A Big Trip focused on New England

For ages I'd been eyeing New England as a place where I could build a number of state lists within a small area, meaning not so much money spent on gas. Other attractions were cooler weather, ocean time, mountain time, possible lifers, and just seeing some country where I'd not spent much time. There were nine eastern states where I didn't have a hundred species list, so that was the official goal of the trip. Since one of them was West Virginia, I took a southern outbound route through northern Mississippi and Alabama and then up the Appalachians through Tennessee and Virginia, and then into the target states. The return trip involved some family visiting near Philadelphia, and then I'd planned to catch some more coast-line down to the Outer Banks. That got truncated by a gradually worsening engine problem that made me think the prudent thing was to just to take the Interstates home. I was gone 32 days.