David’s 2018 Cross-Country Road Trip

What did I do during the summer of 2018? A whole lot, as it turns out! One of the main things was to go on the 2018 edition (the third in the series) of my cross-country road trip. As some of you may know, I didn’t take the trip I had planned in 2017 because I was heavily engaged in a full-time professional assignment at Wayne State University. More on that later.  So this year, I was more than happy to be on the road again, this time with the ultimate destination of Vancouver, British Columbia. See the map below for my itinerary.

As you can see on the above map, I didn’t exactly take the most direct route to Vancouver. I made the following stops along the way:

• St. Louis, Missouri, to see Eero Saarinen’s creation, the St. Louis Arch, for the first time.
• Vail Colorado, just to see the place!
• Moab Utah, a return visit to the mountain biking capital of the world that I stumbled upon during my 2015 road trip.
• Las Vegas, to attend the birthday celebration for dear friend and mentor Anne Monterio.
• Paso Robles, California, to taste and buy some fine wines.
• San Jose, California, to have lunch with my longtime friend Dot Stokes.
• San Francisco, to spend the night with my son Aaron.
• Portland, Oregon, because it’s so weird!
• Vancouver, BC, because I heard it’s one of the best cities on earth.
• Okanagan Valley in British Columbia, again for the wine.
• Crazy Horse Monument and Mount Rushmore in South Dakota. I tried visiting on my first road trip in 2015, but it started snowing like crazy and I had to get the hell out of there!

All in all, it was a marvelous trip, one that I will remember for many years to come. I’m already starting to plan the 2019 trip, and I can’t wait to go!

Each year, I try to add a little wrinkle to the trip, and a little accessory to the car, to keep things interesting. This was the first road trip I have taken in the Golf R I acquired in 2017. Just before departing, I installed a Garmin Dash Cam 55 so that I could more fully record the journey. As a result, I recorded a time-lapse video of pretty much the whole trip, along with some audio narration that I recorded into the iPhone. I’ll be doing a post soon that includes all of that footage and audio, along with lots of images from the trip, so you can vicariously experience the journey. Stay tuned!