Thank you for visiting MyAmericanJourney.com.  I have received a tremendous amount of support from friends, family, and strangers as I have prepared for a year-long trip around North and South America. Preparations have been extensive, spanning four months, and including everything from website development to vehicle modifications.

I drew a picture of my vehcile layout several months ago. Then I finally purchased a used 4Runner a few weeks ago.

I have spent the past two weeks working with my brother, Scott, to modify the vehicle for travel. We installed drawers, a bookshelf, storage units, and sleeping accomodations.

For general information about my trip and what it entails, you can check the “About” section. In short, I decided to drive up to Alaska and then down to Argentina over the course of a year.

I plotted a rough course on a map.

The red lines represent my expected course. I will travel clockwise around North America, then south through Central America, and then clockwise through South America.

I will be studying poverty and economic development throughout the course of my trip.

MyAmericanJourney.com was the official sponsor of Salt Lake City’s first annual Poverty Awareness Concert, which was held on July 7th. The event was organized in conjuction with local members of the ONE Poverty Awareness Campaign. To see a larger version of the photo, click on the photo.

To see more photos from the Poverty Awareness Concert, click the link to my Flickr account. The link is at the righthand side of this page. I am working hard to get my Flickr page organized into searchable albums and tag-groupings. I really like Flickr. It is the best internet resource for sharing photos. It is far superior to Snapfish and other photo sharing sites I have visited. It is even better than Google’s photo-sharing product, Picasa. Sorry Google, I love you but you’re not as good as Flickr. I will be using Flickr extensively to organize and share photos from my trip. I will share photos of friends and family.

I was planning to start my trip on August 2nd, which was also my 29th birthday. However, I still had some packing to do, and so my actual departure date is August 4th. This was okay though, because I got to celebrate my birthday in Thousand Oaks, and we had a great little party. My mom asked me what I wanted to eat for dinner on my birthday, so I told her I wanted my two favorite types of food, which are 1) candied yams, and 2) Fiesta Salad.

My best friend from high school, Max Holzer, even made it to the party with Reina, his fiance. Reina LOVED the Fiesta Salad and the candied yams, both of which were prepared from some really great recipes. Within the next week or two I will get my mom to share the recipes for these delicious entrees. The recipe for the Fiesta Salad was invented by a girl named KereAna. KereAna holds a special place in my heart.

Max and I both loved the meal.

The birthday party was so much fun! There was a cake and presents…

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...and a tresure hunt…

The treasure was a pinata!!

My brother had to sneak the pinata into the house earlier in the day, to keep it a surprise!

Jon was eager to start swinging, even though he wasn’t facing the right direction!

I am making a documentary about my trip, which I will release when I return. I will post video content on the site as often as possible, so you can see not only the still photos, but some dialogue and interviews. This will especially be helpful in conveying some of my ideas about economic development and poverty. I haven’t posted any video content yet, but be patient, it is coming soon.

I am so excited to get on the road and meet up with old friends and relatives, as well as making lots of new friends. I am very interested to learn what people think of this trip and what kinds of visits and interviews people think I should set up. So please leave comments and suggestions. I’ll do my very best to take your opinions into consideration as I make plans throughout my trip.

I plan to post new content at least twice per week. The first couple of weeks may be a little sporadic, but by September all updates will be very consistent. Of course, once I get into South America it will become more of a challenge to get reliable internet access, but I’ll cross that threshold when I come to it. Thanks again for visiting, I hope you’ll come back soon!

-Matt