Long Intro

It’s been said you have to get lost to find yourself.

April fool’s day 2011, I was in a car accident that changed my life forever. I still don’t find it very funny. Now I have a back problem that makes it difficult to walk and do basic things I love, but I endure. My father had the same from a work accident, I watched him live with it for years, I know my fate. We would banter about how we could feel storms or bad weather coming, dreaming of taking me and my sisters on a road trip out west, see the Rockies, the parks, the bison. We went everywhere when I was little. From Arcadia in Main to the beaches of Florida, I loved those trips.

He never got to take us that trip out west.

He was diagnosed with lung cancer. My father passed away October 2013. Over the course of that year, my life took a turn. Soon after I lost my job, my boyfriend left, had to move back to the house I grew up in, I was living on unemployment and food stamps, and given the task of cleaning out the house full of memories. It was awful. I was sad, broken, defeated…I just wanted to sleep forever.

And not wake up.

Finally a break, the settlement for my back came through. I was able to get a newer car, trading in my old 97 Honda Civic, for a 2008 Suzuki SX4. I gathered materials for a time, waited, paid off old debts, got people together, meditated, and started to half plan.

It was always half a plan.

I decide to do what my Dad didn’t get to, I would do it before my back dictated what I could and couldn’t do, I would prove to myself that there is a reason to live, a reason to keep going, and map my trek so my sisters can someday take their own journey if they choose.

Walkabout, that’s what I called it.

This site is dedicated that trek across the USA, through over 27 National Parks, thousands of miles of highways, byways, country roads, sort of roads, and dirt trails. I hope my photographs and stories inspire you to take that chance and travel, go while you can on your own walkabout. Grow, learn, experience life. See the wonders of this country and the wilderness that is still out there.

Protect it

For me, through the course of those months on the road, I learned, grew, cried, biffed it, got run over by an armadillo, flooded out, burned, terrified…and so much more. I intend to write a book about it. The experience, places and people, they deserve that. Some stories I have on the blog here, others are still scattered in notebooks, sticky notes, sketchbooks, and note pads from motels along the way.

In short, I found myself

I'm Sam, Sam I am.

Photographer, Artist, Adventurer, and Storyteller.