Into The Wild

So I just finished watching this movie... and rather than talk about the movie and spoil it, I will talk about what I have thought about along these lines over the years.

Every year just about, I consider making a cross country trip. Just getting up, getting in the car, and driving. The thing that usually keeps this from happening, and moreso recently, is the cost of gas. I have driven from Dallas, TX to Calgary, Alberta Canada, but that was just three days. I have driven in a single day to Omaha, Nebraska, several trips to Oklahoma, one single trip east of the Mississippi River to Nashville, but never really anything of the scale that I really would like. When I was a kid, we took a big trip one summer and went to see a lot of different places. We hit the big sights like the Grand Canyon, Carlsbad Caverns, Mount Rushmore (didn't get to see the secret golden city), and hitting the Pacific Ocean for a while. We had trips where we would spend a few weeks on the Gulf Coast, but never really any massive summer-long adventures. Now of course the major problem with any trip of this kind is money. Transportation is a huge part of it... I calculated out that just travelling from home to Florida, to Maine, To Washington state, to Southern California, and back would be at least a 30 state trip (not bad, and could easily include a few more) and would be 9,000 miles. Now with a car that gets 30mpg, which I do have, this is still 300 gallons of gas... which is $1200. That doesn't even include tolls, hotel rooms for at least the occasional shower, and food. Now of course the trip would be useless if I didn't spend at least a little time in each state I went through, or at least the major cities... so it could be okay to be a 90 day trip. That of course leaves three days per state on average, which I could totally do. This would take up the entire summer (and then some) and if I spent $10 a day on food, a few dollars a week on washing clothes, and of course find some meaningless item to pick up in each state as a collection, it would probably end up costing somewhere around $5000. That is for a single road trip. And I have seriously considered this. Miami, Florida is the southeast most city worth visiting, Bangor, Maine is the Northeast most, Seattle Washington to the Northwest, and San Diego, California to the Southwest. I have even thought up relatively specific paths to drive to make sure I go through useful cities along the way to not waste all the time just driving (like skipping Montana, Idaho, North Dakota, etc).

Now where does this all come into the movie? Well, the guy spent several months living off of nothing. Ditched the car, gave every last cent he had to a charity, and just went. This of course is a much much more difficult endeavor, especially the part about going to Alaska, and he managed to do it with almost no money at all, just living off the land, accepting the kindness of strangers, and hitching rides, jumping trains, and paddling down rivers. I don't know that I'd be up for all that, especially since I don't have the kind of time that he took. I would be up for a much more tame version. Maybe someday I will visit Alaska... or maybe move there depending on how things go with the next presidential cycle... but I don't see myself just living off the land. I have far too much fear of bees and bears and snakes to really do that. I could totally do that in a controlled situation, like being on Survivor, but not just doing it with nobody knowing and no way of being in contact with anyone. Who knows though... maybe when I hit my midlife crisis at 50 I will want to travel around and live off of nothing.

So anyone out there want to take a major road trip and split the costs???