When Dan Helbling, cinema productions major, was passing time in his dorm room during his freshman year, he stumbled upon a website called “Stumbleupon,” where he found a photograph of the Salt Flats. 

Within a year, Helbling, Alden Roth and Mike Cooknick, cinema majors, mapped out their destinations and started a Kickstarter, which they used to offer to visit people if they were in a close proximity to where their end destination was in that area. They did this in order to fund their equipment needed to record this journey. After they planned out their trip and had their Kickstarter up and running, they packed their car and hit the road. 

The summer of 2013, three students documented 28 days, 11,000 miles, 43 locations and 22 states. Upon planning this, the decision to go “off the grid” in a sense, was made. No cell phones, no electronics and no GPS, they would direct themselves using only a map.

“The Whole DAM Nation,” is the result of their road trip that they recorded from day one. It is a two-hour documentary that follows Helbling, Roth and Cooknick as they discover new places, the obstacles they overcome and a journey that taught them a better sense of themselves, this nation, its people and its beauty.

“It was awesome that they went out and did what they did and that they put together a really nice representation of that,” junior cinema student Kathryn Hitchan said. 

To film this documentary, they used three Canon DSLR cameras, two 60Ds and one T2i, two GoPros, an H4N audio recorder, several different lenses, batteries, 22 terabytes of hard drive and a solar panel charger that they taped to the top of the dashboard in their car that charged all of their devices. The group also used a rigged up PVC-U tube pipe to create a type of selfie stick which held the GoPro. 

After the original inspirations for the trip, Roth and Helbling began to discuss how they would do this and what they would do. That’s when they came up with the idea that they wanted to film it and asked Cooknick to join them in being the DP for the documentary and filming it for them. 

Once they were on the road their first destination was in W.V., where they spoke with three elders, one woman and two men, who contacted them via their Kickstarter. They told them of a trip they once took that was similar to the one Helbing, Cooknick and Roth were taking. 

They carried on with their journey, first stopping at a campsite, where they became uncertain about their exact location or how to make it to the end destination they had in mind. At first, they thought they were right next to it, when really, they were nearly three states away. The guys mentioned in the movie that it could be helpful to have a better understanding of the location of the states.

After getting themselves back on track, they began another long ride towards another destination, heading towards San Francisco. Some obstacles they came upon were only bringing money to pay for gas, and when they ran out of food, they were stuck. 

Coming upon a small town like area, they got gas and went to a small restaurant, where they explained their dilemma to the owners of the family run business, to which the owners graciously offered to feed them for free. 

Still on their way to Calif., they met with another man using their Kickstarter, who was a photographer and showed them the beauty of a mountainside. 

The family of the man they met with opened their home to them and offered a free night’s stay. The family asked them to make a list of food they wanted, so they did. They joked in the movie how they would be fed for the rest of the trip thanks to her. 

When they finally arrived to San Francisco, it was a foggy day and the image of the classic clear view bridge they all pictured in their heads, was not what they expected. They talked about how upon arriving, there was very little commentary between them and they just walked it from one side to the other, with little interest. Their exhaustion and the weather made this location a disappointment to them. 

They made a brief stop at Four Corners, where they each photographed one another making a pose that represented them placing some part of themselves in each state at one, joking how they say you can’t be in two places at once. 

After Four Corners, they continued on their path to their many other locations. At one point they were in search for a place to stay and having no luck with either hotels or campsites, they decided their only option was to sleep in their car in the Walmart parking lot, until they received a knock on their window from a police officer, who as they said, “very kindly explained how they were not allowed to continue there in that parking lot, but that there was a Home Depot close by that they could.”

On their way to Death Valley, they were each becoming tired and hot. Though, the next day, Helbling noticed a red warning light flashing on the car. So after reading the car manual, the three guys chose to turn the heat in the car to its highest level while entering Death Valley in the 120-degree heat. Due to the condition of the car, they did not stop while driving through the Valley, but did stop outside the Valley at a gas station, where the car broke down. 

In 120-degree weather, they asked two other men, who happened to be mechanics, to jumpstart their car. Unfortunately, the jumpstart was unsuccessful and using a payphone, they called roadside assistance to tow them. After many miles, the driver dropped them off in a Walmart parking lot where they bought a new battery and installed it. 

The rest of their trip was mainly successful. They ended in Texas to surprise Cooknick’s girlfriend. They filmed their last video journal, which included them looking back on the trip and how it affected them.

They discussed how not only do they feel closer to each other, but also to themselves. They reminisced on what it was like to separate themselves from the digital world, allowing them to open their eyes and view the world in a different aspect. 

Helbling and Cooknick still have yet to become camping fans. 

Although their trip came with its own set of disappointments, the good outweighed the bad. Given the opportunity, if they could all do it again, all three simultaneously answered with “absolutely.” 

The documentary that started as just something two guys joked about that, “snowballed,” as Helbling said, from that very first joke about going to see the Salt Flats and wanting to rope swing the Arches. 

“It turned into something wonderful,” Helbling said. 

This was a journey that started as an idea from a picture and grew to become “The Whole DAM Nation.”