One thing I struggle with when traveling is the urge to keep moving — to find the next thing when the scenery around me begins to look familiar. Is that a bad thing? I know I sometimes need to slow down and wait in order to get great photos, but I know I’m often too impatient.

It’s funny how, when you’re traveling, everyone you meet has advice or suggestions on where to go. Don’t get me wrong — I’m not complaining. On the contrary, I enjoy learning about new places. It’s just that it can get overwhelming. If I took all the good advice I’ve been getting, I’d be gone for two years rather than two months!

One of the many things I enjoy about traveling is hearing the dialects and accents change as I travel from one area to another. Oh, and local food is a fun thing to experience too. I experienced my first pastie (no, not the kind with tassels, it’s pronounced “pass-tee”) in St. Ignace, Michigan at a friendly little place called Bessie’s (how could any place called Bessie’s not be friendly?). It’s a pastry stuffed with meat and potatoes and vegetables, and it’s very filling. They served it with gravy and cole slaw. Not something I could eat every day, but enjoyable. While on Mackinac Island, I had a very good whitefish dinner at Millie’s on Main. Being more of a seafood than a beef and potatoes kind of person (I grew up in Maryland, after all), I would have to give the edge to the whitefish dinner.

I’m enjoying meeting people along the way. Traveling is usually a good way to be reassured that, by and large, most people are nice. Especially in campgrounds, where my tiny camper draws lots of attention (although it also does that at gas stations and restaurants). It’s pretty funny to pull into a camp site with this little thing, when two sites away there’s a family with a huge RV, five kids under the age of 10, and two dogs. Which begs the question, who’s really braver making a trip like this? Me alone, or them?

In my previous post, I mentioned the challenge of whittling down the list of destinations for this trip. Well, I did a good bit of editing, but this is still pretty ambitious. Here’s the overview of my plan:

Leave home (near Annapolis, Maryland) and head west through Pennsylvania and Ohio, and north toward the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. After visiting several destinations in that area (Sleeping Bear Dunes, Pictured Rocks), I’ll continue west through a bit of Wisconsin and Minnesota and into North Dakota, where I’ll visit Roosevelt National Park, and then south into South Dakota, where I’ll get my long-awaited first glimpse of Badlands National Park and the surrounding areas. From there, I’ll continue into Wyoming, to see some of the area east of Yellowstone that I missed on last year’s trip, and then up into Montana. Way up, to Glacier National Park.

From Glacier, I’ll dip back down south through the Idaho panhandle into Washington, where I’m hoping to explore the Palouse region, and then head further south into Oregon. From all I’ve seen and read, I could pretty much make an entire trip out of the state of Oregon, but I’m figuring out how much I can actually see of the central part of the state before heading to the coast, where I’ll meet up with my husband for a few days. After all, this is a long time to be apart!

After visiting the Oregon coast, I’ll head east to Crater Lake National Park, and then southwest toward the California coast and Redwoods National Park. Then it will be time to head east again toward Yosemite and the northern Sierra Nevada mountain area. A visit to Lake Tahoe is on the agenda, and a drive across the “Loneliest Highway” through Nevada to Great Basin National Park. From there I’ll head toward the only national park in Utah I have not yet visited – Canyonlands.

While in the desert southwest, I’d love to revisit some of northern New Mexico,  and the Bisti Badlands have been on my destination list for a while. Then it will be time to head north into Colorado to capture some autumn color in the mountains. Of course, Rocky Mountain National Park is on the agenda. From there, I’ll head east through Kansas and follow a bit of old Route 66 through Oklahoma and Missouri. In Kentucky, I’ll head to Mammoth Cave National Park, and then it’s a quick trip through West Virginia back to Maryland.

Just a little road trip, right?

It looks so easy. At first.

I’m sitting at my dining table with the National Geographic Adventure Edition Road Atlas spread in front of me, opened to the spread of the entire USA. After all, it’s only 20″ wide. Veins of interstate highways snake their way across the country, making it incredibly easy to travel at high speed from one metropolitan area to another. For instance, I find it pretty impressive that you can drive from Baltimore to San Diego, changing roads only once. People have made that drive of 2724 miles in less than four days.

But that’s not my plan. Speed is not the goal. If I were in a hurry to get to the other side of the country, I’d hop on a plane.  My goal is to see parts of the country I have not yet visited. Over the years, I’ve collected lists of destinations that intrigue me. I’ve torn pages from magazines, bookmarked blogs and websites, and faved photos on Flickr, all in preparation for my travels. This trip is a great opportunity to cross a bunch of destinations off my list, so I found myself marking dozens of spots on the pages of my road atlas, only to realize that if I went to all the places I want to see in this one trip, I’d be gone for two years, not two months. And so comes the process of editing and prioritizing.

When I tell people what I’m up to, I tend to get one of two reactions: either they think I’m crazy, or they wish they were going. I would say the latter group outnumbers the first one by a factor of 10:1. Such is the mystique of the great American road trip.

For me, the fascination took hold 15 years ago, the first time I traveled to the western part of the USA. Until that point, I’d never been further west than Milwaukee. I flew to Los Angeles for a friend’s wedding and afterward, I rented a car and embarked on a solo, two-week loop through the desert southwest.

On that trip, I got an amazing introduction to the National Parks of the west: Joshua Tree, Grand Canyon, Zion, Bryce, Arches, Capitol Reef, Mesa Verde, Petrified Forest. I visited Santa Fe, Taos, and Sedona. I drove part of old Route 66 through California and Arizona. I had the surreal experience of being greeted by the neon and noise of Las Vegas on the fourth of July after two weeks spent mostly in the wilderness.

I was hooked. On the desert, on travel, and on road trips. Almost as soon as I returned home, I was ready to plan another adventure. I’ve visited the desert southwest several times since then, and it remains one of my favorite destinations in the world, but I’m almost always thinking about my next trip, whether it’s here in the US or elsewhere.

However, in my travels to date, I’ve never driven coast to coast. I decided this year that I didn’t want to put it off any longer.

First of all, welcome! I started this blog to document my two-month road trip across the United States, driving my Toyota Prius, pulling along a very small teardrop trailer. Here’s a picture:

The trailer is made by a company called Little Guy, and the model, known as the Rascal, is pretty much the smallest tear available, as far as I can tell. It’s so small that people regularly ask if I truly intend to sleep in it. Lots of people seem to think it’s for our dogs.

But no, it’s for me. Basically, it’s little more than a tent on wheels, plus a little bit of storage space. I figure if the Rascal is small and light enough to be pulled by a motorcycle, my Prius can handle it. On my test drives, I can barely tell there’s a trailer back there. This setup allows me to drive my own car (it’s hard to beat 45 mpg!) and camp without having to pitch a tent or find a motel every night.

My plan is to drive across the country, from the east coast to the west coast and then back again, taking photographs along the way. I’ll concentrate on National Parks and other scenic places, via backroads and byways, and capture glimpses of small-town (and sometimes ghost-town) America. If you’ve checked out my website, you can tell I have a fascination with not only the natural world, but the world of abandoned and decaying manmade things. Along the way, I’ll use this site to share some stories and, of course, photos. Stay tuned!