Warped Tour Travels

During the summer of 2014 (last summer), three of my friends and I traveled the open road for two weeks to follow the Vans Warped Tour traveling music festival. We were on the tour to do press for my friend's anti-bullying non-profit (mainly filming anti-bullying public service announcements with the musicians). The first date of our run on the tour was around my hometown, and from there I took out to see much of the country without my family for the first time. Some of the main places we traveled to on our adventure included Tinley Park, IL, Cuyahoga Falls, OH, Auburn Hills, MI, and Mansfield, MA, among others. We also took other stops on the way. When we were traveling around Ohio, our midpoint to stay at was Grove City. We had a few concerts to go to outside of the tour, as well, in Hartford, CT, Albany, NY, and Philadelphia. The third and second to last days of our travels, we stayed in Cleveland for the first Alternative Press Music Awards at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which I also walked around before the actual event and experienced.

It's been almost a year since that trip, but it has had the most profound impact on me out of anything I have ever experienced throughout my entire life. It was my first trip away from my family and with three good friends, and that freedom from my family awoke within me a sense of adventure and a thirst to travel and see the world that I hadn't had before those two weeks. I loved driving through different states and seeing how different everything was (including beer in New York gas stations, since that doesn't happen in Pennsylvania). I met so many new people and experienced new things, and I would never be able to forget that.