Why I’m spending 160 days driving 13,000 miles across America — and why I’m asking you to come with me
There’s a moment, somewhere in a hospital room, when the math of your own life becomes very simple. You stop thinking in years. You stop thinking in months. You start thinking in days — and then, if you’re lucky, in donors.
I had a bone marrow transplant. I’m not going to spend this whole post on the medical details, because that’s not really what this blog is about. But I want to say this much, because it’s the truest thing I know: somewhere out there is a person I will probably never meet, whose cells are now living inside me, doing the quiet, invisible work of keeping me alive. I think about that more often than you’d expect. Some mornings it’s the first thing I think about.
I made it through. I’m still here. And somewhere along the long road back to feeling like myself again, I started making a list — not a bucket list, exactly, but something closer to a promise list. Things I told myself I’d do if I got the chance.
Driving across America was at the top of this list.
The timing wasn’t an accident
Here’s the thing about getting a second chance at life: you start paying attention to dates differently. And when I looked at the calendar, I noticed something that felt less like a coincidence and more like an invitation.
In 2026, America turns 250.
Two hundred and fifty years since a group of people who had every reason to stay safe and quiet decided instead to bet everything on the idea that things could be different — that a future worth having was worth the risk of reaching for. I’m not going to pretend I have any grand insight to offer about the founding of this country that historians haven’t already covered better than I could. But I will say this: I understand something about betting everything on the idea that the future is worth reaching for. I think a lot of us do, in our own ways, even if we never end up in a hospital bed to learn it.
So here’s the plan. Starting early July, 2026, I’m getting in my truck — a 2020 Ram 1500, recently outfitted with a bed cover, a roof rack, and a rooftop tent that I have already named in my head but will not be sharing publicly because it’s a little embarrassing — and I’m driving.
For 160 days. Through nearly every region of this country. From the beaches of Florida to the rim of the Grand Canyon, from the geysers of Yellowstone to the streets of New York City, through mountains and deserts and small towns whose names I can’t pronounce yet and probably won’t be able to pronounce when I leave either.
I’ll be sleeping in that rooftop tent more nights than I’ll be sleeping in an actual bed. I’ll be cooking most of my meals on a two-burner propane stove. I’ll be carrying bear spray in places where that is, apparently, a completely normal and necessary thing to carry. And I’ll be turning a milestone birthday somewhere along the way — though I’m not telling you where yet, because I want to see if you can guess.
What this blog actually is
I want to be upfront about something: I have never run a blog before. I have never run a YouTube channel before. I am, by every reasonable definition, an amateur at this — and I’m choosing to do it anyway, in public, starting now, because I think the most honest thing I can offer you is the whole process. Not a polished highlight reel assembled after the fact, but the real thing, written and filmed as it happens.
So here’s what you can expect from Tommy Loves Travel:
The good days. The sunrises that make you forget your own name for a minute. The strangers who become, briefly, the most important people in the world. The moments where this whole trip feels like exactly the right decision.
The hard days. Because there will be hard days. Days where the truck won’t start, or the weather won’t cooperate, or I’m tired and alone and 1,400 miles from anyone who knows my name. I’m not going to edit those out. If you’re going to follow this journey, I want you to know what it actually feels like — not just the version that looks good in a thumbnail.
The practical stuff. I’m planning this trip around national parks, historic sites, and the kind of places that don’t always make it into the glossy travel magazines. Along the way, I’ll share what I’m learning — what gear actually earns its place in the truck bed, which campsites are worth the detour, what I wish someone had told me before I left. If you’re thinking about your own version of this trip — whether that’s 160 days or a long weekend — I hope some of this is useful to you.
The people. This country is enormous, and I’m going to be alone in a truck for a lot of it. But I’m also planning to visit family members and old friends scattered across the map — people I haven’t seen in years, in some cases — and meet new ones along the way. Additionally, some friends and family will join me at various points along the journey. Some of the best stories from this trip, I suspect, won’t be about places at all. They’ll be about people.
Why “Tommy Loves Travel”
I thought about a dozen clever names for this project. Most of them were, in retrospect, pretty bad. I kept coming back to something simpler: my name, and the thing I’m doing. No metaphor, no wordplay, nothing to decode. Just — this is Tommy, and this is travel, and that’s the whole idea.
Sometimes the simplest version of the truth is the right one. I learned that the hard way, and I’d rather not forget it.
Come along
I don’t know exactly what this trip is going to teach me. I have ideas — about gratitude, about this country, about what I actually need versus what I thought I needed, about whether 70 mph is the correct speed for thinking about your life (I suspect it might be). But I’ve learned not to plan too far ahead when it comes to the things that matter most. The transplant taught me that too. You do the next right thing, and then the next one, and eventually you look up and you’re somewhere you never thought you’d be.
Right now, that somewhere is New Orleans, Louisiana, with a truck in the driveway and 160 days on the calendar and a rooftop tent I still haven’t slept in for a full night.
By the time you read this, the countdown has already started. I’d love for you to be here when it hits zero.
Subscribe, follow along, and if you’ve got a favorite stretch of American road, a campsite you swear by, or a town I absolutely cannot miss — tell me. I’m building this itinerary as I go, and I have a feeling the best parts of this trip haven’t been planned yet.
Here’s to the next 160 days. Here’s to being here for them.
— Tommy
Got a question about the trip, the truck, the route, or anything else? Drop it in the comments — I read every one, and there’s a good chance your question becomes a future post.