I have nothing planned, nothing packed, and I leave tomorrow morning. Great. I’ve been messaging people constantly on social media trying to get someone to join me for a cross country road trip. No luck, so I said screw it! I’ve traveled alone multiple times and have also driven across the country once before. I have no job, I’m living in the city of Philadelphia during the Covid-19 pandemic, and was just gifted a car a couple weeks ago. I literally have nothing to loose. The perfect opportunity.

Honestly not a lot of planning was involved. I planned out every couple days and had an overall route based on the main places I wanted to go. So I basically just picked out key points & used apps like roadtrippers, alltrails, Ioverlander, & freecamping.com to figure out sleeping arrangements and hiking spots. I had a rough outline of points in the US I wanted to stop — mostly national parks and hiking spots. I originally planned to be gone only for 4 week, but that quickly turned into 8 lol. I had no schedule, no time frame. It was just me and the open road.

I posted my presumed route on Instagram and reached out to a couple of friends who lived along the way. The only night I paid for housing was an Airbnb with my friend Jake in Los Angeles. 54 days of free housing: tenting, sleeping in my car, or crashing on a friend’s couch. Food was fairly cheap. I stuck to oatmeal every morning, sandwiches for lunch, and carbs & protein for dinner (either pasta or rice mixed with beans and veggies.)

I learned a lot about myself. When you’re put into out-of-normal situations, new instincts are developed. A new outlook on life. I picked up a lot of useful skills because whenever you force yourself into solo traveling, you force yourself into meeting new people & new adventures.

I’m the cheapest person ever, so living and cooking out of my car for free for the next 2 months was a dream. My 2012 Toyota Rav 4 was the perfect fit. I organized everything into separate crates and bags — winter versus summer clothing, cooking equipment, food, sleeping supplies, etc. Check out this video to get a better look at what my car looked like after living out of it for a couple weeks. Here’s a couple pictures of the highlights from the trip! I broke down the adventure into 6 chapters, listed above. Take a look!