Day 89: Only Lewis & Clark have seen more of the country than I have

DAY 89: Audubon, Iowa
Miles traveled: 12,765
States visited: 30
Weather: 84, sunny

I’m at a campground in Iowa, taking a day to relax and recharge the batteries. I downloaded the entire Michael Jackson memorial yesterday so I’m watching it today and getting in my grieving time.

On the way here I passed another Lewis & Clark historical post. I’ve seen these everywhere, from Oregon and Washington to Montana to Missouri. Those dudes really got around. I’m sure I’ll continue to see them all the way to Pennsylvania. You could create a great road trip by just following Lewis & Clark’s path.

I’m headed towards Minneapolis, but in the meantime here’s something that might be interesting – a rundown of the websites I use most often as I travel 46 states in 4 months.

http://www.couchsurfing.com
I use this site most often to find friendly people to stay with. It’s a worldwide network of people who let others stay on their couch for free. I’ve hosted people at my place too and hope to do some more of it in the future. I’ve met a ton of great people through this site. Visiting cities is much more fun when you have locals to show you around.

http://www.yelp.com
In big cities this site is great because you can look up anything by category – thrift stores, bars, restaurants, dentists, mechanics. Some cities use Yelp more than others (Pittsburgh is way behind the curve), but in most places this site is my bible.

http://www.freecampgrounds.com
When I want to find a campground I usually use this site. I found cheap campgrounds in South Carolina and Iowa this way. I also discovered from the site that Arizona allows overnight parking at its rest stops, which I did one night while headed towards the Grand Canyon.

http://www.indiecoffeeshops.com
This site was valuable when searching for coffee shops with wireless internet. I don’t use it as much now that I can run the internet through my phone, but I still sometimes turn to it when I have an hour or two to kill and want to check out a fun local place – like Paris on the Platte in Denver.

http://www.parkfreeovernight.com
Unfortunately this site doesn’t get updated anymore, but it’s still pretty accurate. You can enter a city and it will tell you the nearest place that you can park overnight for free. Most often, this ends up being a Walmart. There are some Walmarts that don’t allow overnight parking, and this site documents those too.

http://www.calorieking.com
I’ve been keeping careful track of my diet because I feared that I might eat nothing but junk food. So I’ve been tracking my intake of fat, cholesterol, sodium, and carbs. This site provides all of that info for every major restaurant and also for produce and other stuff that doesn’t have labels.