Before I started my journey I came across a Craigslist ad about a gentleman named Scott out in Missoula, Montana that needed a vehicle driven out to him from Philadelphia.  I gave the guy a call and found he already found someone to drive the car out, but had another car in Ann Arbor, Michigan he was looking to get driven out.  I told him I’d keep it in mind as I was traveling in case I was passing through the area.

As my travels commenced I kept being told about checking out the national Rainbow Gathering that was going to be held a few hours south of Missoula this summer.  As I was leaving Florida I made the decision I would indeed make my way to the event.  I initially planned to head into Arkansas and spend a few days with my good friend Ashton, then hitch out to Colorado and then into Montana.  Ashton, as it turned out, was going to be moving back home to Pennsylvania a few days after I arrived at his place in Arkansas and would be making a detour to go to Toledo, Ohio on his way there.  Toledo just so happened to be 45 minutes from Ann Arbor.  I gave a call to Scott and found out the vehicle was still there and he still needed a driver.  I decided to make the goofy route back towards home with my friend and snag this car to drive out to Missoula.

The ride first took me out towards Oklahoma where I met some friends of Ashton’s who were really cool.  We spent a night looking out at the stars having stimulating conversations about the universe. We spent a night at a big paintball event in Oklahoma and then backtracked towards Pennsylvania. I met Ashton’s grandparents along the way and we spent a few days in Dayton, Ohio with some friends of ours who recently got married.  When we finally arrived in Toledo we got some lunch with Ashton’s relatives and Ashton dropped me off at the edge of town.  It was finally time to hitchhike one again.

I needed to get a mere 45 minutes up the road, but finding the ride wasn’t easy.  It took quite awhile, but a gentleman picked me up and told me about how he used to hitchhike and could take me a few miles up the highway to a place he thought was a better hitching location.  It’s been my general policy to trust the judgement of locals for where to go to maximize ride exposure.  I took him up on the offer and got dropped off in a rather desolate location.  It seemed to me this guy had no clue what he was talking about.  I didn’t have much other choice but to get to the on ramp and wait, and an hour went by with hardly any traffic getting onto the highway.  I was preparing myself to disregard the “no pedestrians” sign and head down to the highway and stand in the grass to (hopefully) abide by the law when I saw one car preparing to turn onto the ramp.  I told myself “last chance” and sure enough, the vehicle pulled right over.  The gentleman in the car just happened to stop for gas down the road and was getting back on the highway to go home to Ann Arbor.  Yes!  I’d be picking up that car today after all.

When I hopped in the gentleman said his name was Jim and told me about how his son was thinking about hitchhiking around the country and he wanted to start paying it forward in hopes that it’d return good travels for his son.  I thought this was funny because my own father wanted to do the same thing when I left home.  We talked for the entire duration of the ride and he dropped me off at a gas station near the location of the car.

I got in contact with the guy who currently had the car and he was kind enough to come pick me up at the gas station and take me to his house where the car was.  When we got there he mentioned the fact that the car had a manual transmission.  Oops.  Scott forgot to mention that.  Luckily I knew manual transmissions from riding motorcycle and had some experience driving manual cars.  Soon I was off… well, right after I failed to put the car in reverse and was in first gear and tried to drive away with the e-brake engaged.  The two things I forgot were different from a motorcycle.  After probably making the guy think I knew nothing about manuals, I eased the car out of the driveway and was off.  I was really excited to be driving a car and looking forward to picking up hitchhikers along the way.

I ended up in Chicago, Illinois in the evening and stayed with some friends outside the city.  The next day I explored a bit in Chicago and that evening my friends Greg, Matt, and my friend from home who just happened to be in Chicago for work that week, Mike, all got dinner together.  It was nice catching up with everyone.  I asked Greg about a state park called Starved Rock State Park that Jim told me about the previous day, and Greg got all excited and said I had to go down there and check it out.

So the next morning came along and I ended up at Starved Rock State Park in Illinois.  It was indeed worthwhile.  Unlike the rest of the state of Illinois, which to my knowledge was rather flat and boring, this little gem of an area had these beautiful little hills and several waterfalls.  I spent a few hours walking through the park and met this cool guy who makes YouTube videos and we walked through some of the park together while he took footage for a little Starved Rock State Park video he was making.  We saw some really beautiful scenery and eventually we parted ways.  I headed back to the car and away I went; next stop: Badlands National Park in South Dakota.

Not long into my drive there was a construction zone coming up and everyone was merging into the left lane.  As we merged over one of the tractor trailers went back over to the right lane after merging and kept moving over into the shoulder.  As I thought he was intending to stop  he continued off the shoulder into a ditch.  He managed to keep it upright for several hundred feet but made the poor decision to try and bring it back up to the highway.  He luckily wasn’t moving very fast as the whole truck tipped over onto its side.  Two other truckers and I pulled off the road and ran over to help.  I called 911 as the truckers, who were much more familiar with tractor trailers than I, climbed their way up the undercarriage and to the driver side door.  The driver had fallen down into the passenger seating area and was alert but had some back pain.  It didn’t take long for emergency crews to arrive and they worked on getting the man out of the vehicle.  Emergency crews took our statements and asked us to leave the scene.  We all complied, because it was clear they had it from there.  As I was leaving the scene they were prying out the windshield to get the man out of the cabin.

As I reflected on what just happened I began to think about where I wanted to end up that evening. I checked Craigslist to see if anyone needed a ride in the direction I was going and gave one guy in Sioux Falls, South Dakota a call, but his phone wasn’t in service.  I decided to drive late into the evening and go to Badlands National Park early in the morning.  That evening I ended up about two hours west of Sioux Falls at a rest stop and called it a night.  In the morning I received a text from the guy in Sioux Falls and he was still hoping to get a ride. I decided to just go for it and drove back to Sioux Falls for him.  He was trying to go to the Rainbow Gathering as well and didn’t have many resources to get himself there, and I wanted to help.  We met up at a McDonald’s and it was clear Ray was a decent guy so we were off on our way.

It took about 5 hours to get to Badlands National Park and when we finally arrived we were both happy to take in the sights.  Although I’d been to Badlands multiple times, it’s one of my favorite places.  Ray had never headed this way so it was a treat for him.  We spent a few hours in the park and ended up blazing our own trail up into some rocky hills and ended up with a beautiful view of the park.  We were satisfied with our accomplishment and decided to head on to Wall Drug  outside of the park.  Right as we were leaving the park and coming up to a stop sign, I engaged the clutch and moved the transmission over to first gear as the clutch pedal let loose and I skid to a stop.  Uh oh.

The car just broke down in pretty much the middle of nowhere.