SIOUX FALLS — Every morning for the next year will begin the same way for Albert DeGrasse.
He’ll wake up in his camper van somewhere in America, drive to a different golf course and tee off for another 18 holes.
By the time he finishes on July 3, 2027, the New York City middle school social studies teacher hopes to have played 365 consecutive rounds on 365 different golf courses in all 50 states.
But for DeGrasse, golf is simply the invitation.
The real mission is to experience the country he has spent years teaching about.
“As a history teacher, I wanted to gain experiential knowledge of the country,” DeGrasse said. “I wanted to use golf as a means to connect with people and to enrich my understanding and awareness of U.S. history.”
His yearlong journey, “Now Driving: The U.S.A.,” began on July 4, America’s 250th birthday, combining his passions for golf and learning, Along the way, he’ll visit battlefields, museums, Native American landmarks, military sites and communities across the country while documenting the experience through videos and social media.
By the end of July, that journey brought him to South Dakota, where he played Bakker Crossing Golf Course in Sioux Falls before continuing west.
The stop was another chapter in what he calls a year of “field trips.”
“I’ve always believed I’m in a room full of people I can learn from,” DeGrasse said.
The quote carries extra meaning because his seventh-grade students wrote it on a golf ball before he left New York. It now rides on the dashboard of his van, reminding him why he set out in the first place.
Albert DeGrasse’s van displays the name of his “Now Driving the USA” journey and a QR code directing followers to updates from his yearlong trip across the country.
Jennifer Leither / Mitchell Republic
After more than a decade teaching social studies and humanities, DeGrasse realized something was missing from his own education.
He had spent years teaching American history without seeing much of the country firsthand.
“I can speak of California not just from what I’ve read and what I’ve heard,” he said. “I can speak from what I’ve seen with my own eyes and heard with my own ears.”
The nation’s 250th anniversary became the perfect opportunity to change that.
Rather than relying solely on textbooks, DeGrasse wanted to stand where history happened and hear directly from the people who live there.
His itinerary includes Valley Forge, Yorktown, Little Rock Central High School, Pearl Harbor and the Cherokee Nation. Some destinations connect to his family history — his great-great-great-great-great-grandfather was a French admiral who helped the Americans during the Revolutionary War — while others simply help him better understand America’s past and present.
He also plans to visit dinosaur fossil sites and rocket launch facilities, believing America’s story extends beyond its founding documents.
Golf provides the structure for the journey.
The idea began after DeGrasse read about endurance golf records in Golf Digest. He wasn’t interested in breaking one, but the article sparked another thought.
Living in New York City meant he rarely played. Some years, he joked, he logged more rounds in a week-long vacation than the rest of the year combined.
What if golf could become the vehicle for exploring America?
His wife wasn’t immediately convinced.
When he proposed spending a year driving across the country playing golf, DeGrasse remembers hearing the word “foolish” more than once.
After many conversations, and his wife’s new job in San Francisco, the timing made sense. DeGrasse was finishing his 14th year at his school and felt he needed a professional reset.
“I’m too young to retire from teaching,” he said. “But I need to take a year off so that I can continue.”
His home for the next year is a camper van with a bed, shower and just enough room for essentials.
Adjusting to life on the road proved harder than he expected.
He spent days organizing the van and learning which unfamiliar noises actually required attention.
“I never thought that I would say this,” DeGrasse said, “but the easiest part of this trip is when I put a tee in the ground and play golf.”
His route changes with weather and scheduling, but one thing rarely changes.
Most of his rounds are played at public or municipal golf courses.
“That’s where people play,” he said.
He isn’t chasing famous clubs. He’s chasing conversations.
Those conversations have already changed how he views America.
He’s met grandparents who spend their days providing child care so their adult children can work, opening his eyes to what he calls a hidden part of the nation’s economy. Driving across the Midwest gave him a new appreciation for the scale of American agriculture, from endless cornfields to sprawling sunflower fields. He’s also encountered communities built around generations of hard work and family-owned businesses.
Those stories, he believes, reveal as much about America as monuments and museums.
“No one’s a hypocrite in their profession,” he said of meeting people on the golf course. “When out there on the golf course, I’m being my most honest.”
Albert deGrasse stands outside the clubhouse at Bakker Crossing Golf Course in Sioux Falls on Friday, July 31, 2026, during his 365-course journey across all 50 states.
Jennifer Leither / Mitchell Republic
He’s also been struck by the generosity of strangers. Along the way, strangers have waived greens fees and welcomed him into communities he’d never visited before.
For DeGrasse, those encounters are helping answer a question he’s carried with him since planning the trip.
As a history teacher, DeGrasse has become fascinated by a line from “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
Most people remember the final question asking whether the flag still waves over the land of the free and the home of the brave.
He wants to answer the questions before that.
“How free are we?” he asks. “And how brave are we?”
He doesn’t expect one answer.
Instead, he hopes to collect hundreds of them — one golf course, one historic site and one conversation at a time.
When he returns to teaching, DeGrasse hopes his students won’t just learn about places from textbooks. They’ll hear about the people he met and the lessons he learned crossing America one fairway at a time.
For a teacher who believes every conversation offers an opportunity to learn, that may become the most meaningful lesson of all.