometer. (The circumference of the Earth at the equator is 24,901 miles, so we’ve effectively driven it 1.3 times around the world!)
One of our goals is to visit every state in the US. In 2024 we stayed in 15 new states: Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia, Kentucky, Indiana, Missouri, Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. These join North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, and Florida in 2023, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Texas in 2022, and Washington, Oregon, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, California, and Arizona in 2021, for a total of 38. Just 12 left! (We only count states visited since purchasing our coach.)
We also revisited several states last year, as we headed back to our Pacific Northwest domicile. So all the states we visited in 2024 — in order — were Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Arkansas, Texas, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana, Missouri, Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, South Dakota, Montana, Washington, Oregon, California, Arizona, New Mexico, Louisiana, and Mississippi; a total of 29 in the year.
Here’s a map of our coach travels and stays in 2024, via the excellent RV Life Trip Wizard website, using a variation of their maps that more clearly shows the state borders and color-coded time zones. We started the year in the panhandle of Florida, then the route headed south to the Florida Keys, then north and west to Paris, Texas for the total solar eclipse, then to the east coast and up to Delaware, then all the way across to the west coast, south, then back east, ending the year exactly where we started, in the panhandle of Florida:
Another variation of the map, with more detail:
Here’s the route map with the travel in 2024, 2023, 2022, and 2021 also displayed in different colors; our 2024 travel in orange, our 2023 travel in purple, our 2022 travel in blue, our 2021 coach travel in green, and our 2021 Yellowstone rental trailer trip in brown:
The same map as an animated GIF, adding each year:
Here’s a fun variation, showing the 2024 route without the background map; you can clearly see the shape of the country (other than the northeast, that we didn’t get to):
We actually revised our route a few times from what we planned for 2024; here’s an animated GIF that compares what we had originally planned (as shown in last year’s 2024 travel plans post), and what we ended up doing (as above):
Another interesting animated GIF, showing the elevations along our route; see the elevation and gradient at the bottom, and a moving dot along the map route showing where those elevations occurred. You can really see where the mountain ranges are:
Fascinating!