For some, an American road trip is a journey down the iconic Route 66, or a pleasant drive through the countryside of the Atlantic seaboard, complete with quaint, perfect little towns and rolling hills. However, it was the desert scenery of the American Southwest that captivated my imagination. For me, the Southwest was a magical place where the stories of the Wild West and the legends from an age of adventure continue to live on.
Although vague memories of the various stops and sightseeing that I did as a child, when my family made a cross-country move from Orange County to suburban Ohio, still lingered in the back of my head, an insatiable itch to return to the place of my dreams lead me to return in November of 2015, funded with my income as a graduate student and accompanied by my dear friend Libo, friends from my time at Michigan.
For 9 days, we plowed through the backroads and trails of Utah and Arizona on a mission to find new perspectives and a fresh state of mind.