Nothing screams tourist like walking around all day with a big orange dot on your chest.

[Note to Self: Remove big orange proof of admission dots immediately upon exiting the museum.]

Location:  The Dalles, OR

I would like to write how my first solo road trip in northern Minnesota 10 years ago was one of the best experiences of my life. But in actuality it kind of sucked. It was cold and drizzling, I got up to go to the bathroom in the drizzle twice during the night, and the next morning I woke up feeling exhausted since I hardly slept.

I’m not sure why I continued solo road tripping after that first night. I could have said I wasn’t cut out for it and opted to stay home and watch TV the next time I had some time off and no one wanted to go camping. But I chalked up the unpleasantness to inexperience and tried again.

The second time I went solo camping I was woke up in the middle of the night by raccoons fighting outside my tent. Imagine waking up to sounds like this and this right next to your head. Crank the volume up to the max to get the full effect.

Ah, the joys of camping. Despite those first few rough nights, curiosity and a love of outdoor adventure eventually won out and led me around the entire country solo camping. And while there were plenty more unpleasant nights (some good ones too), the journey as a whole was one of the best experiences of my life.

Sometimes I wonder what I would be doing now if I had given up on solo road tripping because of those first few rough nights ten years ago. Maybe I would be blogging about my favorite TV shows. Regardless, I would definitely be a much different person than I am today.

Today I woke up in a chair at the library at Stanford where I fell asleep teaching myself how to write code for iPhone apps. This whole iPhone developer / entrepreneur adventure is starting out just about as glamorously as my first solo camping adventures. But I’m sticking with it.

I wonder where I’ll wake up ten years from now.

Where do you live?

There are an abundance of living arrangement options for the long-term traveler.  For me, long-term travel is more about what I do rather than where I sleep.  One of the downsides of long-term travel is that you never really have a home, more just like a place to stay for a while.  I have called numerous locations home for a while and my living arrangements have included a combination of the following:

Tent

Badlands National Park in South Dakota, 2005

When I first started traveling around the United States I camped at National and State Parks in a L.L. Bean 2 person dome tent.  After a couple years I upgraded to a smaller but lighter and more weather-proof North Face backpacking tent.

Badlands National Park in South Dakota, 2008

Camping is a good option for budget travellers.  There are even a few places you can camp for free.  And even if you’re not on a budget, camping at National Parks provides a completely different experience than staying at a hotel nearby.  Even if I was a millionaire, I would choose to camp at National Parks for the all-encompassing outdoor experience it provides. And then after hiking for a few days and getting all grubby, get cleaned up and pamper myself at a lodge for a night.

Car

Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado

There are times when I have been camping when I didn’t want to sleep in my tent so I opted for my car instead.  Like when it snows in the mountains in the middle of summer and I don’t want to deal with the cold and snow on my tent.  Or when the campgrounds are bear infested I would rather have peace of mind in a hard-sided vehicle instead of waking up at every sound of heavy footsteps.

In the past year I have experimented with occasionally sleeping at rest areas off of interstates in my car mostly because it is free and convenient. Sleeping in your car at rest areas works in a pinch and is an ultra-economic form of travel.  But sleeping your car gets old after a while.  Well, maybe unless your vehicle looks like this:

The Ultimate Road Trip Vehicle...except for gas mileage....

Hotels

Watching the Sunset over Florida from a Hotel Balcony

I don’t stay at hotels very frequently when traveling mostly because they break your budget quickly.  But if you need a place to stay for more than a night or two most hotels offer reduced weekly or monthly rates.  I stayed at a hotel for a little over a month once and the lady the front desk was super excited to give me sizable refund since after a month you become a resident and don’t have to pay hotel tax.  Also, if you travel in what is considered an off-season for the location you are visiting the staff may be willing to negotiate a reduced rate for an extended stay.

Hostels

Hostel in Boulder, Colorado

Hostels are the typical budget travelers accommodations.  Hostels are good for meeting people, but other than that I’m not a big fan of hostels.  They are typically loud, dirty, and sometimes can even cost as much as a hotel.  But staying at a hostel is a way better option than writing off your dream of traveling because it is too expensive.  And you will definitely meet some interesting people.

Employee Housing

Employee Housing at Wallops Island, Virgina

There are an abundance of seasonal jobs that offer modest housing along with modest wages in exchange for work.  You’ll live where you work and most likely work long hours, making days off a much needed getaway.  Given the choice, I would rather get a higher paying seasonal job so I can bank some money for traveling and find cheap housing on Craigslist.

Craigslist Roommates

My Craigslist Digs in Naples, Florida

Craigslist is an excellent resource for finding short and long-term housing.  Many places will rent rooms month-to-month or even week-to-week so there is no lease to worry about.  And you can get a furnished room so there is no need to cart all your possessions around while traveling.

Of course you run the risk of having a roommate horror story.  The key to having a good experience with Craigslist is knowing what you are looking for and the right questions to ask.  Ask yourself what living style you are looking for and then find someone who fits that.  Don’t get desperate and take the first place you look at if it isn’t a good match.

Family, Friends, & House/Dog Sitting

Dog Sitting in Santa Cruz, California

After traveling for extended periods it is always fun to meet up with family and friends, share a few laughs, and recharge.  Thanks to everyone who let me crash for a day or two…or a couple months.  : )

There are an abundance of housing options available for long-term travelers.  Don’t let the fear of not knowing where you are going to live get in your way if you want to give long-term travel a try.  It really is more about the journey and the adventure than where you live.

Nora Dunn over at The Professional Hobo is doing a series profiling a week in the life of long-term travelers.  She asked me to contribute a post to the series.  Check it out:

A Week in the Life of Sue: Road Schooled

After you read about how much I cram into a week on the road you’ll understand why I haven’t posted this week.  The past week I was traveling from the Seattle area where I spent the summer to the San Francisco Bay area which is my base camp for the foreseeable future. Therefore I haven’t had much time to blog.

I travel fast.  I like it that way because when I slow down I get bored and antsy.  But I don’t recommend traveling as fast as I do for most people.

As a matter of fact one of the pieces of advice I would give to a newbie long-term travelers is to slow down and try not to cram in too much.  And if you want to travel fast like I do, pick a few places to stay more than a day.  In my case for the week in the life post I was traveling fast for a week, but I started at Padre Island National Seashore where I had been camping on the beach for 6 weeks and ended at the Grand Canyon where I camped for about a week (for free!).

The week in my life that took me from Padre Island to the Grand Canyon was in April.  In the 4 months since then I have traversed the Pacific coast from San Diego, California to Vancouver, British Columbia with weeks long pit stops in Santa Cruz, Portland, and Seattle.

And now I’m in the Bay area writing this post from a coffee shop in San Rafael.    A year ago San Rafael was a pit stop.  I lived here for two months last summer.  In the year that has passed not much has changed in San Rafael.  But I have changed a lot.

A year in life of Sue post may read a bit differently than my week in the life post.  The past year was one of the best and worst years of my life.  And now life has come completely full circle and I’m sitting here writing this post in a coffee shop where I sat a year ago.  Everything looks the same yet totally different. Traveling changed my perspective.

I wonder what life will look like a year from now after spending a year living in the same place.

Four years ago today I packed up my car with camping gear and set out to explore the United States. It has been a wild ride of ups and downs through 47 states and more than 30 National Parks. To celebrate my four year anniversary of hitting the road I thought I’d share a few things I learned along the way.

1. Be crazy….or courageous.

When I packed up my car with camping gear and left my life behind to explore what else was out there a lot of people told me I was crazy. Or they said I was courageous. Or maybe a little bit of both. There is a fine line between being crazy and courageous. Crazy knows no boundaries, no limits, no fear. Courage is stepping past boundaries and limits, self-imposed or otherwise, in the face of fear. Regardless of whether people think I’m crazy or courageous, solo road tripping the United States is one of the best things I have ever done. Take bold steps forward, even when people call you crazy.

2. Pick a direction and be flexible.

Long-term travel never goes according to plan, almost to the point that it doesn’t pay to plan everything out. I generally travel for about two months at a time before taking some sort of break. If I tried to plan out every detail I would never go anywhere. I would be in a perpetual state of planning my big trip that never happens. Don’t worry about all the details. If you wait for everything to be perfect you’ll never go. Pick a direction, prepare as best you can, and then go.

3. Be good to yourself.

Long-term solo travel is wearing at times. I do all the driving, planning, tent set-up / take-down, etc. There is no one to help me out when I’m tired or sick. Without my health I could not have done what I did. Your health is precious. Take care of yourself.

4. Adversity builds strength and character.

Solo road tripping the United States has been one of the highest growth phases of my life. Life on the road is roller coaster of exceedingly high highs and almost unbearable lows at times. While the high points were exciting, most of my growth came out of dealing with the lows. Adversity is an opportunity for growth. Embrace it.

5. Always have something to look forward to.

Sometimes life on the road by myself sucks. Bad weather, sickness, and car breakdowns happen and there is no one there to lean on in the bad times. I try to live in the moment but when life in the moment isn’t going well looking down the road boosts my spirits. Things always get better eventually. Hope in a brighter tomorrow gets you through the bad times.

6. Simplify.

Before hitting the road I put all my possessions in storage except for what fit in my car. When I first hit the road I missed some of my stuff, but the longer I was on the road I enjoyed the simplicity of not having a lot of stuff. By simplifying my life so drastically my definition of essential items changed. Doing without makes you realize what is important. You need less than you think.

7. Let go of who you think you should be to become who you are.

I’m still working on this one – easier said than done. Solo road tripping across the country is not a normal thing for a girl to do. If I had let societal norms dictate my direction I would never have packed up my car with camping gear and had the adventure of a lifetime. Before I hit the road I defined myself too narrowly and held too much of my identity in my career. On the road I gave myself room to grow and my definition of myself broadened. If you give yourself room to grow, you can become more than you can imagine.

8. Life gives you what you need, which is not necessarily what you want.

I used to hate it when I didn’t get what I wanted. But in retrospect, more often than not what I wanted wasn’t really what I needed. Life gives you what you need even if you can’t see it in the moment. Accept what life gives you and go with the flow. Everything happens for a reason.

9. Enjoy the journey.

I used to live for the big payoff. I would endure drudgery hoping it would payoff in the end. If you don’t like what you are doing day to day on the journey to your big goal you probably won’t like your life any better once you achieve that goal. The big payoff won’t be what you imagined and may even lead to more drudgery. Do what you love and enjoy the ride. Eventually you’ll get where you need to be.

10. Happiness is best when shared.

The more I solo travel the easier it is to handle the hard times. I count on my experience to get me through and always know that better times are ahead. Conversely, the more I solo travel the harder the good times become. I could spend the rest of my life traveling from beautiful location to beautiful location but without people to share with it starts to feel empty after a while. When I first started solo traveling it was about my own personal development and exploring new places. Somewhere along the way it became more about others and people rather than places.  Share the ride and give back to society.

A dream is your creative vision for your life in the future. You must break out of your current comfort zone and become comfortable with the unfamiliar and the unknown. - Denis Waitley

One of the most common questions I get when I tell people that I solo road tripped the lower 48 is:

How do you plan for something like that? And why don’t you have a van?

The truth is I never planned to solo road trip the lower 48. It just happened. And that is why l lived out of a sedan and station wagon while traveling instead of a much more comfortable van.

My plan was to solo road trip the National Parks of the West and then my curiosity led me to the East coast since I had never been there. And once I had traveled about half of the United States I thought it would be cool to visit all of the lower 48 states. One thing led to the next, and eventually, to more than what I thought I was capable of — solo road tripping the lower 48.

If I had planned to solo road trip the lower 48 I would have never done it. I would still be planning.

I would be overwhelmed with all the what ifs and self-doubt since the longest I ever solo road tripped previously was one week. Too many unknowns to go along with my lack of travel experience.

Even solo road tripping just the National Parks of the West felt overwhelming before I left. I was excited yet terrified. But I went anyway.

Once I was on the road I tried to plan ahead a few times. But something would always come up to foil my plan: bad weather, car troubles, the flu, etc. Within two days my plan was usually obsolete, so I never planned ahead more than two days. I winged it.

While I didn’t have a detailed plan, I did have a general direction – a fuzzy goal.  The National Parks of the West, East coast, the South, the Southwest, and eventually to complete the lower 48. I just didn’t know the pathway that would get me there.

I picked a direction and made a leap of faith.  Jumped into the unknown and figured out the details along the way.  The more time I spent in the unknown the more comfortable I became dealing with uncertainty.  Now I plan on not being able to plan.  My “plan” for journeys into the unknown is:

Pick a direction.  Take a leap of faith.  Make lots of mistakes.  Learn.  Adapt.

If you want to make a major change in your life sometimes you just need to take that initial leap of faith and then figure out the details along the way.  Pick a direction and blaze a new trail into the unknown.  The unknown holds more than you ever dreamed possible.

Sometimes solo travel feels like being a lone tree in a vast canyonland.

Location:  Canyonlands National Park, UT

“One's destination is never a place
but rather a new way of looking at things.” - Henry Miller

Four years ago I packed up my car with camping gear and set out on a solo road trip to explore the West for the summer. My “plan” was to place all my possessions in storage in Minnesota, rubber tramp across the National Parks of the West, and figure out what I wanted to do with my life along the way. My “detailed plan” included an unmarked road atlas, a lightly skimmed National Parks of the West book, and not much else.

So I hit the road to see what was out there and find myself. My summer of exploring the National Parks of the West turned into four years of on and off solo travel across 47 states, 27 national parks, and numerous state parks. Being on the road by myself in constant commotion has been one of the highest growth phases in my life. It has been a transformational journey of a lifetime full of extreme highs and extreme lows and brought me to where I am today.

Today I’m in Portland and tomorrow I’ll be Seattle, who knows where I’ll be in a few weeks. My physical location really doesn’t matter. What does matter is that living outside my comfort zone has completely transformed the way I look at life.

There are others out there who have embarked on journeys similar to mine. Traveling down the road to somewhere has even cost a few people their lives, such as Christopher McCandless of Into the Wild fame. After fours years of traveling down the solo road to somewhere I have come to a similar conclusion as McCandless: Happiness is best when shared.

I’m still not sure where I’m going but I need to share the journey. Road Schooled is the start of a new road to somewhere. An experiment in giving back to society by sharing what I learned by dropping out of society.

Peace to Christopher McCandless and all the other dropouts who didn’t live to share what they learned. May all your roads be winding and full of adventure.