The countdown begins

Five sleeps to go. 118 hours. 169,920 minutes until we take off from Auckland airport on our adventure at 1915 hours (that's 7:15pm).

To celebrate this milestone I'm FINALLY going to post our itinerary.

First stop is LA where we touch down at LAX at 12:15pm – a full 7hours before we leave NZ, the complexities of time travel.

So that's seven nights in LA taking in the sights and eating mountains of American food before heading up the coast to our next stop in the city of San Franciso. We'll call this city home for three days/two nights.

We'll be spending the fourth of July in San Fran so hope to find a little piece of Americana for the big day.

Then it's overnight in Yosemite followed by another night in Death Valley National Park

On Wednesday July 7 we swing into the city of sin, Las Vegas, for four nights of insanity staying at Treasure Island Hotel and Circus Circus.

From here until hit NYC our plan becomes fluid. With no accommodation booked we can take it as we go.

From Vegas we hit Flagstaff, the Grand Canyon, then Phoenix. A short stop in Truth or Consequences we move into New Mexico.

Everything is bigger in Texas as we swing into the LoneStar state. Fort Stockton, San Antonio, Austin and Houston.

Then it's on to Lafayette, New Orleans, Mobile, Panama City, Gainesville and Tampa Florida.

Then we loop around the Panhandle state from Miami, Cape Canaveral and Orlando.

Now it's time to head north from Savannah to Atlanta to Athens Georgia followed by Charlotte North Carolina, Richmond Virginia and Washington DC where we say goodbye to our loyal Hertz rental car and test out American public transport.

A bus trip and we're in NYC and we have to find our way to Long Island to Country Inn & Suites.

Then August 28 we spend two nights in the city of Boston (the most expensive city in the world, well, in my opinion at least.)

A further two nights in NYC courtous of Nick's parents before we fly to London on September 1 and the next stage of our journey begins.