Solo Road Trip around the Western U.S.
2018-10
I quit my job at Google at the beginning of October 2018. While I was very excited to start my new job at Citizen App (as the 9th engineer!), I wanted a few weeks to get away from it all and recharge. I have a deep love for New York City, but I'm a pretty introverted person at heart and really wanted to some time to myself, far from the masses.
And so, I made a plan. Those who know me well know that for as long as I can remember, one of my goals in life has been to visit all the national parks in America. I decided I was going to fly to El Paso, make a circuit through Big Bend, Guadalupe Mountains, and Carlsbad Caverns, and then hop over to Salt Lake City and visit Great Basin. After that, I would go to the Bay Area and wind my way down to San Diego, visiting family and friends all along the way (also hitting Channel Islands as a nice bonus).
There was going to be a lot of driving and a lot of time alone. But I love driving, and solitude was exactly what I was looking for. I booked all the flights and rental cars with various points that I'd accumulated over the years, and I was planning to camp or stay with people the whole time, so from a money perspective it was actually going to end up quite cheap. Then, the day after my last day at Google, I packed up and flew out to El Paso.
I had a major stroke of good luck when picking up my rental car - they offered to upgrade me to one of their premium cars for free. Among the fancy luxury cars and vans was a Ford F-150, which I pounced for. This opened up a whole world of off-roading possibilities that hadn't even come to mind before. I picked up some food and other essentials from Walmart and hit the open road.
Oh, what a trip it was! I spent the days taking my truck onto barely-existent dirt tracks far, far away from any other people, exploring abandoned old Western ruins, hiking into canyons and caverns and over mountains and through rivers, and speeding at well over 100 mph down remote highways. In the evenings, I would find a cheap motel or camp under a sky untarnished by light pollution and read and journal about the day's adventures and gaze at the Milky Way.
It was all incredibly nourishing for the soul. By the time I made it to California, I'd had serious thoughts of throwing everything away and starting over as a park ranger, and lamented the unfortunate fact that I hadn't given myself more time off. But the grass is always greener on the other side. I swore to myself that I'd go back to all those places one day, and spent the rest of my trip enjoying the company of a lot of my friends and family.
As I mentioned, I did a lot of journaling during the trip. Here's a selection: