For over twenty years, my husband and I have dreamed of doing an epic cross country USA road trip. We imagined all of the places we would see, the big cities, the small towns, fields of corn growing out in the country, and miles and miles of roads. But who has time for such an adventure? Well, there is nothing like a global pandemic to thrust you into taking action “Carpe Diem” style and that is exactly what we did. With 2020 in the rearview mirror, we decided that this year would be filled with the trip of a lifetime. A glorious 8 weeks and over 8500 miles of travel!

I bought a special journal to capture every single day in writing and a second special sketchbook to capture the highlights of the journey in watercolor. We visited over 40 destinations and my sketchbook only has about 20 pages, so I get to select which special photos I took along the way to recreate in pencil and paint.

We have only been back a couple of weeks now and are still trying to catch up on the rituals and requirements of daily life, but I wanted to share a little bit about our trip with you and show you a few of my sketches.

Here is a brief summary of all we experienced:

8 weeks of travel

8500+ miles driven

40+ destinations

26 States

23 Hotels

12 Boats Sailed

16 Friends visited

14 Family Members hugged

Our personal state-to-state pizza taste test

56 hand written journal entries

3000+ photos and videos taken

15 different wildlife seen

3 National Parks visited

Countless memories made. 😁

I am so grateful for the opportunity to embark on such a trip as this was. I spent over 6 months planning out the details of the trip and enjoyed every minute of that process. Exploring where we wanted to go and all of the fun things we would do there, is as enjoyable as exploring it in person for me.

Thank you to all the friends and family who welcomed us and showed us so much love! Thank you for the luxury of doing laundry in your homes instead of the Laundromat too! We really are truly blessed to have experienced such an amazing adventure. ❤️

Travel fuels my creativity. It opens up my imagination and mind to beauty and ideas and future paintings. It really is an essential part of who I am as an artist and as a person. I’m excited to see what new artworks develop out of the photographs and memories of this epic journey.