When John Steinbeck wrote Travels with Charley: In Search of America, he described the travel urge as "once a bum, always a bum" in his opening journal. I never thought of myself as a bum and I'm just a little bit older than Steinbeck was when he set off across the United States, but a little of the same restlessness pervades my preparations. Photos of Dumont, Iowa, where our car broke down when I was ten, make me want to revisit my childhood adventures; scrapbooks about each state with family pictures lure me back to the Space Needle in Seattle or the launch pad at Cape Canaveral where husband Andy and the kids, Drew and Tara, explored years ago. Steinbeck wrote about America and then traveled cross country to confirm what he had written after twenty-five intervening years. With his standard sized French poodle Charley he set out to rediscover the land of his famous novels. He sought to hear "the speech of America, smell the grass and trees and sewage, see the hills and water, its color and quality of light." In a self-contained truck, "a kind of turtle carrying his house on his back," Steinbeck left Long Island for several months of bumming through 34 states. In somewhat the same way Andy and I will set out to tour the U.S. Our travel plans crisscross 40 of the 50 states. Now I don't pretend to be a world famous novelist, and we won't try to do our laundry in a garbage can suspended upright by bungee cords or prepare our meals with a frying pan in the camp grounds, but we will seek out the far flung corners of America, view the country with an objective eye, and record what we see. And as Andy drives the old truck, nicknamed Rocinante like Steinbeck's truck and Don Quixote's horse, we will cherish the adventure. A couple of vagabonds, we will drift from state to state and let the journey control us. Steinbeck made no secret of his trip. So too we share our adventures. Join us as we explore America. Come travel with Suzi.