A NEWTON Abbot man has spent almost a year backpacking around his ’spiritual home’, the underbelly of America.

Twenty-one-year-old Jack Preston flew off to Florida in April last year in a quest to discover the real America, unlike others he knows that have been to commercial areas of the country.

Jack said: ‘I wanted to go and explore the dirty places, the rednecks and the hobos. The idea of hitch hiking meeting new people and exploring a huge country was the greatest and best thing I could have done.

‘I wanted to prove to myself and everyone outside of the US that the classic hobo lifestyle and the free open road was not dead.’

The traveller landed in Florida and couch-surfed with strangers, making his way along the south through Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, New Mexico and to California where he traveled the Golden State for four months with a friend he met whilst living on a boat in Santa Cruz before leaving to head east to Massachusetts via the Grand Canyon.

Jack said: ‘After a couple of months there I got a ride back west to California to work on a farm where I stayed from September ‘till January.

‘After this I bought a 1989 Ford Crown Victoria off a Mexican kid in San Diego and drove it up to Portland, Oregon and back down south to New Orleans, Louisiana, where I worked with my friend as a street performer.’

He dressed as a nurse Joker - from Batman - and entertained the crowds.

The thing Jack liked the most about the trip was the freedom that came with the traveling as he found out one night when he ended up skating away from an argument at 4am with a bottle of whiskey and compass.

He said: ’Picture a 21-year-old English guy with a ridiculously big and heavy backpack skating flat out down a hill with a bottle of whiskey.’

In the end Jack camped at the side of the road before hitch hiking further away into the town of Ventura.

Jack will be holding a photograph exhibition at the Jolly Farmer on Sunday (March 13) where he will be talking about his adventure and selling photographs that he took in a bid to raise money to return to America - his ‘real home’.

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