A Tribute to the Road: June 23rd Three Year Anniversary

"On the old highway maps of America, the main routes were red and the back roads blue. Now even the colours are changing. But in those brevities just before dawn and a little after dusk-times neither day nor night the old roads return to the sky some of it's colour. Then, in truth, they carry a mysterious cast of blue, and it's that time when the pull of the blue highway is strongest-when the open road is beckoning, a strangeness, a place where a man can lose himself." from "Blue Highways" by William Least Heat Moon

Well folks, as of today it's been three years since I left Illinois the first time for the Wild West! This marks three years of my wanderlove and time on the road. I have covered all of the western states, Great Plains, southeast, mid-west, went to Mexico and up to Canada twice all in the last three years. I left Joliet, Illinois at 10PM on the night of June 23rd 2008(the same night George Carlin died for random facts)at the age of 21 to discover what lied ahead, my vehicle? A 1994 Lincoln Mark 8 with a leaky transmission carried me 18,000+ miles all over the western USA that summer finally arriving in Sedona, Arizona. The first place I ever felt called to. In spring 2009 I rode again with the Mark 8 down to the southeast arriving in Florida for a 4,500 mile trip with the same leaky transmission, going through all of the southeastern states for a fun spring fling. At the end of summer 2009 I took a trip with my friend Scott to the rockies of Colorado and the Badlands of South Dakota and fell in love with the mountains all over again. In 2010 I stayed around Illinois lost in my unhappiness and went river rafting in Wisconsin, to the sand dunes in Indiana and Michigan on a few occasions as well. In 2011 I moved to California, then Arizona, then Washington state and that is where I write this from now. 46 states later I celebrate my three year anniversary being a lover of the road in the library at Friday Harbor, Washington days before my departure. The road has given me everything I've ever wanted and even the things I didn't want but needed. I have seen many diverse and beautiful places all across this land, I have made many lifelong friends and usually have met them in the most indirect and bizarre ways, I have fallen in and out of love and have had the opportunity to increase my knowledge as well as open my spirit in ways that would have never happened had I not left corporate America the week before 6-23-08. I write this as a tribute of extreme gratitude to the Universe for providing such beautiful places and people for me to experience. For all of the heartthrob, heartache, tears shed in overwhelming joyful gratitude and tears shed in pain that at times seemed like the dawn would never rise again I write this to the one place that has always felt like home, to the one place that always gives me what I need, to the one place I have always evolved and learned, to the one place that has evolved my inner highways, for the path I have chosen to walk in as much faith as possible(even if at times I have none or very little), for what has always been there for me. I am grateful to have chosen to be on the backroads...

THANK YOU! <3

"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference" - Robert Frost





Written: San Juan Island, Washington 2011