MOUNT VERNON — There a road trips, then there are road trips.

Bert and Patsy Nelson of Sedro-Woolley recently completed the ultimate road trip.

The couple drove 25,369 miles over five months, encountering a tornado, golf ball-sized hail and torrential rains along the way.

They motored through 40 states and four Canadian maritime provinces in a Chevrolet Kodiak C4500 diesel truck that pulled a 40-foot travel trailer.

The combined weight of truck and trailer was 26,000 pounds. The fuel bill topped $5,000.

Along the way, the pair snapped 5,714 pictures of destinations large and small, famous and obscure.

“It was a great time,” said Patsy Nelson. “We knew what we wanted to see and do, and we saw and did a lot.”

Bert Nelson, 64, is a retired truck driver while Patsy Nelson, 54, his wife of 17 years, is the finance director for the city of Sedro-Woolley.

Plans for this trip had been in the works for years.

“We’d never been to many of these places in the Unites States,” said Bert Nelson. “There is an awful lot to see in this country.”

The Sedro-Woolley City Council approved a sabbatical for Patsy Nelson. She still managed to take care of pressing matters while on the road.

“I was able to work eight hours per week on budget amendments and decisions that occurred during that time,” she said. “I kept up on what was going on. Then I selected a retired finance director of another city to work part-time in the office to do the hands-on things that had to be done.

“So between those two things, the city was able to continue to function without me in the office.”

With the time differences while the Nelsons traveled, Patsy Nelson usually had her work done before most got to the office in Sedro-Woolley.

“She got up every morning at 6 a.m. and got online and tied into the computer on her desk and did her work,” said Bert Nelson.

So, how did the Nelsons decide what to see?

Well, they picked through travel magazines to find destinations recommended by fellow travelers.

While many stops were obvious, others were under the travel radar.

“Before we left,” said Patsy Nelson, “we researched things we wanted to see in each state. But we wanted to be flexible, just in case we got to some place and hated it, we could just keep on going. Then if we loved it, we could stay longer. Most states have these wonderful welcome centers that are a wealth of information and are very helpful to travelers.

“A lot of places were so out of the way, you never would have thought of them. Places such as the Tabasco factory on Avery Island in Louisiana. That was great fun. And a place in West Virginia that is the only place in the United States still manufacturing marbles.”

Other stops were more obvious.

“Like the Blue Ridge Parkway and the Shenandoah Mountains,” said Patsy Nelson. “Then there was New York City and Washington, D.C. What we were looking for was a real good variety.”

The pair set out on Feb. 14 and returned home July 18.

“We went south first because it was February and the weather could be rough to the north,” said Patsy Nelson. “We kind of wandered around California and Arizona.

“Our goal was to get through some of these hot, humid, awful places before it got too hot and humid. We wanted to spend the majority of our time in the eastern third of the U.S.”

Along the way, the Nelsons learned a lot about the states through which they traveled.

“State economies vary greatly,” said Patsy Nelson. “In Texas, for instance, there are huge billboards advertising for help. They need pipe fitters and welders, and there are big signs for waitresses. In Texas, things are booming. They have massive road construction projects and are building hotels and malls.

“Some parts of West Virginia looked like they had been depressed for 40 or 50 years. In Vail, Colorado, they were building four huge hotels. In Delaware, Connecticut and Maryland, there was a stretch we went through where every car dealership was closed.

“So there were real extremes from one to another as far as economics. Parts of the country are doing much, much better than other parts.”

Costs of living in certain states and region-specific food items also surprised the Nelsons.

“I still don’t know how people can afford to eat in Florida,” said Patsy Nelson. “It is so expensive. A can of green beans that would cost us 50 cents here was $1.25.

“Food varieties are also very different. We were looking for canned tomatoes or something like that in the south and what we found was canned okra, collard greens and canned turnip greens. That was fun, looking at different brands and different grocery stores.”

And down south, everybody fishes.

“We in the Northwest by no means have a corner on the fishing market,” said Bert Nelson. “There were people fishing everywhere. Mom, dad, kids, fishing poles and five-gallon buckets.”

There were also plenty of sights to see, such as Cadillac Ranch in Amarillo, Texas, where Cadillacs are buried hood-up to their doors, and its RV equivalent, Airstream Ranch in Florida. The Nelsons visited tea plantations and took a ride in the Everglades.

Though neither is a fan of country music, both enjoyed visiting the Grand Ole Opry in Tennessee.

The two toured such places as the Harley Davidson factory in York, Penn., space centers in Texas, Mississippi and Florida, and presidential libraries.

“In Boston, I got to sit on the same barstool as Norm in ‘Cheers’,” said Bert Nelson. “That was pretty cool.”

The Nelsons stayed across the Hudson River in New Jersey when they visited New York City. A water taxi provided access to New York City.

“The day we did New York City, we landed in the water taxi two blocks from ground zero (the site of the terrorist attacks),” said Bert Nelson. “Three blocks from there, we got on this tour and they drove us around the city. We did the Empire State Building.”

“We were riding around in one of those double-decker buses, which is wonderful because most of the beauty in the architecture is up,” said Patsy Nelson. “Then you get up in the Empire State Building and all that architecture is now way below you. It was really awesome.”

The two were impressed with Central Park.

“Right in the middle of this megalopolis of skyscrapers,” said Bert Nelson, “is this huge, huge park. Acres and acres of green right in the middle of everything. It was good planning to put that park there. It really breaks up the density.”

Ellis Island was a bit of a homecoming for Patsy Nelson.

“One of my ancestors was the Ellis who owned the island,” she said.

The Statue of Liberty was nothing short of impressive.

“It’s amazing both inside and out,” said Bert Nelson. “We were in the base and took the monument tour. You could look up inside the superstructure. Two weeks after we were there, they opened up the crown. The stairway is a long corkscrew up. You have to physically fit enough to do it and they screen you pretty good.”

“My father spoke of when he came home from World War II and how it felt to see Lady Liberty when they returned home by ship,” said Patsy Nelson. “You think what it must have been like for the immigrants and those soldiers coming home. It’s very moving.”

Philadelphia lived up to its billing as the City of Brotherly Love.

“I was amazed about Philadelphia,” said Bert Nelson. “We rode the light rail into town from New Jersey and then when it came time to go back, we had to find the bus stop again. I asked some lady on the street. She said she didn’t know, but she said she’d find out.

“She ended up chasing me down and giving me the directions. I don’t know if that would happen in Sedro-Woolley.”

The most polite people the Nelsons came across were in Tennessee. Folks in New Hampshire, not so much.

“For the most part, people were helpful and friendly,” said Patsy Nelson.

Just how rural some portions of the East Coast were surprised the two as well.

“We thought it would be just wall to wall city,” said Bert Nelson. “It’s really not. In Maine, it seemed like we went for half a day without even an exit off the freeway. You get outside the major cities and it’s just so rural.

“The state that really shocked me was North Carolina. That’s a beautiful state. If it didn’t have the hot summers, I would think about moving there.”

So would the two do anything different?

Both said no. However, they admitted it was a long time to be away from home.

“Life happens when you are gone,” said Patsy Nelson. “My 10-year-old nephew died while we were on the trip. It was so difficult to be so far away when it happened. We did fly home and back, but still, you feel you need to be there to support people.”

After taking in so much, deciding on favorite locations takes some doing.

For Patsy Nelson, it was seeing Plymouth Rock, the covered bridges in the Midwest and visiting structures designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. There were the Great Smoky Mountains,
Blue Ridge Parkway and a boat ride down the Erie Canal. There was also the reversing waterfall at the Bay of Fundy in New Brunswick, the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and tunnels, and Acadia National Park in Maine.

For Bert Nelson, it was the Houston Space Center and the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza in Dallas.

“That’s where the shot that killed President Kennedy came from,” he said. “It’s all mocked up just like they think it would have looked like on that day. They have a very interesting and intriguing museum there.”

Both admitted to not being Civil War buffs, yet both enjoyed their visit to Gettysburg National Military Park.

“That is quite a place,” said Patsy Nelson.

They were also surprised by the number of towns with the same name. Heck, the Nelsons even came across two Punkin Centers and plenty of Burlingtons and Mount Vernons.

“There’s still only one Sedro-Woolley,” said Patsy Nelson.

Vince Richardson can be reached at 360-416-2181 or by e-mail at .