My Travel Adventures

Today was a grey day and the first day – barring the morning that followed our exhausting night at the hiker’s lodge in Grand Teton – when I was woken up by my phone’s alarm. For the first time on this trip, it started to feel like autumn; some leaves were changing colour, and some were falling to the ground, while the temperature dipped into coat-wearing territory. At first, I found this change relieving for my arms, which the sun had been roasting every minute they spent extended towards the steering wheel. Throughout the day, however, we would come to ascribe our exceeding weariness to the dreary weather.

Today was our last day with Lekha, and we spent it by performing typical tourist tasks. Ingeniously, Kelly cooked up a plan to take the hotel’s free shuttle to the airport, from which we took the light rail downtown.

We took the day slowly, eating a leisurely breakfast before driving up Hurricane Ridge Road into Olympic National Park. The drive was quite narrow and steep, and the bright sun made every shadow all the more difficult to make out. Confused by the lack of signage, we parked the car short of the Hurricane Hill trailhead, and thus accidentally added a bit of distance to our 3.4-mile hike. It was on this stretch, however, that we spotted two garter snakes. Or rather, it was on this stretch that some members of our party screamed after almost stepping on a snake, which we have since identified as a harmless garter snake from my photos.

Our morning drive westwards from George gave us unparalleled views of Mount Rainier, which floated above the orange plains until we drew closer to the nearby mountain range. We arrived in Seattle before noon. There, we managed to meet one of my friends, who was just about to fly to the East Coast that evening. We walked in one of the parks before dropping him off in the centre and promptly picking up another friend with whom we would spend the next few days.

The crack in our windshield slowly grew as we headed west towards Washington, causing some consternation. When we stopped in Butte to take pictures of Our Lady of the Rockies (the fourth tallest statue in the US), Kelly and I switched, and while I drove, she looked up places where the windshield might be fixed.

We started the day by picnicking at Glacier View Turnout. We began our breakfast outside but found our fingers becoming a little stiff and our bottoms a little cold, so we relocated to the car and tried to not make a mess. For the rest of the morning, we made a loop around Grand Teton, following the 191 northwards, Teton Park Road southwards, and then the 191 again all the way to and through Yellowstone. While we were walking along Jenny Lake, I found a berry that looked like a blueberry and decided to try it. It did not taste like a blueberry, so I thought it better to spit it out. As I would learn the following day, what I had chewed on was actually a huckleberry, so I might as well have swallowed.

The ninth day of our trip was always going to be a long one, as it involved driving across practically the whole of Wyoming. Having retained the half day of extra time that we gained in Nebraska, we already covered part of that journey on the previous day. This meant that we traversed the winding ways of Bighorn National Forest quite early in the morning, only narrowly avoiding a sleepy deer on the side of the road.

The Badlands were the first destination for which we significantly deviated eastwards. Our first stop was unplanned: we saw a giant prairie dog statue off the side of the road and sure enough, it marked a wonderfully bizarre attraction. Despite the many signs warning tourists not to feed the prairie dogs, there seemed to be a tacit understanding between the owners of the ranch and the tourists that this sign would be disobeyed (and indeed, should be disobeyed in order to keep the prairie dogs unafraid of humans and continue generating revenue for the nearby shop). As soon as we pulled up, not only did we see a family blissfully feeding the rodents, but the prairie dogs started to approach us demanding food.

We decided that we would cherish the hour we clawed back by crossing into Mountain Time: instead of adjusting to local time, we stayed on Central Time, making the most of daylight hours by waking up at around six o’clock.

We started our day after eight, exulting in the fact that we would drive westwards with the sun shining on our backs and not in our faces. After making a stop at Starbucks to get Kelly coffee, one more stop to get gas, and yet another stop to buy ourselves a take-away lunch at Panera, our first proper recreational break was at Mushroom Rock State Park. The area is home to three large rocks that have eroded unequally to resemble giant mushrooms, as well as several other interesting geological features. We ate our take-away lunch there, with me alternately scooping and impaling my salad using a knife, as we had only received one set of cutleries.  

We started our day by returning to the Illinois side of Saint Louis to visit the Cahokia Mounds. The weather was beautiful, and we saw many joggers running around, indeed, even up and down the main mound while sweating profusely. The layout of the area reminded me a lot of the layout of typical pre-Columbian Mesoamerican city centres, with their ceremonial squares and surrounding pyramids. It seems almost indubitable to me that much cultural exchange, or an evolution from a common cultural substrate, must have happened to result in such similar city planning. At some point, I ’ll have to do some research on how much has been written about this already.

We enjoyed the day at a leisurely pace, as we had booked the Domes and Dripstones Tour at Mammoth Cave for ten o’clock. This was the earliest time at which the specific tour would take place, and I felt quite partial to it because of how many stalagmites and stalactites we would see (in fact, the tour guide said that the tour would take us past 70% of the stalagmites and stalactites in the entirety of Mammoth Cave).

Rather than me adjusting to American time, our internal clocks decided to play a number on us, and Kelly ended up adjusting to my time instead. Despite having intended to wake up at 6:30, we both woke up at around four (as I believe, to the sound of Kelly gnashing her teeth). With neither of us able to fall back asleep, we decided to get breakfast at six o’clock and start the day early. The experience turned into an adventure when I discovered a pancake machine with buttons and a conveyor belt, at the end of which the finished pancakes flopped out onto a prepared plate. We learned then and there that the future is now.

Kelly and I agreed that we would start the day very early to beat the traffic around Washington. She set her alarm to five o’clock and I, still adjusting from European time, simply woke up at half past three and thanked my body for its obstinacy.

“I hate this road trip already,” sighed Kelly behind the wheel, though I cannot remember why. I must have done one of the many things that have begun to annoy her, such as giggling over the words “Juju Chewbacca”, pensively whispering “sooo desu ne” under my breath, quibbling about the definitions of tangentially mentioned terms, or creatively mishearing things she says. It was day 1 of our long-awaited road trip from Wilmington, Delaware, to San Francisco. Kelly has just finished her second master’s degree at the Winterthur Programme in Delaware, and she is about to begin her history PhD at Stanford – and, perhaps most crucially, she needs to get her car from one coast to the other.

I spent my first day back in the US hanging out with my friend Michael, who has previously appeared on this blog here , here , and here . As he had just arrived from California, we stored his suitcase in my room while we went out to explore the city. Although I have been to New York many times (most often in connection with voting and obtaining visas), there are many places I regret never visiting. Since Michael had no preferences as to what to do and see, I got carte blanche to make up for some of these omissions. We started the day on a spiritual note, visiting Saint Patrick’s Cathedral and the Episcopal Saint Thomas Church. The former struck us with its sheer vastness and atmospheric stained-glass windows. The latter had a sprawling organ, which we heard being played as we entered. We also tried to visit the Central Synagogue, but found it closed due to the pandemic. The only exigent item on my itinerary was to buy a phone plan for my upcoming road trip, the two requirements bei...

The weather gods were kind to me on the day of my journey to New York. The horrible heat that had been plaguing England for the past few days abated, so I was able to maintain some semblance of decorum while lugging my bags to the bus stop at Headington Shops. What God giveth, however, man sometimes taketh away. The appearance of control I had possessed vanished as soon as the bus driver asked me what terminal I was going to. With a distinct air of uncertainty, I suggested terminal five, to which the driver responded, “So you’re flying with British Airways then?” I was not flying with British Airways, so lord knows why I said yes. When I was on the bus, I checked my plane tickets, and they confirmed I was indeed leaving from terminal five, but with American Airlines. Why, then, was the bus driver so sure I was flying with British Airways? I spent the rest of the bus ride fretting about increasingly unlikely scenarios of what might happen once I got to the airport. The matter resolv...

This Saturday, I took the train to London to visit my friend and fellow IR student Yang. When discussing where we might go, she suggested choosing one of two places: Greenwich or Hampstead. It was an easy choice to make. Back in March, a visiting friend introduced me to an app that has information about all the UNESCO world heritage sites and lets the user track how many sites they have been to. Since then, I have used this app to an ungodly extent, letting it dictate many of my preferences for my upcoming US road trip. Anyway, suffice it to say, Greenwich is on the UNESCO list and Hampstead is not.

Towards the end of my summer days at Oxford, I realised I had not taken any pictures or even visited any of the places I had intended to see. I was so engrossed in my thesis that every minute spent doing something else seemed like a waste. Towards the end of the third week, though, the weather became really nice, so I spent one morning and another afternoon simply sightseeing. Maddeningly, perhaps half of the colleges I tried to visit were closed either for graduation or summer school, both of which seem to last the entire season. I had thought summer would be a good time to explore them in peace, but when Oxford is not turning unholy profits on its regular student body, I suppose it must make up for the shortfall somehow.

After spending three weeks at home, I came back to the UK at just about the worst possible time. A day before my flight to Birmingham, I got a notification on my phone saying that my train to Oxford had been cancelled due to the coming heatwave. Rather unhelpfully, the Trainline app did not offer me an immediate refund but graciously offered me the option to take another train – with the next available train leaving more than three hours later. I decided, therefore, to take the bus, which seemed like the smartest option until I considered my cumbersome two pieces of luggage. Still, I did not feel like splurging on a taxi on a day when drivers were likely to hike their prices, so I just got on the plane and hoped for the best.