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First, a short introduction to this journal:

When I left home on the night of January 16, 1994, all I was thinking about was the trip. At that time, I never thought of (or wanted to) document anything except the cost and the car mileage. But at the end of Day 2, I felt I should do something more. So I started writing this journal as a permanent record of what became a forty-three-day-long trip. With the exception of one hour on January 16 (see 8:00 A.M. entry), I will remember every single day of this trip until the day I die (you can even test me 10 or 20 years from now!). But towards the end of the trip, I started to get lazy and just jotted down the mileage, costs, and hours of each day at the end of every day. Because of this, more than half of the journal is written long after the trip was completed. But, as I've written above, I still remember every single day of this journey (in one case, I even remember an actual conversation word-for-word, which I think is very strange, since I was not even a part of that conversation! -- February 14, Mobile, AL). So even if portions of this journal are written almost three months after the actual events, nothing has been left out (that's why it's so long!).

When I first started writing this journal, I had no idea WHAT to write about. So I picked the most obvious subjects -- what I did, how much it cost, and the car's odometer reading at the start of each day. In later entries, I have also added to that my opinions of everything, and have tried my best to make the journal more interesting reading, while still giving facts and figures about everything I saw and did.

There is one aspect of my trip that repeated itself more than any other. As you read this journal, you will find out that I got lost almost everywhere I went. This was especially true in big cities like Dallas and New Orleans. At first getting lost irritated me a lot because it usually meant delays in the rest of my plans. But after getting lost a few hundred times (literally!), I started to laugh every single time I did not know where I was. That's because about half-way through my trip, I realized that since this country was discovered by people who were lost, my being "Lost In America" wasn't really that bad!!!

You will also notice that during this trip, I did a lot of foolish things -- falling asleep while driving (California, Jan 16); making a U-turn on a one-way street (that was scary! -- Dallas, Jan 22); spending more than $100 for sleeping one night in a hotel (Corpus Christi, TX, night of Jan 23); driving at unreasonably fast speeds on a wet, slippery, and curvy road (northwestern Alabama, Jan 27); going to New Orleans on Mardi Gras day (Feb. 15); and deciding to spend the night at a rest area where I knew I was going to freeze (New Mexico, night of Feb. 20). I acted foolishly many other times as well, but you can read about that later. My explanation: I'm me, and that's why I did all of those things.

And so, here is my retelling of this trip, hour by hour (almost!):
Click here to go to the start of the journal.

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