As we drove north to pick up I-80 outside Cheyenne today, we finally returned to a familiar roadbed after many days on I-70 (which we had only driven on once before, and then only much farther east). But we couldn’t quite remember how familiar I-80 was. So we began counting it up, and eventually ran up a tally of most of our long roadtrips.

This is what we could remember:

1997

• Minneapolis to PDX via 35, 80 & 84; PDX to MPLS via 90 & 94.

1998

• MPLS to NYC via 90/80, down from upstate NY.

1999

• Scotland: counter-clockwise, starting and ending in Glasgow.

2000

• Feb: MPLS to PDX (but we may have flown, not driven).
• Aug: MPLS to Charlottesville, VA.
• Sep: MPLS to Winnepeg.

2003

• June & August: MPLS to Salt Lake City and back, twice.
• Sep: MPLS to Santa Fe, NM

2004

• Jan: Santa Fe to Phoenix, to LA, to San Francisco, then back to Santa Fe.
• March: Santa Fe to MPLS and back.
• May: Santa Fe to Naples, FL.
• June: Naples to MPLS, then MPLS to SLC.
• Aug: SLC to MPLS.
• Sep: MPLS to Upstate NY & NYC.

Those roadtrips in the 18 months between June 2003 and September 2004 totalled just under 19,000 miles. That’s an average of 1,000 miles per month . . . And this is the sixth time we’ve driven on I-80 between Cheyenne & Salt Lake City.