The Road — Philadelphia to California, 2025

A father and son road trip journal. Nine days. 3,445 miles. A red 2008 Toyota Tacoma.

January 30 – February 7, 2025 Philadelphia → Charlotte → Montgomery → Jackson → Austin → Terlingua → Big Bend → Tucson → California

Live at rt2026.benstrawbridge.com

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Stack

• Astro — static site generation, zero client-side framework
• Vanilla JS for all interactivity (gallery lightbox, filmstrip nav, scroll reveal)
• Google Fonts: Playfair Display, Caveat, Raleway, Space Mono

Development

npm install
npm run dev      # localhost:4321
npm run build    # static output → dist/
npm run preview  # serve dist/ locally

Adding content

All trip data lives in one file: src/data/days.ts

To add photos for a day:

1. Drop images into public/images/days/<N>/
2. Add paths to the galleryImages array for that day in days.ts
3. Videos (.mp4) are supported — add video: true to the gallery item

To add the hand-drawn map hero image: Drop a file named map.jpg, map.webp, or map.png into public/images/days/<N>/ — detected automatically at build time.

Deployment

Hosted on Vercel. Deploys automatically on push to main.

Custom domain: rt2026.benstrawbridge.com