AN AMERICAN EPIC PART 1

Talk about a mind spin.

120 different towns and cities, 16 different states, 14,000 miles, every climate known to man, deserts, mountains, valleys, oceans, wind, mud, sand, snow, Mexico, the American Dream, all seen and consumed in a 6 month span.

Our eyes have been filled with so many places, faces, and spaces that many will only hear about in their lives. It was a tour of America, a dream, an uncovering of past and present, a journey through the states and terrains to uncover what’s out there, to come face to face with legends, to taste and to touch, to experience, to make it all seem real.

Abraham Lincoln, Elvis Presley, John Dillinger, Marilyn Monroe, Johnny Cash, Pat Garrett, Hugh Hefner, Dean Martin, legends. Just to name a few. Their stories, their lives, the fixation and fascination. We stood at all of their feet.

We got to bare witness the exact spot where American history was forever changed. The same hill and stretch of downhill pavement where our young President was violently gunned down in 1963

Knelt down and hovered over the same grass where James Dean died,

Walked right up to the same balcony where Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis

Stood right under Elvis Presley’s bathroom where he took his last breath,

Looked through the same bedroom window Marilyn Monroe looked out before she died, stood right where the Rat Pack famously posed for their movie in Las Vegas,Walked in the same exact footsteps of Billy The Kid looking for his hideout in the deserts in New Mexico,

Shuffled around at the actual gunfight sight of the O.K. Corral,Had drinks at the famous Polo Lounge in the most famous hotel in the world, The Beverly Hills Hotel,

Ran alongside the Red Carpet, crashed the Oscar Party at the famous Roosevelt Hotel,

Stood at the steps of the house where Public Enemy #1 John Dillinger was finally caught, also stood at his grave,

I walked the yard of Alcatraz and passed by the same cell where Al Capone lost his mind,

Sat on the edges of The Grand Canyon,

Hollywood,

Bel Air, Las Vegas, The Hoover Dam, Lake Mead

Zion National Forest,The Petrified National Forest, rode alongside almost the entire original Route 66,

Big Sur, San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge,

Yuma, Tijuana, sleeping in the deserts under the most insane skies, wild cows, horses, real cowboys, mountain lions, wolves,

Tombstone AZ, Saguaro Cactus National Park, Highway 1, slept on the side of the highway in Malibu, Sequoia National Forest, Beale St, Graceland, Sun Studios, Organ Mountains of New Mexico, stood on the corner in Winslow Arizona,

Gateway Arches in Missouri, ate and drank at Bugsy Siegel’s Flamingo Casino in Vegas, stood outside the house where he was murdered, OJ Simpson murder house, Elvis’s Beverly Hills Mansion,

Been inside of the same jail where Billy The Kid famously escaped, saw the real Bonnie and Clyde car that they were murdered in, along with the actual shirt Clyde was wearing when they were gunned down.

Touched the same blood sprayed bricks of the 1929 St. Valentines Day massacre in Chicago, Hoover Dam, Playboy Mansion, Hugh Hefners Grave, Austin TX, Smokey Mountains, touched the stage and sat front row of the Grand Ole Opry, held the same microphone Elvis, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis recorded all those songs on in the 1950’s, Hot Springs AK, Music Row, Amarillo, Griffith Observatory, Haight Ashbury, Grateful Dead House, Elvis Presley’s original Pink Cadillac, The Lisa Marie ( his jet ), his first house in Memphis, Johnny Cash’s first house in Memphis ( got chased out of there ) , tried outrunning LAPD, harassed by Oklahoma PD, and that’s just some it.

I had to try and get all that onto paper, because since I’ve been home, a lot of people ask the same questions like, ” what did you do ” and ” where did you go “… Unfortunately there’s no condensed way of saying it. But, for those interested, there you go. Now, i’ll try and elaborate on the experience as a whole.

Now that we’ve taken a little time to get settled down, I am starting to put the pieces together and make sense of it all. It was a whirlwind, seeing and doing so much, not really having enough time to fully reflect on the places, as we were onto the next monument or landscape. It’s something that I knew in the beginning, before doing all this, that cannot be bought. You can’t put a price tag on something like this. Before we made the decision to leave our jobs, leave the house, buy the camper, put all our things in storage and take a year off, I thought about buying a bunch of things in order to make me feel like all this hard work was worth something. Looking back I am very glad I didn’t do that. The freedom of the road, having your home on wheels, that mobility and ability to go and do whatever we want is quite simply priceless.

The road definitely teaches you a lot of things, the most prevalent is the appreciation factor. Running water and electricity. You’ll never have any idea of how much water you use on a daily basis until you don’t have it coming out of a faucet with one quick twist. We did a good majority of the trip ” off grid, ” so, no water, no plug in power. Our cheapest month we only spent $200.00. You find ways to be resourceful. Showering at local gyms, filling water jugs at welcome centers, not being wasteful, reusing things, re wearing clothes. There is an entire world out there that is living this way, they have communities running on solar, wind power, and just living a much simpler life. We wouldn’t have ever known or seen how all of that is really possible, without this trip.

I’ll say this, to anyone reading my blogs who might be thinking about doing something like this. Just do it. The experience is worth it. Don’t be afraid to leave a job that has been crushing your soul for years. There is so much to see, do, and experience. It’s not for everyone, but if you’ve been on the fence, its worth it. Oh, and don’t let anyone give you a hard time for ” being too young. ” We unfortunately ran into a lot of that on our trip. Everyone’s circumstances are different, we all make our own choices, but my philosophy is, life is way too short and too random to wait around until you’re old enough to go enjoy yourself.

In closing, this trip isn’t over. We thought it would be important to spend a little extended time in NY to connect with friends and family as the past 5 years we’ve only been able to come home for a few days at a time. We will be eyeballing the map and planning our next adventure. Sorry I haven’t wrote in a while, I have a few good ones in the chamber about Chatham that I think some of you will enjoy.

The Show Must Go On.