Our Second Year Of Road Tripping – The Numbers

Ever since we set off on our 5 year, 50 state road trip in 2018, we’ve published stats posts each month where we share how we did with our budget, how many miles we drove, how many hotel points we earned and redeemed, etc.

At the start of 2019 I also published a post sharing even more comprehensive stats from our entire year in travel (see: Our First Year Of Road Tripping – The Numbers). I actually really enjoyed putting together all that information as it was interesting to see all those stats for myself, so I thought I’d do it again to cover the second year of the road trip – here are the results.

Miles Driven

We started 2019 with 107,021 miles on our Toyota Corolla. By the end of 2019 the odometer reading was 132,027, so we drove 25,006 miles in 2019. That’s a little less than in 2018 as we drove 27,643 miles that year.

I’ve a feeling our mileage for 2020 will be closer to 40,000 miles as we’ll have driven from the east coast to the west coast during the year, as well as up to Alaska and all around.

Number Of Countries Visited

This one is different for me and Shae as I did 40k To Far Away last October without her. The number of countries we visited also depends on how you define “visited”. We flew or drove through several countries but didn’t really “visit” them, so I’ll list these as countries we officially visited and the unofficial ones where we just traveled through them.

Stephen

Official

• US
• UK
• Netherlands
• Bali (Indonesia)
• Spain
• Belgium
• France
• Denmark

Unofficial

• Canada
• Hong Kong
• Japan
• Switzerland

Shae

Official

• US
• UK
• Netherlands
• Bali (Indonesia)

Unofficial

• Canada
• Hong Kong
• Japan

Number Of Cities Stayed In (Officially)

37.

Number Of Cities Stayed In (Unofficially)

48. The other 11 cities were generally ones we stayed at on our way from one state to another, including Lebanon NH, Cranbury NJ and Winston-Salem NC.

Number Of States Visited (Officially)

9. This includes Washington D.C. (which isn’t an actual state), as well as Vermont which we first visited last year on the road trip. We therefore only visited 7 new states in 2019 if you exclude D.C.

Number Of States Visited (Unofficially)

17. This includes states like Indiana, North Carolina and New Hampshire where we stayed a night or two on our way to a different state.

Number Of Hotel Brands Stayed At

27. Here’s a breakdown of which brands we stayed at, how many nights we stayed at them and how many different properties we stayed at for each one. Similar to 2018, we stayed most frequently at Hyatt Places thanks to several of them only costing 5,000 points per night.

Number Of Nights In Airbnbs

We only stayed 63 nights in Airbnbs in 2019 versus 103 nights in 2018. The main reason there was such a large drop is because we managed to book more hotels at cheaper rates, whether paying cash or with points.

Average Accommodation Cost

We spent $9,047.52 on accommodation during 2019 which includes both hotels and Airbnbs. That’s the final figure after taking into account reduced costs like statement credits from Amex Offers when paying for stays at Hyatt Places, discounted Airbnb gift cards, etc.

That means we paid an average of $24.79 per night which is much lower than I was expecting that figure to be. In addition to discounted gift cards, etc., we’re able to keep that total so low by maximizing our hotel points.

Paid Nights Vs. Award Nights

Based on our actual hotel stays, we paid cash for 66 nights and used points for 174 nights. That obviously doesn’t add up to 365, so the other nights were either spent in Airbnbs, with friends and family or on a plane when traveling overseas at night. (Thanks to Kathryn K in the comments for the idea to include this information.)

Total Pet Fees

Seeing as we travel with our dog Truffles, we often have to pay pet fees at hotels and, very occasionally, at Airbnbs. Our total pet fee cost in 2019 came to $1,629.93 which is actually less than we paid in 2018 despite staying in hotels more frequently.

That’s how much we actually paid. In theory, we should’ve paid $2,005 but some hotels didn’t end up charging for having Truffles with us or they didn’t charge as much as expected.

Hotel Status Levels

Similar to 2018, I managed to earn top tier status with a couple of hotel loyalty programs in 2019 due to the fact that we live in hotels and Airbnbs. In addition to that, I was able to get some other top tier status levels thanks to either status matching or the fact that it came as a benefit from a credit card.

Average Daily Spend

Our road trip-related expenses came to a total of $35,295.26 in 2019 which is $96.70 per day. Our road trip budget is $100 per day, so it was nice that we managed to stay under budget over the course of the entire year.

Number Of Blog Posts Published

224. That’s down on the 274 posts we wrote in 2018, but that’s because I ended up writing almost 2,000 posts on GCGalore last year which, needless to say, resulted in less time to write posts here.

Total Website Visitors

209,841 versus 99,059 in 2018.

Total Page Views

304,588 versus 160,788 in 2018. We took a hit on traffic in November and December after adding an SSL certificate as that changed our site from http to https, but that’s starting to recover.

Question

Are there any other numbers you’re curious about from the first year of our road trip? Let me know in the comments below and I’ll try and provide them 🙂