The GR8 American Road Trip: Solitude at Its Purest Setting WY and MT
The Pandemic Pivot · 2020
The Great American Road Trip
When the cruise ships stopped, the highways called. Palm Beach to Jackson Hole, Yellowstone and Las Vegas—5,669 miles inside a land yacht and outside the old plan.
It was the best of vibes. It was the worst of vibes. We waited for 2020 to give us perfect vision. Nobody predicted what we would actually be seeing.
The Call
Don’t Give Up the Ship
Normally, we would have been sailing the Norwegian fjords, the Baltics or Alaska’s wildlife superhighway through Glacier Bay. It was the season—but every fleet had come to a grinding halt.
Do not give up the ship—or the goal of taking a holiday. You cannot deny gravity, or the gravity of the situation. Travel would never be the same.
The data changed constantly. I would have to become resourceful, resilient and willing to drive somewhere very far away.
The Threshold
The Land Yacht Adventure
I rented a land yacht—a 2020 Mitsubishi Outlander—and made it my protective bubble from the people who refused to take the virus seriously enough to follow the basics.
I avoided airports and public transport, took my chances in an SUV, joined the interstate freeways and pointed the bonnet west from Palm Beach towards Jackson Hole.
The Foreign Land
Double-Landlocked in Montana and Wyoming
I had sailed the seven seas and visited every imaginable port of call, but being double-landlocked would be a first.
Show rather than tell: if words are a net for capturing beauty, then my Samsung S10+ deputised me as a commercial fisherman. The videos became drift nets for everything natural.
The Trials
The Awe Inside Awesome
I was again on top of the world at Yellowstone: a big, wild and stunning national park where Mother Nature and Father Time had a baby and called it Wyoming, Montana and Idaho.
The Revelation
It’s Not You. It’s U.S.
From ASAP—As Southern As Possible—to the Gateway Arch edition, then through Missouri, Illinois, Kansas, Iowa and Nebraska, every mile carried a story and every state became another badge earned.
2020: The Ultimate Eye Test
The year promised perfect vision, then forced everyone to look again—at risk, distance, movement and what travel was really for.
Read the Companion StoryThe Return
Mission Accomplished
Three days—three dazes—after leaving Palm Beach, I rolled up on the Grand Tetons. Mission accomplished. Then, just to add another five hours, I continued to Las Vegas for four nights.
From cruise-ship decks to mountain peaks, from Caribbean blue to Yellowstone’s rainbow pools, 2020 forced a complete reinvention of travel. The adventure instinct never disappeared.
It was an endurance challenge, but the road had performed its real function: not merely carrying me west, but proving that movement could survive the cancellation of the original plan.
The Elixir
When the Seas Closed, the Highway Opened
Palm Beach palm trees became Grand Teton peaks. A rented SUV became a land yacht. A cancelled cruise became a 5,669-mile proof that the journey was never dependent upon one ship, one route or one version of the future.