Road Trip Series [Blog edition]

Wanting to explore comes natural to a child, driven by that innate curiosity we were all born with. Whatever happened with that? Like all children, I had it, and like most of us on the journey of growing up, somehow, I lost it. Eventually, it all started coming back.

The possibility of traveling to and exploring new places has always thrilled me. But it wasn’t until that one day in 2015 that I became intrigued by long-term travel. It was a holiday and nothing needed to be done. I decided to do a movie marathon; Mile… Mile & a Half, Living on One Dollar , and Maidentrip were the films I decided to watch. Coincidentally, all of them were about traveling and exploring new places. After the last film was done, I got up, went out, and did a short local trail near our place. I got the bug. I wanted to explore. I became interested in other travel documentaries/shows and that’s when I came across departures, a Canadian travel show that has just the right blend of trivia, humor, heart and awesome cinematography; and also a book called Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel, which offers practical advice on the most important aspect of long term travel: your attitude and mindset. These two—the show and the book, and the people behind them—have solidified my desire to someday explore new places, free from the structured routines of normal, everyday life.

After about two years of eagerly longing to do this kind of travel, and dreaming about which places I would like to go to, I decided I would like to test the waters of extended travel right now. Or at least as soon as my budget would allow. So I started thinking about where I could possibly go and for how long. I thought about Iceland and New Zealand, which are really the top two on my list. But I thought if I wanted to be away for a while, choosing either of those would require higher costs. I thought about doing the John Muir Trail, but the planning and preparation for it seemed too much for me at the time, and I’m not sure if I want or even should do that by myself. I even thought about doing a train ride to wherever. But then a thought occurred to me: why not try to see for myself the place where Annie Dillard roamed and observed and wrote about in her book, Pilgrim. Tinker Creek, in Roanoke, in Virginia’s Blue Ridge. Maybe I could go there, and stop by other places along the way. A road trip across the US. It would allow me the length of time I wanted to have without being too expensive. And I just recently bought my car too, so might as well use it.

I came up with the idea around November of 2017 and planned to do the road trip around Fall of 2018. That would allow me time to save up and plan for this trip. Fall season would also be a good time to be in the east. I had approximately 10 months to prepare. I wanted to do this and I hoped I would push through with it. 6 weeks, me and my Honda Fit, some good music, and the open road. I left for my trip on August 22, 2018, and returned on November 7, 2018. I did it. What I originally intended to be 6 weeks turned out to be almost 3 months on the road. 11 weeks of exploring, alternating nature and city, solitude and society, and structuring my days from scratch. As adventurous and fun as that sounds—and in fact it was—it wasn’t all pleasant and carefree. But it was definitely all worth it . . . and then some.