Folly resident helps set Guinness Book of World Record for fastest trip to all 50 states
by Jenny Peterson | Contributing Writer
When a friend and former co-worker at Ocean Surf Shop asked Folly Beach resident Justin Morris if he wanted to join him on a 7,000-mile cross-country trip to all 50 states in the shortest time ever recorded, he thought, “why not?”
“My mindset was that it seemed like a great adventure and worst-case scenario, I could always hop out the car,” Morris said.
Thomas Cannon, a Mt. Pleasant, resident the organizer of the trip, had mapped out—literally—all the details beforehand.
Cannon, who works at eSite Analytics in Mt. Pleasant, built an algorithm that analyzed a multitude of different route combinations to find the most efficient route that updated in real time from 10 identified points on the route.
This adventure was a part challenge, part work guinea pig project to see how well the route worked. The company paid a stipend for the travelers to complete the challenge.
Cannon’s precise route took advantage of state borders as efficiently as possible to knock out several states at one time. The challenge included factoring in flights to touchdown in Hawaii and Alaska before hitting the open road.
The previous record to accomplish this feat was six days and 17 hours.
The whirlwind started in Hawaii, with a few days of relaxation and surfing. Then, when Cannon and Morris left Hawaii on April 20 at 8:33 p.m. local time and flew directly to Alaska, the clock officially started ticking.
After a half-day in Anchorage, they flew to Seattle, where the road portion of the trip began.
In order to tackle the challenge and drive straight for several days, there were four drivers: Morris, Cannon, Cannon’s father-in-law Jim Froehlich and his friend Bill McSteen, who both met them in Seattle.
To save time, Cannon went to Costco beforehand and bought snacks in bulk, like Kind bars and apples. The travelers mostly stopped to eat only when the car needed gas and they tried to stop at large travel centers like Love’s and Flying J’s to stock up on supplies—especially coffee.
The overall route traveled from Washington state, south to Arizona, crossed over New Mexico to the Kansas/Oklahoma border, up to North Dakota, diagonally southeast across the Midwest to just past Chicago before heading south to Louisiana near New Orleans, then west to the tip of Florida at the panhandle before moving Northeast, hitting east coast states on the way to Vermont, the final destination.
There were a few unexpected challenges. The van Cannon had driven from Charleston to Seattle for the journey had mechanical problems, and, before heading to Hawaii, he ended up selling it, opting to rent a van for the journey.
“The rental had unlimited mileage, but I don’t think they realized we would hit just over 7,000 miles as we were pulling into Vermont,” Morris said.
Another unexpected challenge was that Floehlich was called into work unexpectedly and had to bow out of the trip near Minneapolis, where, thankfully, he was able to book a flight and the airport was on the route. That left three drivers.
“We thought initially that our time was going to be longer than the four guys from Missouri who had done it the quickest,” Morris recalls.
Yet with sheer determination, and Cannon’s efficient route mapped out, the team crossed the finish line at the White River Junction in Vermont on April 26 at 6:53 p.m. EST with a total travel time (including the flight to Alaska and back) at five days, 16 hours, and 20 minutes. They beat the previous record by over 24 hours.
Aside from stopping at each state line to snap a photo (Cannon tweeted pictures of the trip at the Twitter handle @nerdstroke), “We didn’t spend much time anywhere,” Morris said. “We stopped at a Shake Shack outside of Chicago and went in and ordered food and we sat out on the hood of the van and ate burgers. That was probably the longest stop I remember. Everything else was just gas, going into the gas station—that was it.”
Their official record is logged on the website www.allfiftyclub.com as members of the “All Fifty States Club.” The Guinness World Record book no longer keeps track of driving speed records for safety reasons.
Morris said the trip was eye-opening in the sheer diversity in the United States landscape.
“When you are in the middle of Kansas, you see these farms and stop at a gas station and people are different, the culture is different all over the country,” he said. “You can see the difference in how people are raised in the Midwest, the South and Pacific Northwest. It’s interesting to see all those places so quickly. Arizona stood out because we drove in the afternoon into the sunset and it was really different than everything you’d find over here.”
Morris, a photographer, took pictures and recorded video from the road with a goal to piece together the footage. He was also able to launch a drone to get footage of the Bonneville Salt Flats of Utah during a stop.
“I’m working on a video from this trip showcasing the beauty of America and the diversity of our landscape,” he said. “But other than the Salt Flats, everything I shot was in the van, or when we took photos at state lines,” he said. His professional website is www.Follyhood.com.
Morris said he was pleasantly surprised at how good he felt physically after being in a van for five days straight (he flew back to Charleston from Vermont) and he’s already looking at flights back to Hawaii and Alaska.
“On paper, it still seems crazy to me that we did it,” Morris said. “But I’m always down for an adventure.”
