From 2018-2024, Shae, Truffles and I went on a 7 year road trip visiting all 50 states in the US. It was an incredible adventure which, weirdly, feels like a lifetime ago despite the fact that we only completed the epic trip less than 9 months ago.
At the end of every month throughout the road trip, we published our road trip stats for that previous month. In those posts we shared how far we drove, how much we spent, how we paid for each hotel and/or Airbnb stay (e.g. with cash, discounted gift cards, hotel points, etc.), how many points we earned and redeemed, etc.
Then at the start of every year, we shared a broader overview of our stats for the previous year. You can find those posts here:
I thought it would be fun this week to look back at the entire road trip and share some stats from the road trip as a whole.
How Many Miles We Drove
We began our road trip on January 1, 2018 with 79,378 miles on our car’s odometer. By the end of the road trip on December 31, 2024 its reading was 238,079; that means that over the entire course of the road trip we drove 158,701 miles.
That’s an average of:
- 22,672 miles per year
- 1,889 miles per month
- 62 miles per day
Our mileage differed greatly from month to month and year to year depending on where we were visiting. Our lowest mileage year was 2020 when we only drove 18,375 miles; as expected, COVID was a big component in that.
Despite driving up to Alaska and back in 2024, that year wasn’t the furthest we drove. In 2024 we traveled 26,328 miles in our car, but our highest year was 2018. In the first year of our road trip we drove 27,643 miles, primarily because we ended up all over the place that year. We left our old home town of Portsmouth, VA, then drove to South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Ohio, Vermont, Canada, Wisconsin, Illinois, Oklahoma, Texas, and finally Colorado.
Number Of Different US Cities Visited
Over the course of our 7 year road trip, we properly visited 237 different cities in the US. I say “properly visited” because we did stay in probably dozens of other cities along the way for a night or two, but I haven’t included those in this count because they’re locations where we were simply sleeping overnight on our way along a longer drive.
We visited several cities more than once on the road trip, but I’ve only counted those once time each. Shae and I also stayed in several places in Canada during the road trip, but those cities aren’t included in that count either seeing as they weren’t in the 50 US states.
Something else I did with this count is lump 2+ cities in a metro area together. For example, we stayed in downtown Chicago, as well as in Naperville and Schaumburg in 2018, but I counted those as one city (i.e. Chicago). Similarly, I counted Round Rock and Austin as one city, etc.
Hotel Brands We Stayed At & How Many Nights
We tended to stay at 20-30 different hotel brands on the road trip each year. Some of those brands differed from year to year, so by the end of the road trip we’d stayed at close to 70 different hotel brands.
Here’s a breakdown of how many nights we spent in each of the brands on the road trip:
As you can see, Hyatt Place was the brand we stayed at far more than any others. That’s because there were so many category 1 Hyatt Places around the US which meant we could get great value redeeming World of Hyatt points to pay for those stays.
How Many Nights We Stayed In Airbnb & Vacasa Properties
We spent quite a lot of our road trip in Airbnbs. Sometimes that’s because it would be a more affordable way of staying in a certain location. Other times it’s because we wanted more space and/or a kitchen. We were also able to pay using Airbnb gift cards bought at a discount, saving money on those stays.
During the last couple of years of the road trip we also stayed at some Vacasa properties. That’s because Vacasa launched a partnership with Wyndham that made it possible to book those vacation rental properties with Wyndham Rewards points.
Over the course of the 7 years of our road trip, we spent a grand total of 598 nights in Airbnbs. We also spent 61 nights in Vacasa properties.
How Many Nights We Paid With Points/Free Night Certificates Versus Paying With Cash
A couple of people have commented to ask how many nights we stayed using points and free night certificates and how many were paid for with cash.
I’ve gone through our hotel spreadsheet and here are the results by year:
Points & free night certificates
- 2018 – 137
- 2019 – 166
- 2020 – 99
- 2021 – 162
- 2022 – 196
- 2023 – 176
- 2024 – 244
Cash bookings
- 2018 – 194
- 2019 – 131
- 2020 – 267
- 2021 – 181
- 2022 – 125
- 2023 – 151
- 2024 – 101
Total over all 7 years
- Points & free night certificates – 1,180
- Cash – 1,150
It’s interesting that it’s an almost 50-50 split; I figured it would be somewhat close, but I though it might be more like 60:40 one way or the other.
As you can see, 2020 and 2024 were outliers. We had fewer award stays in 2020 because a) we booked lots of extended stays due to COVID, and b) accommodation was cheaper that year which meant points bookings didn’t represent very good value.
With regards to 2024, I knew that our road trip was coming to and end, so I wasn’t trying to ration our hotel points quite as much as normal. That meant I booked some more expensive (points-wise) hotels than I would have earlier in the road trip.
How Much We Spent Overall
During the first four years of the road trip, we set ourselves a budget of $100 per day which had to include everything: accommodation, gas, food, activities, parking, etc. Due to inflation, we increased our budget to $125 per day for the final three years of the road trip.
When calculating our budget spend each month and year, we excluded the time we spent overseas from how much we spent as we wanted to limit our budget stats to be focused solely on the road trip.
Here’s how much we spent each year:
- 2018 = $38,432.14
- 2019 = $35,295.26
- 2020 = $35,898.16
- 2021 = $35,577.23
- 2022 = $41,740.43
- 2023 = $43,915.49
- 2024 = $ 43,944.49
That means that over the entire seven years we spent a total of $264,803.20. When looking at it from a raw figure like that, it makes our road trip look super-expensive. However, this was basically our entire life; we’d sold our house and nearly all our possessions, so it’s not like we had housing costs and other bills like electric, internet, cable TV, water, home insurance, etc.
How Much We Spent On Hotel Pet Fees
This part is much more painful to consider! We traveled with our small dog Truffles which made the trip harder from an accommodation perspective. That’s because not all hotels and Airbnbs are pet-friendly, so that removed some good value options.
Then, when properties were pet-friendly, there’d usually be a pet fee. Some hotels charge on a per night basis, while others charge on a per stay basis. Sometimes we got lucky and hotels neglected to charge us a pet fee, but they seemed to become much more diligent about it post-COVID.
Over the course of the seven years we spent a total of $12,638.10 on pet fees – ouch! In reality, it was probably even more than that due to pet fees charged by Airbnb hosts. Those are rolled up into the overall cost of an Airbnb stay rather than being listed as a separate line item, so I imagine we spent another couple of thousand on those too.
Question
We’ll be publishing further posts in the future that look back at our road trip, including both me and Shae ranking all 50 states in order from our favorite to least favorite, so stay tuned for those posts in the coming weeks and months.
For now though, are there any other stat-related details you’d like to see added to this post? Let us know in the comments below.
Thanks for posting this Stephen! Really interesting data.
I wonder if you’ve done a monetary valuation of the benefits (rebates, statuses, free nights, etc.) you’ve accrued from your travels? Some of those may already be incorporated into your yearly totals?
Best regards, Dave
Do you mean in terms of the value we got when we were on the road trip itself, or with regards to longer term value?
If the latter, I don’t think there’s all that much that we’ll have retained on a long term basis. I’ve earned lifetime Platinum status with Marriott thanks to all the elite night credits and years of earning Platinum, but I can’t think of anything else off the top of my head.
If the former, I hadn’t assigned any valuations regarding things like free breakfast with status, value of upgrades, etc. I did sometimes make a note of, say, how much a suite would’ve cost when using a Hyatt Suite Upgrade Award, as well as what the cash cost would’ve been when redeeming free night certificates, but I don’t think I necessarily have enough comprehensive info to put anything together on that front.
I wonder how it would have cost in total if no points were used?
Ooh, that would be really interesting to know. I did track what cash costs were when redeeming points and free night certificates, so in theory with enough time I could probably calculate that. I don’t know how accurate that would be though because if we hadn’t redeemed points for those stays, we likely would’ve made a different hotel choice than the one we actually booked with points/certs.
How many sets of tires did you purchase over the years of the trip with the many miles you drove?
When you are stationary, it is easy to have that trustworthy, reliable mechanic who you know won’t take advantage of you. Was it difficult to find a trustworthy and reliable car mechanic or shop being on the road?
Good question. We probably didn’t replace them quite as frequently as we should have, but I think we changed them something like half a dozen times over the seven years. Possibly a little more frequently than that. I think we replaced them twice in 2024 before and after our drive to Alaska. Then probably once a year other than that.
Thankfully we had very few car issues on the road trip, so we rarely had to go to an actual mechanic. We went to Valvoline and Jiffy Lube for oil changes. We went to a mechanic our friend suggested when staying with them for a few days and needed the car tuning up. They ended up messing up one of the car sensors, but they seemed OK otherwise. Neither of us know much about cars, so we were grateful we didn’t have any major issues.
Interesting to look in the rear view mirror and see these numbers. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks!
I’m a numbers nerd – I love reading all the stats!
What about how many points you used overall and each year on accommodations? How many nights were paid by cash vs points overall and per year? How often you used gift cards to lower the cost of accommodations.
How many days did you spend in each state? Did you think that was the right amount of days to get a feel for each state or would you have liked to stay longer or spend less time?
What were your top 5 favorite hotels and airbnbs overall? Top 5 favorite attractions? Restaurants? Etc.
What did you learn from your time on the road? Knowing what you know now, what would you do differently if you had to do it again?
The number of points used overall would be a tricky one. On each month’s stats post I collated the number of points we earned and redeemed that previous month, but the redemptions included stays that we subsequently cancelled and booked another way. I could probably go through all 7 years of our hotel tracking spreadsheet; that’d be one for another time as I imagine it’d be quite time consuming! I’d be interested to know that too though.
Pretty much every stay we booked with Airbnb was paid for with gift cards we bought for 10%-20% off. Other than that, we only occasionally paid for hotel stays with gift cards when we’d been able to get them on sale. Marriott primarily, but Hyatt at times too. On average it was probably only one or two hotel stays a year paid for that way though.
Re how many days we stayed in each state – when we put together our rankings of our favorite states in order, I might try to calculate that then. This one’s a little tricky too because some states we stayed days or weeks in without doing much (e.g. at the start of COVID we stayed in Albuquerque, NM for 2-3 weeks, then Pueblo, CO for something like 6-7 weeks), so it’s hard to know how much to account for that.
Top 5 hotels and Airbnbs overall – that’s one of the upcoming future posts we’re planning on writing. The attractions and restaurants ones are interesting ideas too – I can imagine having to spend a lot of time trying to come up with my favorite 5 attractions particularly.
That’s a great final suggestion too. We’ll have to write a separate post about what we learned & what we’d do differently. Thanks for all the inspiration for future posts!
I’ve just added a section detailing how many nights were paid by cash versus points and free night certificates 🙂
Great post! I would be interested in hearing your thoughts about some of the under the radar hotel chains you’ve stayed at. I’ve read every one of your posts, and I know that you usually give your impressions of each location where you’ve stayed. I think a lot of us involved in the “hobby” tend to gravitate towards the usual suspects (Hyatt, Hilton, Marriott, IHG). It might be interesting to hear what your overall thoughts are about some of the less well known brands (like Sonesta ES Suites or MainStay suites). By the way, we’ve had 2 recent visits with out of town friends to the Thomas Dambo troll in Hainesport, NJ which we learned about through you. Our Seattle friends were well acquainted with his work, but our Massachusetts friend had not heard of him and are now obsessed…..
That’s awesome, I love that we’ve managed to spread the Thomas Dambo joy!
In terms of hotel chains, that’s an interesting one. Sonesta brands are tricky because from 2019-2021(ish) they picked up loads of existing hotels from various other hotel chains that subsequently got rebranded to one kind of Sonesta brand or another. For example, when COVID first hit we hunkered down at the Candlewood Suites in Albuquerque, NM. A year or two later that became a Sonesta ES Suites. We later stayed at a Sonesta ES Suites which used to be a Residence Inn and which was very different to the one that had rebranded to Sonesta ES Suites in Albuquerque. Sonesta therefore seems to be a chain where there might not be quite as much brand consistency.
MainStay Suites (Choice) were OK; I think we stayed at two or three of those. You can tell they’re a Choice Hotels brand versus being an extended stay brand with a chain like Marriott or Hilton, but they were decent enough value for the points and it was nice having a kitchen and, in at least one case (I think) being able to book a one bedroom suite rather than a studio suite.
I’m trying to think of other brands we’ve stayed at enough to form some kind of opinion. We’ve stayed at a few Aloft properties over the years. Those are OK; they’re pet-friendly and didn’t used to charge a pet fee, but I think some do charge a fee now. Those tend to be nice enough, but I think they’re targeted more at millennials. They also rarely seem to have upgraded rooms and suites, so generally they’re just standard king or two queen rooms. That’s not necessarily bad, but where possible I tried to find us places where we’d at least have a chance of being upgraded to a larger room or suite so that we’d have more space.
Microtel (Wyndham) seems to have very small rooms based on the couple we’ve stayed in. Quality Inn isn’t a particularly great brand and usually seem to be fairly dated, although we stayed at a pretty good one in San Simeon, CA – particularly with regards to their service.
La Quinta (Wyndham) properties would be fine if it was just me and Shae. However, if we’re with Truffles we try to avoid them now. Although they’re nearly all pet-friendly, the construction quality doesn’t seem to be as good and so we’ve tended to hear much more banging around, footsteps in the room above, people in rooms at the far end of the hall, etc. If it was just us, I don’t think we’d notice as much, but Truffles lets us know about her displeasure, especially with people stomping around above us 😉
Tru (Hilton) is fine if it’s just you or if you’re only staying a night or two. Rooms are fairly bare bones though with very little storage, so it’s not a great option for a week-long stay with someone else.
Fairfield Inn (Marriott) – perfectly fine, albeit a little dull with nothing to commend it in any way.
Embassy Suites (Hilton) – I like this brand because at nearly every one of their properties, the default room type is a two room suite (living room and bedroom). We’ve only stayed at a couple though, although the Holiday Inn Phoenix Airport North that we like was converted from being an Embassy Suites.
Home2 Suites (Hilton) – these are OK. It’s nice having a kitchen, but they don’t automatically have a stove top – you have to request a hot plate. I’m not a big fan of their breakfasts; it’s complimentary and they do have hot options, but the hot options are normally things like pre-packaged breakfast sandwiches. Those unfailingly have cheese on them and I don’t like cheese, so it’s hard to find something hot there that I can eat. I also wish they had a more defined separation between the living room/kitchen area and the bedroom. There’s a curtain that can be pulled across, but it doesn’t really do anything to make the bedroom area dark if someone’s in the living room.
Super 8 (Wyndham) – fine for a one or two night stay on your way somewhere else, provided you read the reviews first. There are plenty of Super 8 properties with terrible reviews that we’d never stay at, but the ones we’ve stayed at have been fine as I’ve made sure their reviews are decent enough before booking.
Red Roof Inn – Kinda bare bones, but can be good if you’re traveling with a dog as they’re always pet-friendly and don’t charge a pet fee. This is another brand where you really have to check reviews though as they have plenty of shady looking properties.
Country Inn & Suites (Choice) – They’re fine. We stayed at a few properties on the road trip where we were able to book straight into a one bedroom suite using points; at another, we got upgraded to a one bedroom suite. Their one bedroom suites do wind me up at some properties though because we stayed in at least 2-3 where the door between the bedroom and living room was glass. That meant light flooded the bedroom if the light was on in the living room which kinda defeats one of the main purposes of the door.
Element (Marriott) – These are pretty nice extended stay hotels. I believe all rooms have a kitchen, but they do tend to be a little more expensive than other extended stay brands both cash-wise and points-wise.
Naperville and Schaumburg? Sounds like a couple of category 1 Hyatt Regencies to me!
Congrats on completing the trip! I can’t believe it’s over. What’s next??
For your top 50 states, you don’t want to do worst to first to keep us all in suspense? I would say that there would be some suspense for worst, but we all know it’s Nebraska.
Funnily enough, we didn’t stay at those Hyatt Regency properties! We booked a TownePlace Suites in Naperville as we wanted a two bedroom suite (Shae’s mom and stepdad spent the week with us). In Schaumburg we stayed at the Hyatt House which was also category 1, so almost the same thing.
As for ranking the states, we might do it in reverse order like that – good thinking. We’re also trying to decide whether to publish it was one 50 to 1 list, or whether to do 50-41, 40-31, etc.
As for worst state though, Shae and I are both united in our view, and it’s not Nebraska! It’s Connecticut. Nebraska certainly won’t crack my top 25, but it definitely wasn’t the worst.
Oh, and as for what’s next – for now we’re exploring more of the UK now that everything is somewhat close by, plus Europe trips are even easier and cheaper.
Hey Stephen, do you know how much on average you spent on accommodations out of those yearly totals you indicated? And what is the ratio of revenue stays to award stays on average? Thank you
Here are the averages per night for each year of the road trip
2024 – $31.73
2023 – $47.90
2022 – $43.52
2021 – $38.77
2020 – $42.67
2019 – $24.79
2018 – $38.84
With regards to revenue stays versus points stays, I’ve just added a section with those details.
Great post Stephen! My wife and I are on a year-long honeymoon, and I’ve been keeping some stats as well (mostly as a way to track our budget) — very cool to compare notes!
Would love to know what percentage of hotel stays were paid vs. points (if you happened to track that). Personally, I’ve also been tracking stays that were either free or heavily discounted through some other means (a card offer, the CSP annual hotel discount, hotels.com gift cards received from Capitol One Shopping, etc.) — curious to know if you tracked something like that too.
Thanks again for the great read!
Congrats on your wedding and the year-long honeymoon – that’s awesome! I’ve just added a section listing a breakdown of how many nights were booked with cash vs points and free night certificates. I’d originally thought it might be time consuming to collate that, but it wasn’t bad in the end.
Have you calculated how many points you spent for all these stays? How would it effect your annual costs if you included the conservative value of (or oppurtunity cost to obtain) those points?
I haven’t calculated how many points we redeemed yet. I did track how many we redeemed for each stay, so that’s something I could probably calculate at some point once I have enough time. It’d take a while because I’d need to break it down by loyalty program seeing as 100K Hyatt points are worth much more than 100K IHG points.
I had originally wanted to account for the cost of obtaining the points, especially when they were obtained through manufactured spending. However, that ended up being too much effort, so I never ended up tracking that.
We did buy points sometimes, such as IHG points when on sale for 0.5 cents per point, Choice points during Daily Getaways deals, etc. Those costs were accounted for in the figures listed in the post for how much we spent each year.
Great post and very interesting data.
Any reason you listed “Shell Vacation Club” twice?
Oops, well spotted! That must’ve been an error when I was rearranging the brands in numerical order – I must’ve forgotten to delete its original entry.
How many parks did you end up visiting? Which were your top 3?
Which state(s) do you feel a need to return to because there wasn’t enough time to explore?
Which states were one-and-done?
Did you ever have to use either the travel or medical insurance from a CC during your road trip?
Were there any mistakes you made along the way, and what did you learn from those mistakes?
What kind of personal growth have you both experienced?
After traveling for so long, what was the hardest thing to adapt to? And what was the thing you were looking forward to the most?
What does Truffles think of all of this?
Thanks for all those suggestions for future posts! I’m working on a post right now about which National Parks we visited and which were my favorite 🙂
I’ll try to write posts addressing all those other topics in the future too as those would be really interesting to cover. With regards to mistakes, we definitely did make a number of those; you can find those here: https://nohomejustroam.com/road-trip-mistakes/