Never go to Utah.

So I've successfully made my way across the country, and am in North Carolina with Brian. I'll drive up to Virginia tomorrow, at which point I guess I'll be officially living again on the East Coast.

The cross-country trip took seven days with a very long detour to Bozeman, Montana. We passed through 16 states, in the following order: California, Arizona, Utah, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina.

Between the two of us, we only accumulated two tickets; Brian for running an invisible stop sign in Kenab, Utah, and me for passing an invisible cop at 91 mph about five miles before getting the hell out of Utah. So the consensus is we're never going back to Utah.

Along the way, we saw the Grand Canyon; a place in Bozeman where Lewis and Clark camped for four days while figuring out how to pass through 10 waterfalls in the Missouri River; Yellowstone; Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse in South Dakota; the Gateway Arch in St. Louis and the Louisville Slugger Museum in Louisville. We also went to a couple of bars in Kansas City, where we stayed with Kansas Paul, who I met in Brussels. Here are some things we learned along the way:

1) Wyoming is so far to the right that even its roads are red.
2) Never go to Utah.
3) Waffle House is too good for the good people of Western Kentucky. They prefer "Waffle Steak."
4) Montana has the hottest girls (this is Brian's verdict), and Kansas City the hottest guys (go figure).
5) Even the people in Kansas think the people in Kansas are bigoted. You pass by myriad cars with bumper stickers that say, "Kansas: it's as bigoted as you think."
6) There are at least 17,000 places called "Bear Country" in Montana and Idaho, but you will never actually see any bears.
7) Valium doesn't work so well on cats (The vet gave me a prescription for them, I swear).
8) The people carving Mount Rushmore had to buy new expensive equipment to avoid delays caused by dirty laundry.
9) Looking for the Gateway Arch, which towers over the rest of the skyline in St. Louis, could very easily leave you en route to Chicago.
10) Brian fails as a motivator to do pushups and situps every night.

So that's it. The trip. I'll post pictures as soon as they finish uploading...