The Great Road Trip

THE GREAT ROAD TRIP

Fourteen years ago today, I was on my way home from The Great Road Trip.

In 2010, through a combination of circumstances I will never really understand, my friend Kylie and I both managed to take two weeks off work to go on a road trip across the country. I drove from Massachusetts to meet her in New York, and the night before we left, we sat at my parents’ kitchen table to make a plan. Yes, you read that right. We didn’t have a plan until 12 hours before we left.

Even once we made a plan, our itinerary was still incredibly vague. We had two fold-out maps of the US that Kylie got from AAA (remember when that was a thing?), and we took a marker and circled everywhere on the map where we knew people. Neither of us had seen the Grand Canyon, so we chose that as our ultimate destination, with the idea of visiting as many friends and family as we could along the way.

She had a dash-mounted GPS, and although we did have cell phones with texting capability, we still wrote down the numbers and addresses of each potential friend we might visit. We were plotting the course by hand, each day a new adventure. The night before we left might be the most excited I’ve ever been for a trip in my entire life.

ALL THE FEELINGS

And The Great Road Trip did not disappoint. It was chaotic, as you’d expect when you don’t have an itinerary, but we didn’t care. We traveled south through Virginia and west through Tennessee, Oklahoma, and Texas. We slept in my tent and on couches. We ate turkey sandwiches for every meal for days.

At that time, Kylie was doing an artistic project of taking and posting one selfie a day for a year. She could sometimes be perfectionistic, so the daily photos often took a thousand years. We’d stop at one overpass on the highway for an hour so she could set up the perfect shot, only to stop at the next one because it “might be better.” I’m a patient person, but even I have my limits when it comes to spending time on an Oklahoma overpass. But the result of her project was that we ended up with dozens of amazing photos from the trip. It’s my most well-documented travel experience, which is hilarious when you consider that neither of us had an iPhone at the time.

These photos show almost the whole breadth of emotions on any therapist’s feelings wheel. Kylie and I laughed for hours, getting slap-happy from late nights and poor sleep in the back of the car in New Mexico. We cried when our tiredness and frustration made us lash out at each other. We grieved at memorial statues and wondered at dormant volcanoes and dinosaur footprints. I felt every emotion possible on The Great Road Trip, and I think she did, too.

HOW ADVENTURE CHANGES US

The funniest part of this story is that we never got to the Grand Canyon. Just as we reached the edge of Arizona, we realized we could either go to the Grand Canyon for a day or go north to Colorado and see our friend Alicia for 12 hours. We turned north, and I’ve never regretted it.

And even though we didn’t arrive at our planned destination, I will always be incredibly grateful for those memories and the impact of that trip on my life. I do believe that travel and adventure change us, often for the better. We see the world differently after an experience like that. After spending two weeks living out of a car and eating cold Cup’O’Noodles, I’m more flexible and willing to go along when the plan changes. Having to wait for Kylie’s artistic whimsy makes me more patient when someone is trying to get something they care about exactly right. I’m a different person because of The Great Road Trip. 

What trip or adventure changed you the most? I’d love to hear about it.