Couple's quest to visit every Cracker Barrel in America nears end

An Indiana couple have nearly completed their decades-long quest to visit every one of the 665 Cracker Barrel Old Country Store locations across the United States, according to multiple reports.

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Ray and Wilma Yoder, both 80, have only one location left to visit: a Cracker Barrel in Tualatin, Oregon, The Lebanon Democrat and the "Today" show reported.

Ray Yoder told the newspaper he embarked on his mission to visit each Cracker Barrel 40 years ago, while he was working a job that saw him traveling the country to deliver recreational vehicles.

"It took the boredom out of being on the road," Ray Yoder told the Democrat. "It has a down-home spirit, and everybody is friendly. It's like being at home."

His trips were initially made without his wife, who stayed home with their four children, according to a 2015 report from The News Herald in Morganton, North Carolina. Wilma Yoder eventually joined her husband.

In the 1980s, Ray Yoder said the couple thought, “Well, now why don’t we try to go to all of them?”

"It's not like a McDonald's place, where they have 26 or 30 thousand of them," Ray Yoder told The News Herald. "It was something we wanted to do, so we are trying to hit all of them."

A couple from Goshen, Indiana have a mission and it brought them to Morganton on Friday night. Check out what inspired them to visit the recently built Cracker Barrel.

Posted by Morganton News Herald | morganton.com on Tuesday, December 8, 2015

The Yoders have since traveled more than 5 million miles in their quest, which once included trips to eight Cracker Barrel locations in a single day, according to the Democrat.

In all their visits in the last 40 years, Ray Yoder said, they never had a bad experience.

“It’s the same good service and great people wherever you go,” he told the Democrat.

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