According to Facebook (which has been somewhat creepily keeping track every time I change my ‘current city’ on my profile), I have moved ten times since finishing college in Boston in 2010. I’ve become an expert at packing my car to the brim, and one of the many upsides of the transient way of life was that I was always forced to limit my belongings to what could fit in my Jetta. But when it came time to move to New York City, owning only what could fit in my car was still too much.

Not wanting to bring my car to New York, and knowing that I wouldn’t be able to fit my VW-sized load into the 200-square-foot apartment I was headed for, I decided I needed to drive my things to be stored at my parents’ house in Florida while I took on this grad school adventure. I enlisted a driving buddy, packed the car one more time, and set off on the 1,974 mile drive from Colorado to Florida.

So how did it go?

It turns out, in the 2,000 miles between my home in the mountains and my home in the swamp, there wasn’t a whole lot to see.

Highlights between Colorado and Louisiana included my trusty driving companion’s very first encounter with a Dairy Queen blizzard, and a couple of bottles of champagne leftover from New Years chilled in roadside motel sinks.

In Houston, we stopped for a night to catch up with one of my oldest friends. But a long day of driving through two major metropolitan areas (both Dallas and Houston were nightmares!) left me too exhausted to snap a picture of either our reunion or the delicious German-themed restaurant where we feasted.

Our next stop brought us to one of my favorite cities – New Orleans! We spent two nights in the French Quarter eating lots of char-broiled oysters, watching my first live NBA game, and taking quite a few poorly-lit selfies.

We made it back to Florida the next day, exhausted but greeted warmly by my parents and a couple of very happy cats.

It wasn’t the classic cross-country Americana roadtrip from the movies, but it got us from point A to point B. Besides, there’s no better way to test a relationship than to share a crowded space with someone for 30 hours of driving strung across four days.