Today marked our six-week anniversary of leaving Seattle to drive the Literacy Lab all the way to Orlando, Florida! We ended the journey, appropriately, by visiting a second-grade class my mom had visited back in June, thus completing the round trip. And what a trip it has been. Over the past six weeks, we have:

• Driven through 23 states
• Visited around 20 schools, libraries, or community organizations/events.
• Given away around 2000 books (exact count to come) to around 2000 students
• Performed for 15-300 students at a time
• Talked to kids ranging from preschool to early high school about our love of reading
• Written postcards to all the schools we have visited from the next states! (There are still some to be written…)
• Visited about 45 friends and family (thanks to all of those who hosted us–words cannot describe our gratitude)

We have learned:

• We still have *a ton* to learn about Sprinter vehicle maintenance.
• With any sort of technology that we love so much and understand so little of (cars, computers, etc.), perservere, perservere, perservere! The past week has been a series of misadventures with the Literacy Lab vehicle (vehicle not starting, brake warning lights, tires worn down) and while we know next to nothing about the maintenance (see previous point), perserverence and sheer determination (desperation?) at one point made the difference between getting towed 20 miles out of our way in a random North Carolina town and being able to continue on our way. (Long story short: after stopping for dinner in somewhere in the middle of North Carolina, we couldn’t get the car started and had to call AAA, who when they arrived, informed us that the battery was fine and we’d have to get the Lit Lab towed to figure out what was wrong. We tried starting the car with a different key and it worked, go figure).
• Car keys with electronic chips in them are hard to replace when you’re on the road (one of our Sprinter car keys snapped in half about 3 weeks ago and the process to get it replaced was way more difficult than we thought it would be)
• Students love brightly colored neon wigs
• The response we have received from all the amazing, dedicated, hardworking professionals in the education world has made this trip and venture worthwhile

This past week was a great end to the trip. In Wilson, North Carolina, we visited the 1st through 3rd grades and gave away books (including some for the 4th and 5th graders on a field trip); in Hendersonville, North Carolina, we visited 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th grades at the wonderful library of Bruce Drysdale Elementary School, and today we went to Audobon Park Elementary School in Baldwin Park, Florida. I’m sad that the Professor Plot/Professor Page partnership will not be back together for a little while. We’re hoping to set something up at an elementary school in Key Largo, Florida right before I get married, but until then, we probably won’t be presenting together until sometime in the summer.

However, while we might be blogging even more sporadically than we are now, keep an eye out! While this may the end of the road trip, it is the beginning of an adventure and identity.

(Pictures to come tomorrow hopefully; I have to load them to the computer).