About

I'm Chris, and this is Rhea, my 70-pound pup. She's a 4.5-year-old Husky and Cane Corso rescue from LA. She can be a handful, but also the sweetest. On October 1st, I left Long Island in my modified Tacoma, rooftop tent and all, to drive Steinbeck's loop around the country. 80+ days and over 13,000 miles. The first 5 days were a New England shakedown without Rhea. On October 10th, she climbed in, and we headed west together.

Why this trip

I read Travels with Charley this past winter while sailing the remote South Pacific Ocean with friends. What it made me realize is how much of this country, my own backyard, I haven't seen.

I've lived on the East Coast most of my life and explored up and down all of it. I also lived in LA for 5 years and saw a lot of California. But the rest of the country (the middle, the north, and the south) I really haven't seen. The book inspired me to get out there and see it.

I was thinking about taking a smaller road trip with Rhea this spring. After reading the book, it morphed into something much bigger that needed a lot more planning. Seeing how much joy Steinbeck got out of having Charley along, I wanted the same with her. She's my little shadow and attached to my hip when I'm home, so I couldn't imagine an adventure like this without her.

I enjoy driving, and it's the easiest way to cover long distances. It's also the best way to see the country. You really get a sense and feel of the people and the place, firsthand, instead of flying over it from city to city.

I hope to come back with a fuller picture of the country I call home. Having grown up in New York and lived my whole life on the coasts, I've experienced a very specific part of the U.S. I want a more complete understanding of what it means to be an American, and how connected we all truly are, even if the current political climate makes us feel otherwise.

Why Steinbeck

In September 1960, John Steinbeck left Sag Harbor, NY, a few miles from my home, in a camper truck he named Rocinante and with his standard poodle, Charley. He went up into Maine, across the northern states to Seattle, down the coast to Salinas, CA, where he grew up, then across the desert and Texas to New Orleans, LA, and home to New York City. That trip became Travels with Charley.

Rhea and I are driving the same loop 66 years later, with a different rig and a lot more rules about where she's allowed to hike. The dashed purple line on the map is his route, rebuilt from the book and from Bill Steigerwald's research into where he actually slept. It's approximate. Steinbeck wasn't always strict about the facts either.

Where Rhea can go

National parks are mostly hard on dogs. At Yellowstone, she can't set foot on a trail or a boardwalk. At Zion, she gets one paved path. The national forests, state parks, and BLM land right next door are usually wide open, so this route favors the places she can actually explore with me. The dog page has every park on the trip and explains what's allowed and what we decide to do instead.

Rhea is never boarded or left in a kennel, including the day kennels some parks run. If she can't go, I don't go. Plain and simple.

The map

The pawprint is us, give or take a town. It sits on a 10 km grid, names the nearest town, and moves at most once an hour. You'll see the town we're in but not the exact campsite. The roads we drove show up within about six hours. The days ahead show where we expect to be and on what dates; the campgrounds appear once the night we spent there is over.

When the dot says "out of signal," don't worry too much. Big Bend, the Lost Coast, and Yellowstone's Lamar Valley don't have cell service, and the truck only gets online when the sky cooperates (Starlink needs a clear line of sight). The dot catches up when we do.

Comments

Every stop on the map and every day in our journal welcomes comments. We'd love suggestions for dog-friendly hiking trails, restaurant recs, roads to drive, sights to see, podcasts to listen to, and playlists to rock out to.

We'll be posting videos and many more pictures on Instagram, @rhearunswild. Can't wait to see where we end up!