In December of 1979, the road once again called me. It was a time to head west, a time for vagabonding, a time to visit my birthplace and meet with my grandfather and father after 11 years of absence.

My travels would take me to the Pacific coast, to Southern California, to the San Jacinto Mountains, to Baja California, and to Mazatlán, Mexico. I would see 11,200 kilometers of the road in 32 days. 7,200 of those kilometers would be by hitchhiking.

In the evening of 21 December, I found myself 640 kilometers from home in Des Moines, Iowa. Student to LA by Christmas, my sign read. As I stood drowning in a pool of light on the interstate, I felt I would never get out of there.

But I was fortunate. A trucker gave me a lift to Omaha, Nebraska. 960 kilometers was fair game for 11 hours of hitching.

Instead of traveling through the night, I made a bedroom out of a field next to the interstate.

Another long day lay ahead of me. I mentally tried to figure out how much further I had to travel as I walked out to begin another day.

Nebraska, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, and then finally, California. It seemed so far. Would I make it by Christmas? A college student and prospective Olympic wrestler brought me across Nebraska, where hitchhiking is strictly prohibited.

In western Nebraska, a French traveler named Oliva saved my trip. Where was he heading? San Francisco. Hallelujah.

For the next two days, I rode with Oliva and shared with him the beauty and vastness of America.

Together, we battled snowy, slippery roads in southern Wyoming, …

… tasted the salty water of the Great Salt Lake, …

… felt the loneliness of an isolated cafe and gasoline station near the Bonneville flats of Utah, …

… and marveled at the cold, desolate Nevada desert.

It was difficult to say goodbye to Oliva, a good friend indeed, when our paths diverged in Sacramento.

I was caught in a gale, which nearly blew me off the road in Sacramento, and was forced to take a Greyhound bus to Seal Beach, California, where my grandparents lived.

On 24 December 1979, after 11 years since I had last been there, I arrived in Seal Beach where my 86-year-old grandfather and his new wife, Priscilla, hospitably welcomed me.

But big cities don’t appeal to me, and after three days, I was ready for the mountains.

With Stephanie, a friend of mine, I ventured 200 kilometers to the southeast, where we were swallowed up in the San Jacinto Wilderness Area of the San Bernardino National Forest.

For five days, we hiked in snow-covered granite mountains and were dwarfed by 100-year-old Jeffrey Pines.

It was difficult for me to leave the mountains and return to Los Angeles. I developed a deep love for the area and vowed I would return.

I went back to Seal Beach and started 1980 off by seeing my father for the first time since 1968. Yet I only spent a day with him for reasons long and complex.

I was beginning to like my stay in Southern California. I was enjoying the hospitality of my grandfather and the good cooking of my new grandmother. And I was enjoying the company of Stephanie.

I could have easily spent the rest of my vacation there. But a call for more adventure was pulling me away, a call for wilderness, a call for Baja California.

I traveled the entire length of Baja’s red carpet, a trans-peninsular highway completed in 1973.

A trip that once took weeks or months by four-wheel drive or burrow is now covered by luxury buses in 24 hours, unless you hit a pothole and break an axle, which is what happened to me. For six hours, I was stranded in the middle of the desert.

I traveled with vagabonds from England, Australia, and Canada and slept in my tent or cheap hotels, or I crashed along the road.

A Mexican with a jeep agreed to take me and two others 500 kilometers to La Paz, the main city of Southern Baja.

But La Paz was a mecca for tourists and lacked a quality beach, so I continued south below the Tropic of Cancer to Cabo San Lucas at Land’s End.

For three days, I soaked up sun and relaxed, nothing else. A wave drenched my Olympus OM-1 camera and within a few hours the salt had rendered it useless.

After eight days of Baja, I took a 16-hour ferry trip to Mazatlán, where an attractive 21-year-old senorita befriended me and offered to show me around Mazatlán.

From Mazatlán, I rode the rails to Nogales, Arizona, where I began the long, tiring, cold, and often depressing hitch home.

On 21 January 1980, I returned to Stevens Point, to the cold, to my friends, and to reality.