This was the trip just about everyone I know has dreamed of taking. Armed with a long summer, my friends Steve, Shane, Tanya and I decided to give it a shot. Our route changed several times, sometimes spontaneously, and ultimately ended up as what you see on the left.

We allotted ourselves around a month to complete the tour, and limped back to New York after 29 days and 9,192 miles (14,754 km).

Our trip began on Memorial Day. Our first few days featured a lot more excitement than we baragained for: getting mooned on the Ohio Turnpike, a borrowed video camera ceasing to work after around 2 minutes of filming, a Ribfest in Cleveland, the filthiest river in Toledo, a minor auto accident in Chicago, and trying to find ANYTHING exciting about the state of Indiana. While in the Windy City, we visited the Frank Lloyd Wright House, Wrigley Field, the Sears Tower, and the City of Addison Police Department among other places.

We cut across Illinois diagonally, visiting the first of many state capitols in Springfield; we crossed the Mississippi at Saint Louis. Heading west on I-70, we bisected Missouri, Kansas, and eastern Colorado. Great moments of this part of the trip include stopping at Aullville, the only town of under 100 population we could find near our road. Here's Shane's head in front of the only store in town. We also ran into a fun period of weather, with our camping plans cancelled by a tornado warning in central Kansas, and two hailstorms in Colorado. Here is a road to infinity while on a state road in eastern Colorado, and a Colorado mountain road, just prior to a hailstorm.

A turn northward at Denver took us into Rocky Mountain National Park and then into Wyoming. The population thinned out and the scenery improved. After a side trip to Nebraska (just to say we were there of course) and the Wyoming Frontier Prison in Rawlins (where we got to see a real gas chamber and gallows), we continued our trek west. Here's some cliffs by the side of I-80 near Evanston, and an outcropping in eastern Utah.

Salt Lake City came next, and following nearly a dozen offers for a free Bible, we were on our way again. The Great Salt Flats provided a unique respite from all scenery as well as impediments (except wind!), and Nevada brought us a long ride with an unexpected late season snowstorm. We finally crossed into California, then took another diversion, southward to Yosemite National Park, where we didn't have much time to hike but did get to see many meltwater-falls which made the sunny day that much more beautiful. While searching for a campsite, leaving Yosemite at sunset, we got lost on a very narrow fire road and were surrounded by some eerie dead trees from a recent fire.

The next day we reached San Francisco, the goal of our trip as it signified we had crossed a continent. We stayed 2 days in town and it quickly beacme my favorite city of the trip. Here are some surfers in the Bay, in front of the Golden Gate Bridge. Later in the afternoon, the fog rolled in. And in the evening, here are Tanya, Steve, and I showing off our Chinatown shopping spree purchases, collectively costing around $2. When we left the Bay Area, we headed down the coast via the scenic and stomach-turning Pacific Coast Highway. Reaching the Los Angeles area, we stayed at my relatives' house near Riverside and travelled around several days, going to San Diego, Burbank, Los Angeles, Hollywood, Beverly Hills, Tijuana, etc..

Soon California was behind us and it was time to head back east, into the low desert. The Mojave passed by, as did Pheonix. We turned north at Phoenix and hit the Grand Canyon, the site of the only photo I have of all four of us together. We then continued east, getting ripped off at Meteor Crater ($6 for a hole in the ground the owners had nothing to do with!), and headed into New Mexico. States went by in a hurry as we crossed New Mexico and Texas (and very briefly Oklahoma), stopping at Albuquerque, Amarillo, Wichita Falls, and Dallas. We headed up to Texarkana just to straddle the infamous boundary, and then headed south through Arkansas and Louisiana, to Baton Rouge and New Orleans.

New Orleans was our last big stop of the trip... and also the home of our worst motel, a place which had starving cats at our door, a mildew smell everywhere, and an air conditioner which could drown out a jet engine. Needless to say, after a day in the French Quarter, we stayed somewhere else the next night.

The trip back to New York went quickly thereafter. Crossing through the heart of Dixie (seeing the amazing gazebo with a tree growing out of it), we traversed Mississippi, Alabama, and brief parts of Georgia and Florida. We raced through Knoxville, Tennessee; Lexington, Kentucky; and Cincinnati and Columbus,Ohio. Our last night was spent in Pittsburgh before arriving back home in New York.