How I Became a Nomad and the 48 States That Started It All
My journey to a nomadic lifestyle started far before I finally hit the road. Actually, it started before I could even drive, when I was fifteen, and scrolling through Facebook, you know, as one does when they’re fifteen in the early 2010’s. I came across an article about an algorithm that calculated the fastest map that would touch each of the 48 contiguous states, in one go, and I slowly became a little obsessed with the idea. They called it The Ultimate Roadtrip. For years, the article sat saved in my computer, and then, sometime during college, I opened the thing back up again for the first time. Scrolling through the list of stops, I figured out the route I’d need to take to complete it, starting in Southern California, and moving through the Southwest first. I’d end in Oregon. The original goal was to do exactly the algorithm’s list. I wanted to truly complete the thing that sparked my fifteen-year-old wanderlust in the first place, but around the same time, in early 2018, I took my first trip to Yosemite.
Yep, that’s me in the white! My first visit to a National Park, circa 2012 at Haleakala National Park, Maui, HI
Yosemite wasn’t my first National Park but it sure feels like it. My first Park was Haleakala in Hawaii when I was fourteen, but I wasn’t obsessed with travel and the outdoors when I was a fourteen, I was obsessed with travel and the outdoors when I was twenty and visited Yosemite for the first time. It would be an understatement to say that 2018 was a rough year for me, but it had only just started testing my strength by the time I ventured into the Yosemite Valley that March. And yet, despite the hardships that I was only just starting to get past, I felt a deep connection to the Valley, its surrounding mountains — Half Dome and El Cap — and the woods that filled in the gaps.
So, when I sat, constructing my perfect route that would eventually take me to all 48 contiguous states in one go, I scrapped the original idea, and instead, replaced the stops, keeping the states in (almost) the same order, with National Parks. Planning the route took almost 3 years, and the end route would include about 40 National Park Service sites, 33 of which would have National Park status.
On June 16, 2019, I graduated from the University of California Riverside a year early. On June 19, 2019, I hit the road, solo. It would take me 3 months, and I’d be living in my Kia Soul. So, with a not-even-a-twin bed in the back, a camp stove, a cooler, and some other essentials, I set out for Nevada at 4 in the morning, 3 days after walking across the graduation stage. The journey started in Valley of Fire State Park, on a 107 degree day, and things stopped going according to my original route almost immediately. I’d planned on camping in Lake Mead, which ended up being much further than I thought. So, I stayed the night in the Valley of Fire, sweating as I slept on top of my blankets with all the windows cracked and under a sky of stars.
Me and Theon, my Kia Soul, on our way to Pinnacles National Park back home in California, a month before I hit the road solo.
Once I passed New Orleans, where I’d booked a hostel before I’d come up with the living-in-my-car-vanlife-style idea, I stopped the schedule. I let go of the calendar I’d written out, let go of the strict route, and decided I’d find places to stay the night no sooner than the day before I’d arrive somewhere. I’d stay as long as I wanted with the family I planned to visit and equally long without them, when I was solo in the wilderness. I’d let the places convince me of which were most worthy of my days on the road, and let myself learn about these places from simply being there. And that was when I truly started to learn things, about myself, about the road, about a nomadic life, and once I did that, nothing went truly wrong. I always ended up with a place to stay, and I usually met the nicest people. National Parks and everything in between took my breath away.
I did end the trip in Oregon, though, and I will end my nomadic lifestyle there too, at the end of 2023.
And as there has been every time ever since then, there was something about returning to the West Coast that September 2019, even up as far North as Washington’s Cascades, that felt like home. I cried when I saw the Pacific Ocean again up at Rialto Beach in Olympic. I couldn’t stop smiling when I saw the “Welcome to Oregon” sign — it was the final stamp on the roadtrip passport: I’d done it. 48 states, 3 months, 1 girl, and her car.
When I hit California again, I bought my first van, went to Southeast Asia for a month, and then hit the road again, crossing off my 50th state, Alaska, at age 23.
Over the years, I have lost my love of hiking through chronic injury, and found it again in the mountains of Los Angeles. I have become a rock climber, a yogi, and an activist. And in 2022, I became a wilderness guide and outdoor educator.
In 2022, I started my career as a guide, and discovered my passion for bringing people outdoors. My guide career started in New River Gorge National Park in West Virginia. I became a climbing guide, and through that summer I discovered that while I didn’t love guiding climbing trips in particular, I did love guiding within the National Parks. So, I continued to pursue wilderness, backcountry, and trek guiding with the goal of taking people out into the National Parks to teach them how to truly explore our local wild spaces safely and responsibly. The outdoors changed my life, and now I want to help it change yours.
In early 2023, after completing my first thru hike, I started a movement I call Trek. Save Mountains, to help people gain access to outdoor education and recreation. I want to show people why these places deserve protection and how they can help save them.
So, what I’m trying to say is, if you’re craving your next (or first) adventure, as mine was for many young years of my life, the mountains are out there for you. The desert is out there for you. The forest is out there for you. There’s a destination just waiting for you to arrive, and you’ll know it as soon as you get there. You’ll feel at home, even if it’s far from it.
-Halle, Hal, Sunbird, etc… (your guide to the wild)