Why I Decided to Visit All 50 States in 5 Years
How a life-long dream became the most ambitious goal I’ve ever set for myself
I have always been a dreamer. For as long as I can remember, I’ve had big, grandiose ideas about who I wanted to be, what I wanted to do, and where I wanted to go. I could see, so clearly, what my life would look like if my dreams were realized. Over the years, though, those dreams began to fade as I settled into reality. The real world — Work, marriage, home-ownership, bills — has a way of showing you that your dreams are nothing more than fantasy, and you’re much better off succumbing to the mundane beat of corporate life.
So it was, that in my late 20s, I was living the American dream. I had the house, the wife, the cars, the dog, and the debt that everyone aspires to have. Or, at least I thought that’s what everyone aspired to. There was only one problem: I was bored. I was unhappy and uninspired by my daily grind. I knew in my heart that there had to be more to life than my desk job and Netflix. Then, my life changed.
My Wife Lost Her Dad
My father-in-law was an incredible, hard-working man, who loved his family and did everything he could to make sure they were taken care of. He had worked his whole life and was counting down the days (literally, on a paper calendar he kept at his desk) until he could retire.
He had plans of home renovations, woodworking projects, and maybe even a dream vacation to Glacier National Park in Montanna once his retirement date had come. After a 2 year fight with cancer, at the age of 63, my wife’s dad passed away. He had worked all the way until the end.
This was a wake-up call for my wife and me. It really brought into focus the fragility of life and the brevity of the time we have. My father-in-law had so many things that were left undone, planned for a day that he didn’t live to see. We knew that we couldn’t make that same mistake.
30 Was On The Horizon
Also on the topic of time, nothing makes a young person think about their own mortality like the end of their 20s. This was the case for me, at least. I was suddenly struck by how quickly time goes by, and how much of it is wasted.
I had this overwhelming sense of loss as I bid farewell to my youth and tried to determine what the future would hold. Honestly, the future looked pretty bleak. Hannah and I were working more than ever, and our jobs were becoming more and more stressful every day. We knew we had to find a way to break the monotony of our day-to-day and do something worthwhile.
Somewhere in our mid-twenties, Hannah and I agreed that we needed to do something big to celebrate turning 30. We decided on a trip to Europe. I opened a savings account, and we started making small deposits each month toward the goal of a dream European vacation. We kept this savings practice up for several years and had a nice little amount ready to go when we decided to shift our focus to another goal instead.
The Conversation
In February of 2017, one year before my 30th birthday, Hannah and I were sitting in our living room discussing her recent trip to Charleston, SC. She had gone with some friends and really had a great time. She was talking about how much more there is to see and do in the U.S. that we may never experience, and I was agreeing. A few minutes later, somewhat to my own surprise, I blurted out, “Do you ever feel like we’re living life all wrong?”
This conversation acted as a catalyst for change in our life. We started talking about what living “right” would mean for us, and what steps we could take to get there. The idea of living “right” is different for everyone, of course, but for us, it was about getting out of the comfortable, soul-sucking rut we had been living in and getting out into the world.
We wanted to meet new people and see new places. We wanted to make some memories and gather experiences that wouldn’t soon be forgotten. After much deliberation, we decided to set a 5-year goal to visit all 50 states + Washington D.C. We set a list of rules for what visiting a state means (just driving through doesn’t count), and we re-dedicated our Europe fund to this new venture.
50 in 5
3 months after that conversation, we started our adventures off with a week-long trip to California, where we rented a bright blue Mustang convertible and drove along the Pacific Coast Highway from L.A. to San Fransico, stopping for the night in a beautiful little town call Carmel-by-the-Sea.
Since then, we’ve stayed the night on a bison ranch in Wyoming, taken a Jeep tour through Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado, and roasted marshmallows around a bonfire in Arkansas. We’ve eaten cheese in Wisconsin, deep-dish pizza in Chicago, thin-crust pizza in NYC, Poke in Hawaii, and lobster rolls on the rocky beaches of Maine.
We’ve been so many places we wouldn’t have otherwise gone and done some things that I still can’t believe we did (like the time we stayed in a cabin on a farm in the middle of nowhere in Nebraska), but we’re not done yet. There’s still so much more to see.
It takes careful planning, working these trips into our budget and time-off allotments from work. We are constantly putting money, little by little, into a savings account to fund our next adventure. We are not rich, by a long shot. We work full-time jobs and spend most of our time exactly like most people do: working, paying bills, and watching Netflix.
But every now and then, we head out on an adventure.
