After graduating from high school in 1998, two friends (Schultz and Chad) and I decided to do something fun. So we threw a bunch of camping gear in the back of Chad's 1992 Grand Prix and headed out west, with a craving for adventure and a sense of destiny. Okay, we actually didn't know where the heck we were going and our planning for the trip was sketchy at best. Each day we took the road atlas out and pointed to the next destination we wanted. On a limited budget, our meals were mostly sandwiches and hotdogs that we made or cooked at rest stops and we camped most nights at parks. Occasionally we would meet up with some people who knew someone that knew someone we knew and stay with them for a night or so.

Our trip lasted about a month, and we made a loop around the continental states. In rough order, the states we passed through were Connecticut (start), New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, West Virginia, and then back toward Connecticut. We stopped off at many beautiful parks and sites, and below are thumbnailed images of some of the pictures we took. These pictures each feature a brief description of the picture or events surrounding the time it was taken. The pictures are placed roughly in chronological order.