By Jason Clark​

​I’ll be honest: Even as we did tons of cool stuff on this trip, I was often thinking about food. If we were on a hike, I pondered about what we’d eat afterwards. If we were heading to a baseball game, I’d wonder about the culinary ballpark creations in store for us. And a few times, we visited certain cities just for the food. We stopped in Austin twice for barbecue, and from Vermont, we made a day trip to Montreal just to sample different poutines.

We tried every regional specialty we could find, and eventually, it got us thinking: What is the best regional food in the United States?*

To answer this question, we decided to divide the cuisines we sampled into categories (after all, pitting clam chowder against barbecue wouldn’t be a fair fight). Then we chose a winner of each category and matched up the winners against each other.

​Over the last two years, we’ve attended 27 baseball games across the country. We’ve seen three shutouts, one rainout, and 56 home runs. We’ve eaten nachos, hot dogs, and—regrettably—the Big Queso.

So, out of all that, which ballparks were our favorites? Which ones gave us a great experience? And which ones do we hope to never set foot in again?

This is our ranking of the Major League Baseball ballparks, tiered from our favorites to the ones we’d rather forget.*

​Jason and I have hiked lots of trails throughout the Big Trip—480 miles of them, to be precise. We love exploring national parks on foot, and in every park we visited over the last 18 months, we searched for a specific kind of trail: the ones that cover many miles, promise big elevation changes, and require lots of planning. That’s because, in our opinion, the most demanding hikes tend to take you to the most incredible places.

While we still haven’t checked off every hike on my bucket list, I think it’s safe to say that we’ve trekked along some of the best trails the contiguous U.S. has to offer.* Here are our favorite ones, organized by region.

At this time last week, I was hoping I wouldn’t have to write a newsletter like this.
But here I am, writing to tell you that our Big Trip has come to an end—earlier than planned.

To be fair, it didn’t end much earlier than planned. If everything had worked out, I would have sent this newsletter last Tuesday, sharing that we’d made it to Albuquerque. And today, Jason and I would be arriving home in southern California, bringing our Big Trip to its scheduled end.

Instead, I’m writing this newsletter from California, and I’m sending it a week late. Because things got a little sketchy in Albuquerque.

My brain hasn’t quite absorbed this yet, so I need to put it in writing: As of two weeks ago, Jason and I have visited every national park in the contiguous United States.

That’s every park we can drive to. Every park from the Redwoods in California to the wetlands in Florida to the mountains in Maine. Which means we’ve done it.

The goal that sparked our idea for the Big Trip six years ago? It’s complete.
​
And I’m not sure how I feel about it.

Back in Southern California, I used to sweat through every summer in eager anticipation of fall: the season of artificial pumpkin spice, when the leaves turned slightly more brown and temperatures dropped to a balmy 79°F.

Little did I know what I was missing out on.

This year, per my request, Jason designed our travel route to bring us to New England by October. I used to wonder what autumn felt like here. Were the fall foliage and cider mills really as spectacular as everyone said? Or was it all just hype, designed to lure naïve tourists like myself?

Having spent three weeks romping around New England’s forests and mills, I can say for certain now: It’s not hype.

For the first 14 months of our Big Trip, we were very lucky.

We’d towed our trailer some 50,000 miles across 37 U.S. states and two Canadian states, and the entire way, Holt had given us no issues. Sure, we had a couple hiccups—some leaky spots in our kitchen sink, a burnt-out fan in the range hood—but nothing that brought us to a halt. Nothing that made us question whether we could finish our trip as planned.

Then, seemingly out of nowhere, our slide-out gave up.*

Two big things happened over the last couple weeks.

First, I’m thrilled to share that we got our slide-out fixed--and our insurance covered most of the cost to repair it. Our sighs of relief could be heard for miles around.

Second, we completed one of our primary goals for the Big Trip: A few days ago, we watched our last baseball game of the season, and now Jason can say that he’s seen a game at 29 of the 30 Major League Baseball ballparks.

When we set out on the road last summer, we knew we were taking on a new adventure—and a lot of risk. Yes, we’d given up our apartment and our jobs, but we were also moving into a travel trailer. And when you’re towing your house along hundreds of miles of highways every few days, just about anything can happen.

Well. Something happened.

A couple weeks ago, as we broke camp in West Virginia, our trailer’s slide-out stopped working properly.* I could go into detail here—too much detail—but in an effort to keep this newsletter somewhat brief, I’ll just say this: our slide-out couldn’t extend and retract smoothly anymore. Somehow, it had become crooked.

Sustaining damage to a vehicle is already stressful. But seeking out repairs while you’re living in that vehicle thousands of miles from home?

Good Lord.