In August 2000, a young Dave Cameron sets out on a four-month trip from Dawson City, Yukon, to Key West, Florida, leaving the comforts of home to go out and explore the unknown. Continental Drifter is the record of that journey. Although a journalist by training, Cameron is reluctant to play the role. Nor does he want to be a tourist. He hopes merely to observe quietly, collect experience. He comes to realize, accept, and enjoy the fact that he's a writer who needs material, and that he's out there looking for stories to tell. He has an ear for the interesting tale, an eye for the telling detail and the thoughtful sensibility of the true traveller. On the road he meets a variety of strangers, some more strange than others - from the Dawson City gold miner in designer sunglasses, the evangelistic co-ed, and a number of alcoholics (some more recovering than others) to the owner of a shrine to Elvis, the Crocodile Lady, and the sunbaked senior intent on squeezing out as much fun in the sun as his pension will permit. Collecting stories and mementos as he goes, by the end of his travels he has also acquired a richer sense of the possibilities of his own life. Equal parts travel picaresque and coming-of-age memoir, Continental Drifter is at once an interpretation of many fleeting individuals and a gradual discovery of one in particular.