Greg Bledsoe was a morning news anchor in San Diego until he and his family decided to ditch their daily routine and hit the road.

More than 29,000 miles and 47 states later, the adventure continues on what they’re calling a “family geography project.” In an interview for "LA Times Today," Bledsoe told host Lisa McRee why he chose to leave it all behind and what he’s learned along the way.

The idea to hit the road was one Bledsoe and his wife had entertained for years. When the pandemic hit, they seized the opportunity to make it a reality.

“I’m a storyteller at heart, and I just always dreamed about venturing out into the unknown and finding stories,” Bledsoe said. “My wife and I started talking about it 10 years ago. And then life happened. You have kids, you buy a house, you do what we do. And eventually we just got to the point where we said, ‘we don’t want to say in 20 years why didn’t we ever do that?’ So we decided to just go.”

The Bledsoe family, including their two young children, have been on the road for months, doing schoolwork along the way. Bledsoe said the first few days of the journey were the hardest, but some moments made the struggle to adjust worth it.

“The first few days, like anything you do, were the toughest because we’re working out the kinks. We lost the tent within the first couple of nights in a windstorm. And then we go to the Grand Canyon, and we wake up our kids for sunrise to go check it out. It’s going to be beautiful, but it’s also freezing cold and windy, and the kids are tucked up in a blanket and pretty miserable, to be honest. But I look back at that day and I think that was just sort of a preview of what was to come. There have been a lot of moments that have been tough and not perfect, but beautiful, and we wouldn’t change it. So, we’ve been savoring it, even though there are days that aren’t perfect.”

Bledsoe explained the route the family took around the United States.

“We tried to map this out weather-wise to stay ahead of the weather,” he said. “We started almost a year ago. We went up the West Coast, crossed the top of the country. … We’re in the Midwest for the summer, then fall in New England, which is incredible. Then down the East Coast over the wintertime and then zig-zag the south. And here we are right now at the one year mark, and we’re heading back towards home.”

Bledsoe says that being able to educate his children through experiences has been rewarding. He talked about some lessons his kids could never have learned in a classroom.

“We took the kids on a lobster fishing boat when we were up in Maine and they learned all about not only how the process goes, but the regulations and which you’re allowed to keep, which you’re not,” he said. “We took them to a maple syrup farm when we were in Vermont. We tried to do the things that are very native to those places. When we were in Florida, of course, we went out and kayaked alongside manatees. We learned a lot about manatees, but also the situation we’re in right now. The country’s lost a lot of manatees over the last year. It’s just been amazing, but we tried to do those hands-on lessons that the kids can learn whatever that state is known for.”

Along the way, Bledsoe has met with people from all walks of life and shared their stories. He shared the experience of meeting a couple of those people.

“Some of them we found in advance and set something up, and other people we’ve just sort of run into,” Bledsoe said. “Our goal was, in addition to teaching our kids, to tell some stories that hopefully teach other people. When we were in Minneapolis, we talked to the photographer who was with George Floyd’s family and family attorney for a year or two. He shared his incredibly powerful images with us and had stories about times that he was the only camera in the room and these really powerful, intimate moments with the family. And then there are much lighter moments. We talked about the one guy who works at a sawmill in southern Pennsylvania. He selects the trees for Louisville Slugger that then become Major League Baseball bats. He does the job now. His dad did it before him. And it’s just fascinating. We’ve met so many people. We could do this for the next hundred years and never run out of stories.”

Bledsoe and his family are heading back to San Diego now, as their trip comes to an end. He spoke about whether they would do it all again.

“We would do it forever if we could,” he said. “We’re headed back towards San Diego to at least recharge and sort of figure out what’s next. If we did this again in a year or two, I wouldn’t be shocked. But at the same time, we’re trying to appreciate every single day right now because we may never have this opportunity again. Our kids are getting older, and we’ll have to plug back into regular life, eventually. For now, we have about another six weeks left.”

Watch “LA Times Today” at 7 and 10 p.m. Monday through Friday on Spectrum News 1 and the Spectrum News app.