We rolled into Richmond, VA, on Saturday, August 3rd, just in time to change and head to Rohan and Khushbu’s engagement party at the Science Museum. It was wonderful to celebrate their upcoming (will-be-totally-awesome) wedding AND see so many friends, some of whom have already made an appearance on this blog.

And, of course, we were delighted to catch up with this little friend goober as well! Pretty sure he didn’t miss us at all….(That is, if he noticed we were gone in the first place.)

And on Monday, we gave Harrison’s mom’s car, our WVT workhorse, a much-needed vacuum and bath.

It has been fun to recount stories and share photos from the road with our families. We’re still processing the fact that we were on the road for 53 days, and I’m sure over the next few days, weeks, and months, we’ll remember funny things that happened on the trip.

With no more “from the road” stories to share, we want to have another contest Instead of animal identification, this contest consists of trivia questions and a doozy of a puzzle.

Contest Rules: You must submit your answers by email (info [at] weddingvictorytour.com) on or before Sunday, 8/11, by midnight EST. A winner will be selected from the submissions with the highest number of correct answers by use of the tie-breaker estimation question (see below). Only those in the continental US are eligible as we will most likely have to mail your prize. Once again, the prize is something yet to be determined, but it will be something cool from Richmond, VA.

Some of the questions are “Google-able,” but wouldn’t you sleep better at night if you answered them with your best guesses?

So, without further ado, WVT trivia questions:

• We managed to see license plates from all 50 states over the course of the tour, but finding them was more difficult than we anticipated. What was the last license plate that we found? 
• As you saw, we are trying to photograph ourselves in front of every state capitol building (though not all on this trip, obviously). On WVT, we took pictures in front of the capitols in the largest AND smallest state capitals by population. Name them.
• We saw some interesting state mottos over the course of the trip. Which states have the following mottos?

“Live free or die”

“Eureka”

“Fatti maschi, parole femine” (“Manly deeds, womanly words”)

• We crossed the continental divide in two states. What were they?
• We saw rain when we ate lunch in Yuma, AZ. On average, how many inches of rainfall does Yuma get in the month of July? (We’ll give it to you if you’re reasonably close.)
• Tie-breaker: We estimated that we would drive 10,000 miles over the course of WVT, but the final mileage ended up being more than we anticipated. Estimate what our total mileage was for the entire trip from June 12th to August 3rd.

Bonus!!! Harrison’s brother Palmer is an international puzzle champion and has authored several puzzles of his own. At our request, he has made this brain-twister of a puzzle. To solve the puzzle, you must partition the grid into shapes that can be shaded to reveal a hidden message.

The WVT puzzle is available here for you to download (PDF). It is printed over four sheets of paper with one sheet of instructions and practice. All assembled, it should look like this:

If you are able to solve the WVT puzzle, e-mail us with the secret message! MAJOR BONUS POINTS (but not necessary to enter the contest).

(Neither of us has solved it yet.)

Answers will be revealed on Monday, August 12th. Stay tuned.