3,000 Miles Across America: From the Tippity Bottom to the Tippity Top and Back Again

Driving from San Diego to Montana in my 2005 Toyota Camry with my best friend for the adventure of a lifetime.

In 2021, as the pandemic fears were beginning to wane and things were starting to open up again, I went on a road trip with one of my best friends, Kaela, from San Diego up to Montana and back down again. We were meeting up with a big group of friends at my aunt's house in Montana for a weekend of outdoorsy fun. Kaela and I decided to take it a step further and road trip all the way up there in my 2005 Toyota Camry and it was an adventure for the memory books. For some reason, I never had the motivation to post the photos on Instagram. So this is the world premiere of that grand adventure. 

For some additional context, this is Kaela:

She’s a hoot and a fantastic road trip buddy. Endless games, endless enthusiasm, and endless good times. 

And this is the playlist that carried us most of the 3,000 miles over the 10 day road trip if you’d like to bop along: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2KCZn8CpuwIDVS3X4NfGR9?si=b55291dd27a849f2

1st stop: Duck Creek Village & Cedar Breaks National Monument, Utah

As with any big plan or any big trip, we took a few months to prepare our itinerary. Originally, our first stop was going to be Zion National Park, as I had visited a few months earlier and knew it was an epic spot. But an epic spot often comes with epic weather, and they had massive flooding and mudslides which closed the park and much of the surrounding accommodations. We decided to reroute to another place in Utah called Cedar Breaks National Monument, which looked very similar to Bryce Canyon. We’d avoid the flooding and still get some epic scenery. 

We stayed at a cute Airbnb called the Tree House in Duck Creek Village. And a Village it was indeed. The whole town was essentially one small strip of cabins, stores and restaurants. Living in California is such a funny bubble sometimes when you get out and experience really small towns like that and you’re clearly an outsider, clearly don’t belong there, but you waltz in anyways and own it. The Airbnb was a cool little cabin with a small kitchen, a pull out couch, and a loft.

Kaela let me have the loft. She’s so sweet. 

The next morning we woke up to go catch sunrise at Cedar Breaks. This was back in the days that I was doing my 52 sunrises project, where I would wake up once a week to go shoot sunrise, wherever I happened to be in the world. I thoroughly enjoyed traveling and keeping up this challenge as I’d get to see so many cool places at the crack of dawn. Cedar Breaks was no exception to that rule.

There is something about catching that warm glistening first light creep over a landscape that is so special. And when you’re one of the first few people up and out there experiencing it, it feels so freaking magical.

We also ventured up to Brian Head Peak, mostly because we saw a road and wondered where it led 😂This was the start of taking my 2005 Toyota Camry (aka the Cam Cam) offroading. One thing I love about traveling with Kaela is the spontaneity of our adventures. Often times we’ll make some plans, a little framework, and then branch off from that once we’re there and see what we’re really working with.

After a bit more exploring around Cedar Breaks

And 1 timelapse later:

We headed back to the Airbnb for a nap and to explore the small town. There was a bit of rain so we took it easy for the rest of the afternoon and evening as we were getting up early the next day for our next leg of the trip. 

2nd Stop: Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming

Stop #2 was Yellowstone National Park. We stayed at Under Canvas Yellowstone, which is a really cool glamping option that puts you right in nature and gives you the best of both worlds when it comes to comfort and a natural experience.

We got there later in the afternoon, so we really just spent the evening eating, chatting, and planning our adventure for the next day in the park. 

We were up early again for a day full of adventure. My only mission for the day was the see a bison in person and within the first hour or 2, we had a Bison walk right next to our car.

Yellowstone is quite an incredible site to see. The geysers create otherworldly landscapes that are a landscape photographer’s dream.

This was an interesting moment for me as a photographer. I had every intention of going into this trip and making a video. I was at a turning point in my career where I was shooting photos for fun but didn’t see the commercial value to what I was creating. I had recently started a new job doing corporate video and I wanted to lean more into that by creating a film for this trip but I fell back into my old ways, I fell back into what I knew and that was shooting photos. I think maybe that’s part of the reason I never ended up posting these photos online anywhere, since they were never supposed to be created in the first place. 

After a full day in the park, we got back to Under Canvas with enough time to scarf a meal and hit they hey. 

We woke up for a gorgeous sunrise and cruised the grounds before heading off to meet up with the crew in Montana.

3rd Stop: Bonner-West Riverside & Glacier National Park, Montana

It was a quick hop, skip, and a jump from Yellowstone up to Montana, where we were gathering with a group of 8 others for a fun weekend. My best friends since middle school and high school - Amanda, Kaela, Piercey and Allison, plus their boyfriends - Sean, Troy, and Rei, plus 2 of my friends from college - Patrick and Bryan. It was a huge crew, very exciting. And everyone was getting there in their own way in their own time. 

All was good for the first few hours as everyone started arriving. We were having fun, people were taking out the ATVs but as we were hanging out after dinner, Bryan came back to the house frantic and said Patrick fell off his ATV and we had to go help him. Turns out he flew off the ATV and broke his leg so on the first day of the trip, we were already one participant down. Luckily, we had a nurse in the group to help facilitate getting him to the hospital and getting him patched up. He ended up flying home the next day so he could get surgery and recover in a comfortable place. It was not the ideal way to start the trip but he made a full recovery and the rest of the trip went off without any more casualties.

Our first full day we made the two hour trek to Glacier National Park. This was my second time visiting this park but many of my friend’s first time. There were a lot of wildfires happening at the time, so the skies were pretty hazy but we made the best of it anyways. We did the Going to the Sun Road, which is a drive way up in the Mountains that gives you epic views down the valleys of the parks.

Then we did a hike up at Logan Pass, I want to say it was the Hidden Lake Overlook. Nothing too crazy but we got great views and got our legs moving after sitting in the car so much.

We ended the day at the park with golden hour at Lake McDonald and I’m always so pleasantly surprised at how much fun I can have with my friends doing anything and everything. Driving around in the car with wigs on, talking about golden showers at the lake, spending hours upon hours together in the car and never running out of things to talk about and laugh about. I know I’ll always think back fondly on these crazy trips and crazy memories we’ve shared together.

Day 2 we did a local hike near my aunt and uncle’s house to a waterfall. We got to walk through some of the forest that had recently been burned out which made for some fun and interesting pictures.

The waterfall was cool and refreshing as it was kind of a hot day.

And to prove what a small world it really is, Piercey ran into one of her old friends from high school … on a random hike in the middle of Montana 😂 I always find coincidences like that so funny.

Day 3 is when we all parted ways. Piercey and Troy left at the crack of dawn, Kaela and I left mid morning, and the rest of the crew caught flights at various times throughout the day. It was a short, sweet and eventful get together for the crew. And Kaela and I were literally on the homestretch of our journey.

4th Stop: Barndominium & Bonneville Salt Flats, Utah

Although we were sad to leave the homies, Kaela and I were quite excited about our next stay in Salt Lake City. We stayed in a tree house at our first stop in Utah, glamped at Yellowstone, and now we were staying in a barndominium - that’s right a repurposed barn turned into an airbnb. 

After the adventures we experienced in Montana, we took it easy and enjoyed the barndominium to it’s fullest extent. We stayed in for the evening and watched Barb and Star go to Vista Del Mar, which we proceeded to quote relentlessly for the next few months, and then called it a night as we were driving the home stretch the next day. 

And in typical Kelsey and Kaela fashion, we woke up at the crack of dawn to stop at the Bonneville Salt Flats on our way out of town, another otherworldly location on this journey.

To give Patrick his redemption and make sure he still felt like he was a part of the trip, we slapped a sticker of his face to live in perpetuity at the salt flats.

Then it was time for our final stretch - back to reality. 

5th Stop: Foster City, California

As we neared California and entered back into the Bay Area, the Sunday scaries started hitting. After seeing so much incredible nature, after traversing so much land, after offroading the camry on multiple occasions and getting a gnarly crack in the windshield, cruising back into little old Foster City felt like torture. Neither Kaela nor I wanted to return to reality. We wanted to continue the adventure, continue the road trip, and continue the fantasy. Endings are never easy and especially ending an insane roadtrip like that can feel like a major come down. 

I dropped Kaela off at her house, headed to my parents to spend the night and then it was back down to San Diego to complete the roadtrip across America: from the tippity bottom to the tippity top and back again. 

Conclusion

I did 2 large roadtrips in 2021 as well as started a new job. It was a year of big changes and big adventures after a year spent inside realigning during 2020. And I’m honestly not sure what compelled me to do these road trips. You think of some crazy ideas and share them with your friends one day and to your surprise their down and all of a sudden you’re trekking 3,000 miles in your 16 year old Toyota Camry bumping Rico Nasty at ignorant levels. 

This road trip brought me little to no monetary value, in fact it cost me a lot of money, especially because I had to replace the windshield and suspension system on my car. And if I got the chance, I’d absolutely do it all over again. I have 0 regrets about that trip. It was so crazy and so epic, I know my friends and I will be telling these stories to our kids and our grandkids. The time spent with people I care about and the memories created are irreplaceable and priceless. 

If you ever get the chance or the inspiration to do some crazy shit with your friends and they’re actually down??? You have to take those opportunities and make the most of them. 

“Time spent enjoying yourself is never time wasted.” - Jen Sincero from “You Are A Badass”