PRESCOTT (AFP) - Twenty hours, seven states, three time zones, and one very sore throat: John McCain set a new standard for eve-of-election campaigning here Monday. His long road home began near the blue waters and sandy islets of the Florida coastline before ending in the chilly night air of the Arizona desert. It passed American football stadiums, motorsport racetracks and even the infamous outpost in New Mexico where conspiracy theorists insist an extra-terrestrial crash-landed in 1947. McCain's gruelling sprint across America was more than just a frenzied get-out-the-vote effort; it also served to highlight the breathtaking diversity of the nation he hopes to lead. And the former Navy pilot revelled in every minute of it. In the opening stops of the whirlwind tour, McCain unleashed adrenaline-fuelled performances that belied his 72 years, pumping up supporters with a stirring rallying cry to fight till the very end. "There's one day left until we take America in a new direction," McCain told a crowd of several hundred supporters gathered in a field next to the home stadium of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers' American football team on his first stop. "The pundits may not know it and the Democrats may not know it but the 'Mac is back' and we're going to win this election" Then it was back on the plane, leaving Florida behind and heading north to Tennessee, jetting over NASCAR's famous Bristol Raceway before touching down at Blountville near the Virginia border for a rally at an aircraft hangar. The 1,000-strong crowd roared its appreciation as McCain built up to the climax of his well-worn stump speech. With no time to lose, the travelling circus of McCain's campaign team and several dozen journalists scrambled back on to "Straight Talk Air" and an accompanying charter jet and headed to Moon Township, Pennsylvania. Another rally, another speech, and soon the tour was passing over the patchwork fields of the midwestern Corn Belt state of Indiana. In Roswell, New Mexico, the spiritual home of UFO conspiracy theories, the entourage arrived to a surreal sight - dozens of decommissioned commercial passenger jets lined up eerily on the tarmac like an aircraft graveyard. But the crowning glory came in his home state of Arizona at a midnight rally in the town of Prescott, a venue with symbolic meaning for McCain. McCain had wrapped up his previous US senate campaigns in Prescott, and the town's courthouse also played host to the final presidential election rally of Arizona senator Barry Goldwater in 1964.