A road trip tale through California, childhood, and life
Road trips. RVing from coast to coast. Cooking classes. Buying a condo in Japan.
Ever since we started our full-time world travels in August 2022, we’ve done many things, and shared many of them with you.
But there’s something we haven’t talked about.
Prior to getting rid of 90% of what we owned…
Before we left our home in Oregon to travel the world…
There was a road trip.
With a pop-up camper named Bebop.
The road trip that changed everything
On Feb. 11, 2022, at three in the morning, we began a pop-up camping road trip. After a few days at Disneyland, we spent the next six weeks road-tripping all over California.
The very first day after leaving Disney, something changed our entire trip. In southern California’s Mojave Desert, at the edge of where paved road gave way to dirt track, it began with a sign, which simply said, “ROUGH ROADS MAY EXIST”.
Over time, it became a book.
I started writing it in the middle of the night during this road trip. It’s been a constant companion ever since.
Coming soon
And on Feb. 11, 2027, exactly five years from the day that road trip began, we’ll tell that story in the travel memoir, ROUGH ROADS MAY EXIST: One Family’s Accidental Quest for the Meaning of Life, by Anthony St. Clair.
This book is about far more than our trip, though. It’s about something much deeper.
Something universal shared throughout our common humanity.
This travel memoir is for everyone who looks to get more out of life, pursue their dreams and goals, and live a life that makes space both for challenge and for fulfillment. Along the way, it shows the ways a family can work together, the joy and difficulty of camping in a pop-up, the shortness and changes of childhood, and the ups and downs of what it is not only to travel, but to live.
In exactly one year, the book will be available in ebook and trade paperback. As we have news, open pre-orders, reveal the cover, and more, you’ll be the first to find out.
In the meantime, below is the book’s description. Please check it out and share this with anyone you think would be interested in ROUGH ROADS MAY EXIST.
About ROUGH ROADS MAY EXIST: One Family’s Accidental Quest for the Meaning of Life
What happens when a family road trip goes sideways—and becomes the adventure of a lifetime?
Anthony St. Clair’s family had one goal: take the kids to Disneyland, then camp for a few days in the Mojave Desert. Simple, right?
Wrong.
By their third night, sitting in a motel parking lot after being blown out of one remote campground and finding no room in another, the question hung in the air: Should we just go home?
They didn’t. What happened next transformed not just their trip, but their understanding of family, home, and what it means to keep going when the road gets rough.
ROUGH ROADS MAY EXIST is the heartwarming, hilarious, and deeply human story of six weeks of a family of four traveling California in a 12-foot pop-up camper. From the wind-battered cliffs of Big Sur to the ancient silence of the redwoods, from failed camping attempts in Death Valley to an unexpected friendship forged on desert rocks, this is travel memoir at its most authentic.
This isn’t a story of escape or crisis. It’s something rarer: a family choosing to spend time together, choosing adventure over comfort, choosing to keep going even when it would be easier to quit. Along the way, they encounter:
- 50-mph winds that threaten to tear their camper apart
- A 97-year-old lawn bowler who embodies the secret to staying vital
- The loneliest Russian hermit in the redwoods
- A feeding frenzy of dolphins, seals, and seabirds off the Channel Islands
- The exact moment when “home” stops being a place and becomes being with those who matter most
But beneath the adventure is something deeper: the recognition that childhood has no pause button, and the time parents have with their children is finite and precious. With warmth, humor, and unflinching honesty, author and dad Anthony St. Clair explores what it means to be present for your kids—not someday, but now—while the road is still open and the time is still yours.
Perfect for readers who loved Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods but wish it included more family dynamics, or who enjoyed Cheryl Strayed’s journey in Wild but wanted something cozier and more hopeful.
Written with Terry Pratchett-style footnotes and a self-deprecating humor that never undermines the genuine emotion, ROUGH ROADS MAY EXIST is both laugh-out-loud funny and unexpectedly moving.
St. Clair doesn’t shy away from the challenges: broken camper parts, accessibility concerns with his wife’s prosthetic leg, moments of genuine fear. He also celebrates the joy of morning coffee in the desert, kids making friends on canyon rocks, and the simple miracle of a family choosing to stay together through it all.
ROUGH ROADS MAY EXIST is for parents wondering if they should take that big trip “someday,” for families looking for inspiration to do things differently, and for anyone who believes that the best adventures aren’t the ones that go according to plan. After all, they’re the ones where you figure it out together.
Anthony St. Clair is a ghostwriter, travel content creator, and parent who believes in experiencing the world with his family while his kids are still kids. After this California adventure, the St. Clair family sold most of what they owned and took their children traveling around the world—without a return ticket. He lives wherever his family is, which lately has been more “road” than “house.”
ROUGH ROADS MAY EXIST will be available worldwide February 11, 2027, wherever books and ebooks are sold.
