New York, NY

Trip miles 8871
Daily miles 808

Junior Nomad and I completed the final leg of our trip on Friday, July 11. It was an epic 800 mile run from Chicago through Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and finally into New York City. O' Nomad had flown out of Chicago the before.

We left Chicago about 8am and after a few wrong turns finally made it onto I-80 which goes directly into the George Washington Bridge. Consequently we didn't need the car's nav system for anything other than to periodically compute our estimated time of arrival.

I don't have that many pictures from this leg of the trip because a) there truly wasn't that much to see en route, and b) Junior Nomad and I were too busy enjoying the now near-continuous cell coverage by surfing the net on my laptop in full digital nomad style to take pictures of featureless landscape. Nonetheless there were a few items of note.

First was the sheer industrialness of Indiana.

None of the pictures truly capture this, but the above one is the best. In parts of the state there just seemed to be nothing but power pylons with the odd power plant in the distance.

Easily the most interesting thing we saw was a stunt plane (probably an Extra 500 or similar) doing aerobatics no more than 1000 feet off the deck. None of the pictures really captures the aggressiveness of the maneuvers, but this is the closest.

We then entered Ohio.

The main item of note in Ohio was a very large GM plant. It was good to see that domestic production was still occurring.

I was very happy to enter Pennsylvania. We were getting closer!

I wonder what had been blocked out...

Knowing that we were finally in a state that borders on New York was inexplicably soothing to me. This effect persisted even after I saw this sign.

The rest of the run was uneventful. Pennsylvania is a really long state, which I hadn't appreciated prior to the trip. Virtually all of the 400 miles we drove were picturesque, but the rolling hills did not lend themselves to being photographed and then it started to get dark.

I have a really blurry picture of the Welcome to New Jersey sign, but it's more or less illegible so I'm not posting it. Suffice to say Junior and I were thrilled that we were almost home!

We parked the car in my parking space about 9:45 PM New York time. I was exhausted and truly felt a sense of accomplishment. I remember pumping my fist in the air with joy before walking to the home that I had been away from for the last month. I felt like Odysseus finally returning when I greeted Mrs. Nomad.

A big thank you to all of the readers of this blog. Your interest in and comments about it motivated me to try to capture as much of the essence of the trip as possible. I will undoubtedly appreciate this record of the trip even more in the coming years and it would not be nearly as detailed as it is without your input.

I plan to have one last post over the next couple of weeks which summarizes the key themes and takeways of the trip. After that I plan to post sporadically about travel, especially when I go somewhere interesting.

Please do check in periodically, and again, thank you again for all of your support!