And Finally...the Fiftieth

QG50SMA Total Miles: 18,957 

Though we didn't start recording miles until July, 2012, so we missed an entire year of mileage.

As always, if you want to read this blog from the beginning, start here. You can catch up on past adventures using the navigation at the right.

If you go back and count the number of state pictures in this blog (and some people have) you'll notice there are only 49 states. We didn't miss one of the tiny states out East or one of the big ones out West. This was by design.

We planned long ago to celebrate the completion of our adventure at home in Minnesota - our golden, 50th, state.

We've been home a week now, and couldn't have picked a better morning to ride east to the Minnesota/Wisconsin border and do this:

With champagne in hand and smiles on our faces, we took our 50th state picture.

It's a wonderful thing to celebrate - going from a spark of an idea conceived while we sat in the chemotherapy room at the local hospital to reaching the end of the adventure.

There is, of course, the melancholy "What Now?".

The adventure will go on.  Next year we will finish up Canada by visiting the Maritime Provinces, and the year after that, who knows. There's a whole big world out there accessible by motorcycle, and we plan to see as much of it as we can.

There are so very many places we want to go back to and spend more time. A day here and a day there was simply not enough to really absorb all the history, culture, fantastic food, wonderful people, sights, smells and sounds of the places we traveled to.

One thing we did learn on this great quest: this country of ours is amazing. The vast beauty of the land and diversity of one road to another is incredible and we loved it all - admittedly some places more than others - but there isn't a single road we traveled, or a single stop we made that we wouldn't do again in a heartbeat.

We are asked all the time what our favorite part of QG50SMA was - and we simply cannot answer. Each trip was unique and offered its own beauty and challenges. Each trip showed us and taught us something we hadn't seen or known before we got on the bike.

Thank you all for taking this journey with us. We were so happy to have been able to share so much of it with you.


Anne and Sean