After searching high and low for the last few weeks, we finally completed our license plate collecting project. We have now seen plates from all 50 states and Washington, D.C. on a single road trip (sorry Puerto Rico, you don't count). The ultimate in road trip accomplishments (right up there with finishing the 96-ounce cherry Slurpee in between stops for gas).
We finally stumbled across a Delaware plate in Grand Teton:
Rhode Island however proved more elusive. Seeing as Rhode Island is the smallest state in the country, has only about one million residents, and was over 3000 miles away, we were beginning to lose hope. We were truly beginning to despair after trolling the parking lot at the Old Faithful Visitor Center in Yellowstone (our last park) to no avail. Then, like a gift from the heavens, the load speaker in the Visitor Center clicked on and announced “attention visitors, if you are the owner of a white Ford Explorer with Rhode Island plates in the parking lot, your lights are on.” Nick shrieked, dropped his park map, and sprinted like a bat out of hell towards the exit. Unfortunately, the white Ford Explorer was too well camouflaged amongst the sea of thousands of white SUVs come to see the geyser that day.
Despite the near miss, we left the Visitor Center and drove towards our campsite bolstered by the knowledge that people from Rhode Island did in fact drive cars and at least one of them was somewhere in the 2.2 million acre park.
This time, it was Jo's turn to shriek. As Nick was taking a picture of some wildlife, she screamed “Rhode Island” and pointed at a blue Toyota Prius with a Rhode Island plate driving past us in the other direction. Luckily, Nick was quick enough to snap this photo to prove it (note the elk in the background...).
This time, it was Jo's turn to shriek. As Nick was taking a picture of some wildlife, she screamed “Rhode Island” and pointed at a blue Toyota Prius with a Rhode Island plate driving past us in the other direction. Luckily, Nick was quick enough to snap this photo to prove it (note the elk in the background...).
We swear, that's a Rhode Island plate. You'll just have to believe us. In the entire 7000 mile road trip, we saw just this one single solitary Rhode Island plate. Rhode Islanders, you need to get out more. There is no way that we should see seven Hawaii plates to just one from “The Ocean State.”
As a bonus, we also saw a plate from Nova Scotia, perhaps an even more glorious accomplishment given it's size, distance, and the strange proclivity of Canadians to live in places like Saskatchewan instead:
Mission accomplished.
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