In total I was gone for over 7 weeks and drove over 7,500 miles! I saw parts of the United States I had never been to before and came to appreciate the places I have been all my life. Traveling, especially alone is something I think everyone should experience at least once in their lives. You gain confidence, helps you become a better problem solver, and learn alot about who you really are.

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Of course the trip began with the flight to North Carolina where I bought a 1986 Honda Civic Wagon with about 180,000 miles on it. My first car was a 1987 Civic and so I was familiar and confident in these old cars. After making a loop in the North East seeing friends and checking out awesome places like the New River Gorge I drove home to Texas and took about a month to plan the next leg of the trip.

My goal for the entire thing was to stay on the road however long felt right and always choose the scenic route. I drove through many desserts, high mountain passes, forests, and amazing coastal roads. It was wonderful to see alot of family and friends that I had not seen in years, and I made more new friends than I can count! Every hostel I stayed in was a fantastic experience, one I wish more American’s would take advantage of.

I got to experience the horrible city of Las Vegas, the healthy and vibrant city of San Francisco and everything in between. One of my favorite some towns was Cambria, California. There is a small and charming hostel there, the scenery is breathtaking and the beaches are great, not to mention Big Sur is directly north. I had always heard about how amazing California is, yet I was skeptical it could live up to the hype. By far California was one of the most beauitful places I have ever been. From the beauty of Big Sur to the majesty of the Redwoods, everything was amazing in California.

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By the time I got to Portland, one of my main destinations, winter was settling in and I was becoming home sick. So after a great week in Portland I set off with Texas as my destination. I made a few stops, but ultimately drove home as fast as I could. As many amazing places are out there, it all made me appreciate even more the diversity and uniqueness of Texas. I chose the settle down in Fort Worth because it is a city that still has a small town feel while still offering everything you could want in a city. Fort Worth is also on the verge of becoming a really amazing city, if things continue as they are it will be able to rival places with reputations as high as Austin and Portland.

I want to travel more now than I did before and I hope that my trip will inspire you to do one of your own. Come visit me in Fort Worth!

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I could have stayed much longer in Cambria, it was a lovely little town and had a perfect hostel. It is tucked behind some hills, guarded from the ocean, and had some beautiful beaches around. Maybe I will get back there one day…

The drive was just as nice as it is said to be, and I am sure even more spectacular when the hills are green. You can drive very fast because you have a sheer rock wall inches from one side of your car and a cliff leading down into the ocean on the other side. I have a feeling it would be a better drive going south because you would be on the ocean side of the road. It was a beautiful day with some fog in the morning and low clouds hanging around the hills all day. I stopped to take pictures whenever I could but you can only stop so much and make any distance.

My destination was Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park. Most of the park is closed because of fires in  recent years but McWay Waterfall is still there and absolutely beautiful. I was stopping to stay at a secret section of the park, two environmental hike-in campsites. I say secret because the park has no camping signs all over the place and so you have to have read about them before hand to know about them.  The sites are just behind the waterfall under a grouping of trees. It was lovely weather to camp, just chilly enough to need a fire and sleeping bag. My only complaint was the stream of tourist that would meander down the trail and walk around my camp, especially the creepy photographers that stayed for hours!

Because of my short drive I got there rather early and setup camp, did some hiking, and read for a while perched on a rock above the ocean. It was a long evening alone out in the woods. At one point in the night I was dancing around the fire when I turned around to see a small fox sitting on the hill watching me, I returned the favor and watched him for a little while. I slept great and was able to pack up and get on the road fairly early. I ended up in San Francisco on this day!

I had planned on camping at one of the nice state parks on the beach in the area but that turned out much harder than you would hope. Turns out getting a spot in a California state park is like winning the lottery. rant/ The state has given all reservation responsibilities to Reserve America, which reminds me of the horrible Ticketmaster.Every season they open reservations on a certain date for California and what happens is that every spot gets booked immediately for the whole year. California state parks are not very conducive to a random last minute traveler like myself.  One last note about a Reserve America policy that is idiotic is that you have to book a spot at least 48 hours in advance, after that there is no way to get a spot even if the park is empty. \rant

So when I realized I wasn’t going to be camping I headed for the hostel in Santa Barbara. I had already done research on it and had it as my backup plan. Turned out to be a nice backup because it was cheaper than a tent site at a park and was a very fun experience. The hostel was only a block from the beach and was centrally located in Santa Barbara. I stayed for two nights and was able to check out the city. I met alot of awesome people at the hostel including a guy from China riding a $150 bike from San Francisco to New York! After my Sunday morning plan was changed because everyone was at the assembly I rented a bike and rode around the city. The highlight of the visit was the Santa Barbara Art Museum. There was a fascinating exhibit on an ancient tomb found in China and the artifacts that revealed what life was like back then. The permanent collection was nice but not outstanding. I mostly just loved that it was a nice museum that wasnt to big or to small. My favorite piece was a collaborative piece made of clay that encouraged you to sculpt something to add to the piece. In the afternoon I rode my bike along the beach and wanted to try and get in to swim but it was just way to cold so I just watched the surfers for a while and took pictures.

When it was time to leave I headed north on Highway 1 towards Cambria, CA as a stopping point before driving Big Sur. On the way I stopped at Pismo Beach to look around and have lunch. Got to eat some delicious clam chowder and see the amazing beaches there. Again, wish it were summer.

I planned on writing a huge rant about how creepy the city is, and that it reminded me of Pyongyang, North Korea… blah blah blah. I will save you and me the time and cut to the chase, it’s not my kind of city. I have some good friends there and they are the only reason I will ever go again. The End.

Bright patches of red rock jutting out of a valley plain, it was beautiful driving into the park. At first we drove around to the normal tourist spots, weird old drawings on the rocks, cool arch formations and such. They were interesting but not that captivating so we drove around the campground a bit. Wow, what a place to camp! I am sure it fills up fast, some very dramatic spots in between giant rocks and boulders.

The hiking urge overcame me and so I dragged Anthony down a trail and up one of the largest rock formations in the area. It had a steep but walkable incline on one side so we were able to scramble up the side pretty easily. It doesn’t matter how high, when you reach summit its exciting. We stayed up there for a while just taking in the views and watching the sunset. I even got to see the sunset twice by jumping up as soon as it dipped below the mountains! Overall it was a great afternoon and I hope I can stay out there longer in the future.

Getting from Skull Valley, AZ to the interstate was a fun drive through the mountains. Made a little detour to see Bagdad, AZ because it’s a mining town that my family lived in for many years. After that it was straight on to Nevada.

I wanted to stop and check out the Hoover Dam as I made my way over it. Traffic was very light coming from my direction happily. I later found out it takes hours to get through security coming from the Nevada side, so many people! This will all be made alot easier once they have the bypass done. After 9/11 they realized what a huge target the dam was with so many people driving over it so they stepped up security and made plans for a bypass route. This is a huge project that is going to be finished in 2010, you will see the photos of it.

I made it through and happily paid for parking, its a nice garage with some decent views of its own. Decided I wasn’t going to pay and wait for a tour so I just walked around, took some pictures, and headed on to Vegas.

I made it to Las Vegas Nevada in good time. I must say that it was creepy driving into the Las Vegas and being able to see the entire city. The whole city creeped me out, but I will go into that later.

I was able to see my friend Brenden and his wife Lacy and alot of their friends and family on Tuesday night. We drove out to Red Rock Park and hiked around, went back to his place for homemade pizza and watched the new Star Trek (which is sooooo good!).

I arrived on Thursday November 19th, and left November 24th. It is about 45 mins from Prescott so we only went into town a few times. I would love to come back and explore Prescott a little more because it seemed to be very bicycle friendly with great lanes and a number of shops.

Went to a going away party on Saturday where I met a number of great people and had a great time at The Raven in downtown Prescott afterword. It was a very nice place with some great beer and even better atmosphere, it was very popular.

On Monday I stayed out at the ranch and we worked on  the quads but the batteries were far to dead. I took one out after jumping it but quickly killed it in a wash down the road…. oops. We ended up taking the mule and a Honda Metropolitan scooter down a dirt trail/road to the corner store in the town of Skull Valley. Great place and a very adventures trip to it, even got to do a geocache on the way!

A wonderful stop to see some of Arizona and see some of my great family! Hope I get to see them again soon.

I wanted to get an early start out of Ruidoso, but I didn’t of course. After waking up and getting the cabin clean I left town a little after 8 am. Not super late but as it turns out leaving at 6 or 7 would have been much better. So I headed north out of town and the mountains. It was a pretty drive down the mountains and got to see some awesome evidence of the past volcanic activity in the area at the Valley of Fires.

Once I got up to Socorro I realized the Very Large Array was right on my route so I decided to stop and check it out. Turned out to be a very cool stop. One of my favorite movies as a kid was Contact which was filmed and based around this radio telescope array. It’s not the most visitor friendly place but I appreciated seeing it and learning more about it. Driving up on it I thought, “man, this isnt “very large” like the name suggests”. But I soon realized its configurable based on what they need to resolve. It was in its closest configuration, D, so they can study the overall structure of the source they are observing. This let me get some very cool pictures and video showing their synchronized movement.

After I got back on the road I stop in Pie Town to grab some lunch, and yes pie. Great little place to stop and interesting because it was right on the continental divide. They say everything is downhill from there, but it didn’t seem that way lol.

Then I trucked the longest section of this drive all the way to Payson, AZ. I was possibly going to visit an old family friend there but it didn’t work out so I had to continue on to Skull Valley. I didn’t like doing this because it was getting dark but I didn’t have much choice, just glad I didn’t see any elk! I arrived at my family’s place around 7:30 pm. Total miles 530 miles, it took 9.5 hrs driving and about 11 hrs total. Surprisingly Bing Maps was right on while Google was way off predicting it would take 13 hrs! It was a very pretty drive, but remote in many places and almost no cell signal the whole way, so keep that in mind if you take this route.

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I started the hike at 3:00 pm at the Bonito Trailhead which was a good drive from Ruidoso. I stopped at the Forest Service ranger station to get maps and suggestions. Bonito trail was interesting with some nice trees and multiple creek crossings.

But it wasn’t my favorite forest to hike, not the prettiest and very little wildlife. However it would probably be much better at a different time of year, everything is ready for snow. I should have started a lot earlier because I had to hurray back shortly after reaching Crest Trail because of dark creeping up. Would have loved to explore a lot more on Crest Trail which was scenic. It was almost to dark to see by the time I got back to the car. I need to do this more often and build my leg strength up, I am very sore now after the hike.

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The trip got off to a successful start. I left Breckenridge at a comfortable 8 a.m. making my first stop twenty minutes later in Albany, TX to grab some breakfast. It was overcast with a low ceiling so visibility wasn’t that great and made the first few hours a little blah. After the sun burned off the clouds it was a little more enjoyable. Most of this drive is very flat farm land, but I enjoy seeing all the cotton. There are also a lot of wind farms south of Lubbock that I love seeing. I love driving through wind farms.

Stopped for a quick and cheap lunch in Brownfield at KFC. Was able to eat for under $5, which is an accomplishment for me. My brother called me out on not traveling cheap since I always like to have good food when I am traveling. Sailed right through the border because it is very empty out there with barely an AT&T cell signal. It wasn’t until I got to Roswell that my phone was able to update its time.

The drive in Roswell is where the scenery really started to change and it felt like New Mexico. Dropping off the Llano Estacado near Caprock, NM is awesome, the beautiful escarpment behind with Roswell ahead and the Capitan Mountains on the horizon.  However, this beauty also brought with it the previously mentioned winds. In most cars it probably would not have been a problem, but I am in an 80’s wagon with less than 100 horsepower. Going up a mountain with a 30+ mph head wind is long and noisy. It killed my gas mileage but I made it to Ruidoso in good time regardless.

The rest of the day was spent exploring the town while I waited for a phone call, then getting set up in an awesome cabin that will be in the next post. Thanks for reading! Follow me live at http://twitter.com/kmuncie

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