Living life on a Dollar and a Dime

I’m sitting on a rock on the shore of Lake Thompson, Maine, watching the sunset behind the sailing boats and having a pensive moment. Tomorrow it is time leave the summer camp I have worked at for two months, and with this comes a sorrowful goodbye to this stunning part of New England which I have begun to call home. Cheesy as it sounds, I was adamant that places this idyllic did not exist in the real world, with its rugged mountains, clapper-board houses and blueberry fields, it is straight out of a film set.

Saying goodbye to my ‘Parent Trap’ lifestyle is, however, bittersweet, as it marks the beginning of my one month road trip of the USA, which will take me and my over-sized backpack from Maine to Vermont, Boston, San Francisco, the capital Washington DC and finally New York City. Whilst working at camp I have had some interesting experiences ranging from the spiritual, on mountain peaks and lake shores, the scary, in tents during electric storms, and down-right ridiculous, from sinking up to my waist in peat bogs, to dressing up as a Marshmallow man and dancing to Rhianna. Hopefully the variety of experiences will continue throughout my onward travels and I will have some interesting anecdotes to follow me home.

The following month will reveal a series of five articles on how to travel on a Warwick student’s budget without compromising enjoyment or experience. In a moment of artsy hippiness, I purchased from the bookshop an overpriced journal with the cover mimicking that of Jack Kerouac’s ‘On The Road’. Although I have little intention of imitating the trip of Sal Paradise, the lazy waster of a main character who spends his life pounding tarmac in the US, I will for the some part use the carefree Beat attitude as inspiration for my own adventure, and every anecdote I scribble in my now-battered notebook will be relayed to you every time I find an internet cafe…

I will disclose the best place to pick blueberries and buy maple syrup in Maine, the cheapest (!) way to survive the affluent cities of the North East, the best bike rental store for your ride over the Golden Gate, and the student’s take on New York over Labour Day weekend when the hostels are double the price. I promise not to mince my words, I know I will probably meet wierdos on buses, have nowhere to pitch my tent in a thunderstorm and find suspicious stains on my hostel sheets, but truth be told, it is these joys of budget experiences that make the trip. So here we go…