Photo Essay: Road Trip America

Last summer my boyfriend and I decided to take a road trip around our country, the United States. We left at the beginning of June and returned mid July. In total we traveled, 16,000 miles, and visited all 48 states, in 28 days. The whole trip was a feast for the eyes. It would be impossible to realize how vast this country is without experiencing it this way.

We started in Virginia Beach, Virginia on June 10th and started traveling south and went across to California. After traveling up A1A and stopping in Seattle we had to start eastward and did a squiggly line, up and down up and down, so we could hit all of the states. We arrived back home July 8th. I kept a journal of the whole trip, the route numbers and everything.

June 18th 2007 - "We got the hell out of Las Vegas and went to Death Valley. Wow. Desert, rugged, dry, tan, rocks, hot, burning, barren, incredible, sea level, lowest point on the western hemisphere, drop dead, no a.c., amazing. So amazing I bought a t-shirt."

"Then on to Yosemite one of those unbelievable things. We stopped first at a beautiful lake, first let me say it was rather chilly and I wore a sweatshirt. Ben climbed down the bank to taste the water. It was so tasty, so fresh. Our first taste of Yosemite."

"Then we saw the Sequoias the largest living thing on Earth. Another 'you have to see it' thing."

June 21 2007 - "LOL= Lots of Lakes. Today we went to Crater Lake National Park. The deepest lake in the US, 2nd in the Western Hemisphere, 7th in the world. 1,900 ft deep. It was the bluest blue I have ever seen. Cerulean would be my pick."

June 22 2007 - "We started out alright heading to Mt. St. Helens (erupted May 1980) except that half way through I realized the road into the park stopped and didn't continue where I had expected. . . In the end we erupted, not Mt. St. Helens."

June 24 2007 - "Much of the landscape is red rock. Arches was really fascinating, it is the world's most dense collection of natural arches. We walked up to one, good Lord it was hot. We literally walked through some desert. Phew. Death Valley Revisited."

June 25 2007 - "Bison weigh 2,000lb. and can sprint at 30 mph, 3 times faster than a human can run! I sound like the Discovery Channel. . .Bison have cool beards and shaggy coats and are HUGE! When we were heading out of the park a bison decided to nonchalantly walk out of the trees into the road! We had to swerve around it!"

June 27 2007 - "The colors, the colors. They say this place is called Hell on Earth, and the way it just pops up out of nowhere it does seem unreal. The way the rock changes colors is crazy! I'd love to see it when it rains."

This trip will be one I remember for the rest of my life. No matter how corny this whole paragraph is going to sound, there is nothing like a map in your hand and the open road ahead. We navigated the whole trip with just an atlas and would only decide the night before where we would go the next day. I never thought of America as a vast and diverse place to explore, not like you would think of South America, or Asia. I was definitely surprised and no matter where I am will always have a place for America in my life.