The plan? Take two teachers from Granville Central High School and add five students. Put them together in a van for a road trip to each of the lower 48 states, registering voters all the while.

The verdict? So far, so good.

"It's been a really cool experience," says Jordan Rank, 16.

Teachers Jonathan Williams and Diane Hineline came up with the road-trip idea last year as a way to get kids involved in the upcoming presidential election. The group held its first voter-registration drive in Raleigh on June 14, and plans to end the journey Aug. 9 in Washington, D.C.

Along the way, the teachers and students will set up a voter-registration booth in each state, before bunking down for the night and then rising early to hit the road. Late last week, they spent the night in a church in Mobile, Ala., where they called in a progress report.

For each new voter they sign up, one team member will run a quarter-mile. This twist was inspired by Williams, an experienced ultra-distance runner.

All this has come together despite the fact that each of the students is too young to vote in November. Stephanie Sutherland, 15, says that because she can't vote, this is a way to be involved.

"I live in America," she says. "It's important to me how people affect America and the world. It's affecting my future, and everyone else's."

The teachers' original plan involved securing a donated RV for the trip. That didn't work out.

"We tried and tried and tried, but nobody was going to take us up on that," Hineline says.

So Hineline spent $3,500 of her own money on a used van. She hopes to recoup much of that cost when she sells it at the end of the trip.

Not long before starting the journey, Hineline worried the $1,500 in donations they had collected wouldn't get them very far. She decided though, that they would stay on the road for at least a week.

But by the end of last week, through the generosity of friends and family, and media coverage that spread the word of their trip and helped bring in some donations, they had accumulated a $3,000 nest egg. The influx of cash helped bolster her belief that they will make it to Washington as scheduled, adding between 8,000 and 10,000 miles to the van's odometer.

"We're blown away every day, about how generous people are and how wiling they are to help us," she says. "I have every confidence we'll get through all 48. No doubt."