It's no secret that human beings, especially young ones, are enamored with the idea of road trips. Pretty much everyone I have ever talked to has the same lofty dream of piling themselves and all their 20-somethings-year-old friends into a smelly van and making their way across state line after state line on the hunt for culture, food and adventure from the east coast all the way to Cali.

I am no exception to such desires at all. It's no secret that I, too, indulge in rose-colored-glasses-wearing travel-hungry daydreaming. I desperately want to rent a van and go exploring too. "Some day," we all say, giving pointed side-eye to our mounting debt, minimum wage jobs, and crushing academic workloads. "Some day."

While I absolutely love that the human spirit seems to share a uniting, transcendent desire to travel, to grow, to see, eat and experience, I absolutely hate that Facebook keeps forcing me to look at the same "scientifically perfect," "best, most official," "must see" United States road trip map delivered to me in 19 separate BuzzFeed articles.

I'm not here to tell you that dreaming about travel and fulfilling long-sought-after goals of adventuring with friends is bad, nor that these articles themselves are bad for trying in earnest to give you a good place to start in mapping out your road trip goals. I'll even begrudgingly admit that the map itself is actually very well thought-out and helpful.

Unfortunately, that's not enough to save you, map. I'm tired of looking at you, and frankly your lack of originality disgusts me. If you want to see the map because, by some miracle, it has graciously spared you in its newsfeed dominating reign of terror, please feel free to check it out here!

Or here. Or here. Or here. Or maybe here. Or here. You get the idea.

Now, I do have a problem with this level of stream-lining, organizing and standardizing of transcendent human desires. Unity without uniformity! Personally, I don't want to run into 50 other assholes on the same exact road trip as me because we all read the same (or one of the 109 alternate versions of the same) stupid BuzzFeed article. Something about that seems wrong. It irks me. Maybe I'm just an asshole, I'm not sure. All I know is that I have had enough, and I'm ready to fight back.

As such, I have devised the worst possible U.S. road trip that one could possibly have the misfortune of experiencing, and I fully intend on spreading my propaganda far and wide to compete with Randy and Tracy's map. (Randy and Tracy are the original co-conspirators behind the world's best road trip map, a big thank you and f*ck you to Randy and Tracy for carefully researching, compiling and itemizing the most overshared bit of travel advice of 2015 and 2016.)

I have conceived a truly dismal, inefficient and highly expensive road trip beginning in the area where I reside, Baltimore, and ending in what research would indicate is the worst possible place in California: Lucerne Valley, which is essentially a barren, desert wasteland with virtually no municipalities or cities and extremely high unemployment. This chaotic journey is mind-numbingly long (about 50 days in total), as it is incredibly inefficiently routed, and the sites along the way promise to fluctuate wildly between total desolate wasteland and highly dangerous hell-holes, all while avoiding any possible sources of joy, fascination or ease. Please enjoy.

*Please note that the places that appear along this journey are to no fault of their own, super crappy. Some of them have terrible weather and eye-sore landscapes by pure unluck of the draw. Others are desolate and have small populations and are therefore, by nature, are less interesting than bigger more populace places. And still others have serious financial and resident well-being issues, and on the whole are mostly just bad because they are underfunded, and the residents are poor (and desperate and trapped as such). These places and their residents shouldn't be ridiculed, and my intention is only to create an intentionally unpleasant, boring journey through the U.S. that avoids major landmarks and any activities (and thus is likely to travel through poor, desolate areas as a result.)

Without further ado, here are some of the (least) memorable places you'll be visiting with me on the Anti-Road Trip Road Trip:

1. Lansdowne, Baltimore, Maryland.

We begin our road trip in scenic Lansdowne, Baltimore, Maryland, on Monday morning, May 30, Memorial Day weekend. The sun is shining, and the busiest, most stressful weekend of travel for the entire year is just heating up. So get out there and into that stand-still traffic to kick things off! I currently live in Baltimore, so it seemed like a logical place to begin on the east coast. Baltimore itself has a bad enough reputation as it is (even if I do love good ol' Charm City). I picked Lansdowne, Baltimore, in particular because it excels in boringness. While the unemployment rate is high (but not terrible, honestly), crime is still a real factor in boring little Lansdowne, and additionally there's basically no relevant historic landmarks anywhere to be found. It’s the 12th most dangerous place you can live in Maryland according to the latest FBI numbers. While there are certainly more dangerous places in Baltimore, a lot of those places are also full of interesting architecture, history and people, so Lansdowne it is. This photo of Lansdowne is pretty indicative of the place a a whole.

2. Huntington, West Virginia.

We end our first night on our road trip, after driving six hours, in Huntington, West Virginia. Both Virginia and West Virginia are en route on our journey westward, and both are generally very beautiful and historic, so this one was tough to find. Huntington, West Virginia has the worst weather in the state, and the physical scenery honestly isn't too far behind for the most part. Additionally, its residents earn far less salaries than the rest of the state, and crime is well above state averages. There are no significant landmarks in Huntington either, making it a true stop of tranquility on our gloomy expedition West.

4. La Follette, Tennessee.

After another six hours, we arrive in La Follette, Tennessee. La Follette is tucked away in the hills off of I-75 on your way to Kentucky on our journey westward. Tennessee was also an incredibly challenging player for this Anti-Road-Trip map, because, as you know if you have been there, Tennessee is a beautiful mountain state with a rich cultural and historical background. You can barely throw a rock in Tennessee without hitting something interesting. But fear not, I take my tour guide duties seriously, and I scoured the state long and hard before finding this place. You can imagine the boredom level out here in La Follette is at its max capacity. There's very little around, and the town is mostly made up of blue collar workers, thirty three percent of whom live below the poverty line. The unemployment rate here is at eight percent, and the crime rate is ludicrously the third highest in the state, despite having a population of only 7,000 or so.

5. Waynesboro, Mississippi.

After seven hours of driving you "arrive" in Waynesboro, Mississippi. With high crime, extremely high unemployment, and with a population density that is almost as low as you can get (meaning there’s next to no one and nothing do here), Waynesboro, Mississippi, is a truly dismal stop for a weary traveler. Waynesboro is out in the middle of nowhere, near the Alabama state line and it's somehow both dangerous and incredibly dull.

6. Weslaco, Texas.

Across the board, Weslaco is one of the worst places in Texas for us to be forced to make a stop in after driving for nearly 12 hours straight, which is what you just did to get away from Waynesboro, Mississippi. There is more crime in Weslaco than in any other place in Texas. Just a short drive from Brownsville and the Mexican border, Weslaco residents have a one in 95 chance of being the victim of a violent crime – meaning raped, murdered or attacked. Additionally, even though it's mostly residential, one in every 5 homes here is vacant and nearly one in 10 people are without a job. So, in short, it's not very nice to be here.

7. Owyhee, Nevada.

Owyhee is located in the middle of nowhere near the Idaho state line. It’s a census-designated place that’s the main home for Shoshone, Paiute and other tri-state area Native Americans at the Duck Valley Reservation. The data says the population is about 953, crime is high, homes are worryingly cheap and households earn far, far less than most other people in the state. Most people who are non-natives only come out here if they are some kind of government official back to bring more unfulfilled promises to the already struggling residents, or if they're looking for a missing body. You get the point. It's disgraceful but also not really a shock that one of the worst places in the state is also a Native American reservation. Thanks, government!

8. Nephi, Utah.

After 10 hours, we arrive in Nephi, Utah. Nephi’s unemployment rate is the seventh highest in the state (but it should be noted that Utah overall, as a state, does really well in this area). Residents here earn some of the lower salaries in the state, where households bring in $52,000 a year. They have similar economic problems to other cities on this list, no surprise. Nephi is a bit of a drive south of Provo on I-15. You can imagine there’s not a lot to do here at all, as activities go, and it has virtually no historic landmarks to speak of either. I will admit that Nephi does have really gorgeous scenery in some of its more nature-heavy regions. Utah is majestic as fuck, so this is not a big shock. I spent the longest out of any state looking for a shitty place in Utah, and even then, Nephi is not so bad. So you go, Utah.

9. Eloy, Arizona.

Eloy, along I-10 south of Chandler, is a hot mess right now, and possibly is actually one of the most dangerous cities in America, not just Arizona. The place is expansive and largely empty. There are some BIG economic problems here, and crime is really high. In fact, Eloy is the eighth most dangerous place you can live in Arizona. In short, it's really flat, really hot, and exceedingly dangerous.

10. Lucerne Valley, California.

Finally! After seven hours of driving, we arrive at our West Coast end point, Lucerne Valley, California. We’re going to see a pattern here. Lucerne Valley is another desert town on the fringes of society where there’s nothing to do, residents earn meager salaries and have long drives to their jobs, if and when they can find them. It's dry, hot and ugly, and its only real selling point as a place is that it's near Las Vegas.

Driving at an average 13 hours per day, with no stopping except for sleeping, eating and bathroom breaks (no stops for scenery. There's no time to waste on this unimpeded march of death), you should inconveniently traverse the nation at tremendous emotional and financial cost to you in as little as 50 days, returning home on Monday, July 18, at 9 p.m. eastern time. Amazing.

While Randy and Tracy had their own methods and areas of focus for creating the best road trip, so, too, did I have careful areas of research and methodical mapping to create a truly objectively bad time. I have tried to stay true to the "road trip" spirit in that I have tried my hardest to hit as many states as possible in my pursuit of looping from the east coast to the west and back again in the most non-sensical, inefficient, winding and intentionally grueling trek around the country.

Using FBI crime data, the government census, Bureau of Labor Statistics and general Google search results data, I devised a list of seemingly objectively bad cities and stopping places with little to no landmarks, and how to navigate between them without accidentally passing something interesting.

Here are some of the things I was looking for when I devised the Anti-Road Trip Road Trip map:

- City anonymity. No one knows or could even guess where the f*ck you are, and even when you tell them they've never heard of it.

- Little to no historical or aesthetic landmarks.

- Population density. The lower it is, the worse the place is (or the better for my purposes) – meaning there isn’t a lot to do or see.

- High crime rates.

- The worst weather.

- Highest unemployment rates.

- Adjusted median income. Median income adjusted for the cost of living in that city. Lower income here was meant to indicate worse cities in that less money = less nice stuff to look at and do, in theory.

- High housing vacancy rate.

- Worst hotels/motels/restaurant reviews

I was also expressly avoiding any parks, landmarks, known cities, fine dining establishments, delicious local cuisine spots, friendly locals or the possibility of passing anything generally pleasurable along the way to maximum the Desolate Wasteland of No Activity factor. I used neighborhood scout and road snacks to find this census/government/city data all in one place.

It's really hard to calculate what will be in the in-betweens of a trip, but thankfully, the Internet gave me Furkot, a road trip planning website and app meant for planning enjoyable road trips. It features a "find fun" option, which allows you the option of selecting types of activities to find and do along the way (hiking, swimming, skiing, eating, museums, beaches, you name it). I subverted this fun-filled app for my own needs by asking for all of its wonderful recommendations and advice and then flagrantly ignoring all of it, only to carefully draw lines around any and all points of interest/fun along the way.

I also used good old Google Earth quite a bit to scope out the physical beauty (or, more likely, lack thereof) of each place. For comparison, here are some of the landmarks and places you’d typically stop at in each state on your average "best road trip ever" road trip, which can be enjoyed in as little as seven-10 days:

1. Grand Canyon, Arizona

2. Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah

3. Craters of the Moon National Monument, Idaho

4. Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming

5. The Alamo, Texas

6. Elvis Presley’s Graceland, Tennessee

7. Vicksburg National Military Park, Mississippi

8. French Quarter, New Orleans, Louisiana

9. Wright Brothers National Memorial Visitor Center, North Carolina

10. Mount Vernon, Virginia

11. White House, Washington, DC

12. Liberty Bell, Pennsylvania

13. Statue of Liberty, New York

14. Mount Rushmore, South Dakota

15. San Francisco Cable Cars, California

16. San Andreas Fault, California

17. Hoover Dam, Nevada

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. Those are all pretty historically significant, beautiful, and "good" places for creating cherished memories of youth with friends, and you can enjoyably complete it in as little as 7-10 days, but so what? Authenticity, people! Everyone goes to visit those "picturesque national parks" and "exquisite historical landmarks" to form "life changing memories" with "life long friends," but what about individuality? What about the wonderful, tantalizing travel destinations on the Anti-Road Trip Road Trip list? See you in Lucerne Valley, punks.

Here's a link to the official Anti-Road Trip Road Trip Map 2k16 for more information.