2020 In Review: Travel Stats

I think I jinxed us by closing our 2019 Travel Stats blog post saying I was looking forward to visiting a new continent in 2020. While 2020 wasn't the travel year anyone expected, we were able to make the most of it and see a lot more of our own country.

Regions

We had one trip booked for 2020 that we had to postpone because of the pandemic. We were supposed to go to Tanzania on a safari. Like many, we did not leave our home country in 2020, so we only visited one country and one continent. Within the US, we visited 16 states:

• Ohio
• North Carolina
• New York
• Pennsylvania
• Hawaii
• South Carolina
• Tennessee
• Oklahoma
• Colorado
• Wyoming
• Idaho
• Utah
• Nebraska
• Kansas
• Missouri
• Florida

Of those, I visited 2 new states—Oklahoma and Idaho—and Anthony visited 9 new states—Hawaii, Oklahoma, Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, Utah, Nebraska, Kansas, and Missouri.

This list only includes states we actually did something in. We also drove through or visited the airport in another 13 states. This means we were in over half of the states in 2020.

We spent 18 days visiting 9 national parks:

• Haleakalā
• Hawai'i Volcanoes
• Great Sand Dunes
• Rocky Mountain
• Black Canyon of the Gunnison
• Grand Teton
• Yellowstone
• Gateway Arch
• Everglades

Of those parks, 4 were new for me and all of them were new for Anthony.

Nights

Totals

We stayed in a total of 14 different places in 2020. In a year of a pandemic, it makes sense that this is about half of the number of places as the year before. The most nights we spent in one place was 226 nights in our house. We actually spent less nights at home in 2020 than the year before which we can chalk up to working remotely starting in March.

We spent 34 nights camping this year. I use the term camping loosely since all of these were spent in an RV at RV parks/campgrounds.

Another first in 2020 was that staying with friends and family was the highest number of nights we spent away from home at 44 nights.

We also spent 23 nights in hotels (18 of which were for work, all of which were before mid-March), 38 nights in Airbnbs, and 1 night on an airplane. We slept outside of the house for 140 nights which is over a third of the year.

Superlatives

The most consecutive nights we spent in one places was 91 nights in our house from the middle of March until the middle of June.

The most nights we spent at a place outside of our house was 42 nights at my parents house. In the middle of June, we were getting really tired of seeing the same four walls every day, so we relocated our quarantine to my parents house. This was also the most consecutive nights slept outside of our house.

Flights

Totals

We flew a total of 12,244 miles for 30 hours and 3 minutes last year. Considering we only flew for the first 2.5 months of the year, it's impressive that we still flew almost as many miles as we did in 2019. This was mostly thanks to our trip to Hawaii. We took 14 flight segments to 13 airports and 7 unique destinations:

• Cleveland
• New York City
• Philadelphia
• Maui
• Kauai
• Kona
• Columbus

Superlatives

Our longest flight was 2,845 miles for 5 hours and 53 minutes from Phoenix to Maui. Our shortest flight was 102 miles for 41 minutes from Kauai to Honolulu.

Road Trips

We don't count any day trips as part of this, only trips that started and ended in different places.

Totals

We drove 9,038 miles this year on 6 different road trips:

• Columbus to Kenton
• Malvern to Charlotte
• Charlotte to Solon
• Charlotte to Idaho
• Charlotte to Outer Banks
• Charlotte to Miami

With 2020 being the year of road trips, we still drove less miles than we flew. We definitely spent more time in the car than we did on planes though. We clocked in at a total of 5 days, 22 hours, and 11 minutes of driving on road trips this year. I think we're both hoping that this will be the most driving we do in a year for a long time.

We also traveled by train for 84 miles and by bus for 96 miles. Both were on trips from New York City to Philadelphia.

Superlatives

Our longest road trip of the year was 5,904 miles on our RV trip. This included many stops which were mostly in Colorado, Wyoming, and Idaho.

The most miles we drove in a single day was 729 miles from Charlotte to Miami. At 10 hours and 11 minutes, Anthony is hoping for shorter drives in our future travels.

Final thoughts

Our 2020 travel year was a lot different than we expected it to be. The best thing to come out of 2020 for us was the ability to work remotely. It allowed us to travel much more than we would normally have been able to and we hope that we will continue to work remotely for the rest of our careers.

We're going into 2021 with no travel expectations. We'd love to be able to travel internationally again, but we'll continue to explore the US if that's not possible. Here's to hoping for more flying and less driving in 2021.