A month after our time at Techstars ended, the Wonders team left Austin for Seattle with a U-Haul trailer behind us. We were helping our friend Josh move some things, but that only partly explained the trip. We also wanted an adventure and, perhaps more than that, a break from whatever was supposed to come next.
At the beginning, the trailer was the whole story. It was heavy, the car did not feel obviously up to the job, and we were not entirely sure we would make it to Washington. We set off anyway, aimingāwith a fairly naive kind of optimismāto cross Texas and New Mexico and reach Boulder by the end of the day.
Austin to New Mexico
Texas quickly corrected our sense of scale. It took almost the entire day to get out of the state, and the flat road kept stretching towards a horizon that never seemed to get closer. By sunset, we had barely crossed into New Mexico.
We did not want to force the drive through the night, so we looked for somewhere to stop and found Lake Sumner State Park along our route. It felt like a reward for giving up on the original plan. We had the park to ourselves, cooked dinner beside the clean, still water, and watched the light disappear.
We hung our Kammok Roos before dinner and added Dragonfly bug nets, which turned out to be essential. The bugs were everywhere. One still managed to get inside my net and bite me in the middle of the face, so I woke up looking as though I had grown a second nose.
New Mexico to Colorado
Colorado changed the rhythm almost immediately. Mountains rose from the horizon in every direction, green summer fields were dotted with wildflowers, and the last patches of winter fed cold streams below the peaks. After the flat immensity of Texas, the landscape seemed to have gained another dimension.
We changed the route and drove through Breckenridge, Aspen, and Telluride instead of heading through Colorado Springs. We had dinner in Telluride and walked around town before returning to the road. A few months later I would move there for the ski season, which made this first, unplanned visit feel different in retrospect.
Once we left Telluride, the road disappeared into dark forest. We were tired and wanted a campsite, but eventually settled for a place near a cliff, parked the car, and set up for the night. Below us, white water crashed against the rocks, loud enough to hear but too far down to see.
The next few days were spent in Boulder and Denver, exploring the cities and seeing old friends while making new ones. Some nights gave us beds, blankets, showers, and familiar faces; others ended in cars and parking lots. The comfort kept changing, but the trip never felt diminished by it.
Colorado to Idaho
We reached Idaho hungry, tired, and looking for somewhere to sleep near Coeur dāAlene. Darkness arrived before we found a proper campsite, so we stopped near Rose Lake, around twenty minutes outside town. There was a small improvised fire pit, and we made a fire.
Twenty minutes later, two fire trucks appeared. The firefighters put it out and explained that the entire region was under a high fire hazard. Three firefighters had died in Washington only days earlier, which made our small decision feel much less harmless and the rule much less like an inconvenience. Environmental conditions can turn an ordinary choice into a consequence for people you will never meet.
The next morning, we went down to the lake for a quick swim before getting back on the road. We were still thinking about the fire trucks, but we left knowing at least two things: never assume a fire pit is safe, and never underestimate how quickly a dry landscape can change the meaning of a small fire.
Idaho to Montana
We drove through Wyoming and arrived in Montana almost giddy to have made it as far as Glacier National Park. After so much time moving from one unfamiliar place to another, it was good to meet our friends from America Yāall and spend the Fourth of July with people we knew. Jeremy took charge of the food and made the kind of campfire burgers that taste inseparable from the place where you eat them.
Glacier was almost difficult to take in. The runoff and rivers were a startling blue, and the water was colder and cleaner than anything we had tasted. It rained while we were there, making the nights bitter, but Kammokās Firebelly kept us warm even through the shower.
The higher we drove, the colder it became, until we were inside the clouds. The glaciers looked ancient, but not permanent. Even then, standing beside them, it was hard to see the landscape as fixed scenery rather than something visibly changing.
Montana to the Pacific Northwest
For the final stretch, we had the Pacific in mind. Rather than driving straight into Washington, we detoured to the Oregon coast and then planned to work our way north to Seattle. The first part of the drive was dry and yellow, but crossing the mountains changed everything: the grass turned green, the air cooled, and the landscape began to feel unmistakably coastal.
Pacific City was our first stop. We had wanted to surf, although the water was much flatter than we had hoped. We rented a standard eight-foot board anyway and paddled out. The conditions never improved much, but being in the water was enough.
On the final full day, we bought salmon from local fishermen and made ceviche. We drank Pabst and bourbon from tin cups and ate with plastic utensils, which felt entirely appropriate. It was not elegant, but after two weeks on the road it felt like a feast.
Five thousand miles gave us plenty to remember: empty parks, improvised campsites, friends, mountains, rain, cold water, and more tired driving than any of us would recommend. What stayed with me was not a clean story about adventure or personal growth. It was how much of the trip came from the parts we had not plannedāthe lake we found because Texas took too long, the town I would later move to, the friends who gave us beds, and the ocean we reached by taking a detour.
The trailer had felt like a problem to solve when we left Austin. By Seattle, it was simply the thing that had come along for the entire ride: still heavy, still slightly ridiculous, but no longer the point of the story. The route was worth taking because we left enough room for it to become something other than the plan.