A Road Trip To Remember

Your first road trip is always special. You only have preconceived notions about the places you’re going to visit, and you don’t know what to expect. Now five years and many more road-trips later, I find myself struck with nostalgia and writing a blog about my first road trip in the United States.

Let me give you a little back-story before I jump into it. My first month in the United States as a student, with little savings, no car and a burning desire to explore, I started looking around for groups I could travel with. Soon, I crossed paths with a guy named Kyle Walter who went to church nearby and enjoyed taking international students on hikes. I tagged along with him on a hike and since then he had become my inspiration to travel and adventure. That summer, I made my bucket list and casually showed it to him. I never thought someone would take it so seriously. Kyle noticed that I wanted to explore all the states in the United States and promised me he would help me check off as many states as possible. He had an amazing plan starting to form in his mind.

One day Kyle showed up at my house and said he had this amazing plan laid out for my spring break. He offered to take me snowboarding out west and also explore 10 states in 10 days. I was stoked at the opportunity, but realized that I was a broke student and couldn’t afford an expensive trip like this, and I backed out. Kyle was determined to help me check things off my bucket list. He offered to pay for my trip and said I could pay him back slowly in 10-15 years once I started earning. Balancing between opportunity, friendship, and Kyle’s trust in me, I was on board for my first road trip in the United States.

I walked out of my exam hall after giving my last exam, ready for spring break. Kyle was eagerly waiting outside the exam hall, with a car full of luggage ready to head to the airport. We flew into Denver (Colorado), rented a car and started driving east. But we had no plan. I am someone who plans my trips down to the hour, and Kyle is the exact opposite. On this trip I realized, sometimes not knowing what to expect adds so much more thrill to the whole experience. But I had done my research. We made four rules on our trip to make it more exciting-
1. Whoever drives, does not use the phone. (Safety – check)
2. Whatever happens, we do not use the GPS. (Getting lost – check)
3. Wherever we go, we would not take the big boring freeways.
4. We would spend a day exploring and doing an activity in each state.

Over the next 10 days, the book of maps became my best friend. Kyle loved driving while I enjoyed the shotgun seat and shooting photos with my little point-and-shoot camera. Each morning, we woke up at 5am, discussed our route for the day and continued our journey. My job was to read the maps, plan our day, look for possible hiking/snowboarding opportunities, and calculate if our route was even possible by dividing the miles by the average speed limit. Kyle jokingly named me “The Mapamathecian” and going old school made our trip so much more interesting.

Unplanned incidents, little goof-ups and deep conversations are the moments we end up cherishing. You must be flexible to allow for the spontaneous to happen and allow for some awesome unexpected experiences to take shape. We had our share of stories as well. As ignorant as I was, I did the silliest things on our trip. Once while driving late night in the middle of the desert, a cop pulls us over. My fascination for police cars dates back to the PC games I played in high school. Having never been pulled-over in my life before, and excitedly wanting to document every experience, I unbuckled my seat belt, walked out of the car, set my camera on a tripod to get a good photo of us being pulled over. Moments later, I hear the cop yell in the microphone- “Sir, this is your first and last warning. I need you to get in the car RIGHT NOW”. Not knowing what I had done wrong, I quickly slip back in the car and wait nervously. The officer walks up to my window, looks at my clueless pale face, gives me a father-son talk, and lets me go with a warning.

In another incident, we’re driving through the middle of a desert in Arizona jamming to Taylor Swift songs, and suddenly the car indicates we have 41 miles to an empty tank. Worried of being stranded but determined to stick to our “no-GPS” rule, I quickly pull out my map and try to figure out the closest town to get gas. I spot a little town approximately 40 miles away, and we go for it. As we reached the town, we noticed that the town literally had just two houses, an old post office the size of a dump-truck and a sketchy looking gas pump. We drove our choking car into the gas station, successfully filled gas and celebrated our luck with just 1 mile to spare.

Our route took us through some of the most scenic landscapes I had ever seen in my life, and the terrain changed dramatically everyday as we drove through different states. We came across an abandoned town in Colorado with trees creeping through houses and cars; hiked the mysterious Badlands in South Dakota; did snow boarding in Wyoming/Colorado/Montana; explored a 113,000 acre ranch with 5000 bison on it in Montana; spent our day chilling in a natural hot spring in the middle of winter healing from our snowboarding bruises in Yellowstone NP (Wyoming); explored the never ending golden wheat fields in Kansas; played on hay bales on the rolling hills in Nebraska; hiked the pine cliffs in North Dakota, explored Arches NP and rode bikes on one of the most dangerous biking trails in the United States located in Moab (Utah); witnessed the grandness of The Grand Canyon in Arizona; and we lay in the middle of a deserted road and did star-gazing in New Mexico.

After an amazing 10 days of exploring 10 states and tiring ourselves to the max, we completed our loop in Denver (Colorado), and flew back to our hometown. Kyle directly dropped me to my lecture hall, and I rolled in with my luggage just in time for my first lecture after spring break. After all, the journey is always the real destination.

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