CALIFORNIA | HOLLYWOOD

I have fond memories of long winding road trips with my family when I was young. Beautiful countless spurts of memories of my mother and father in the front seat and my darling little sister and I sitting in the back. I remember early mornings, a crammed car, the familiar little stops and having absolutely no responsibility other than to sit back for hours on end gazing out the window wide eyed, constantly pestering my parents all restless and curious of how long we had until we were to arrive. Thinking about those days so young and naïve consumes me with happiness and wonder.

Then I grew up. And so did the world around me. Responsibilities came gushing in. I moved out from the comfortable roof my nurturing parents had provided me and somewhere along my road to independence and adulthood, I got a taste of the Monday to Friday grind and suddenly the ratio of the things I needed to the things I wanted got a little bit out of hand.

Spending these 3 months on American soil has made me ache for the bare minimum once again. The naivety and wonder days that used to fill my heart with pure bliss back in the day. I wanted so bad to chase life in pursuit of pure happiness before it chased me and tied me down to heavier things. This was all my dreams were made of for now. And 10,000 miles on the American road has proved to me that in actual fact, sometimes when you dream big enough. Work hard enough. Love hard enough. They do come true.

After surviving a tornado in Texas, sleeping in a teepee in New Mexico, making friends with cowboys in the wild wild west of Arizona, playing in the sin city of Nevada, partying for days on end amongst the sunny deserts of California, Kieran and I found ourselves back amongst the streets of Hollywood. Back to where it all started 80 odd days ago. A lovely but peculiar lady from Texas caught a long overnight bus trip to meet us here to become the next and proud owner of our little home on the road. Somehow we had managed to empty the campervan and fill 3 bulging suitcases with all of our things. And after she shook our hands and drove away, all of the sudden Kieran and I felt bare and weightless. But excited for our last 2 weeks before it all came to an end. With nothing but these suitcases and each-others hands to hold.

This one particular day in Hollywood, Kieran and I hired a car and spent the entire morning finding secret roads and climbing steep mountains to get the perfect view of the Hollywood sign. It felt like we didn’t stop until the sun went down and our legs gave up on us.