During this Winter break, my dad and I decided to do something special. With minimal planning, we set off on a journey across the country. In this article, I hope to relay to you some of the sights and sounds we saw along the way and hopefully inspire you to go on a journey of your own!
Part 1: California
The day of departure was so uneventful compared to what would come later that my brain seems to have forgotten it almost completely. What I do remember is that we left early in the day and did not spend much time preparing. My dad rented a large SUV sometime prior to the trip and after we took showers and got dressed, we were ready to go. The SUV was packed with a camping stove, two backpacks, a suitcase mainly for clothes, masks, hand sanitizer, and two paper grocery bags, and a basket filled with snacks for the road.
Part 2: Arizona
On the first day of the trip, we arrived in Arizona. Along the way, we stopped at a couple gas stations and rest areas. It was in one of these rest areas where I tried a packet of freeze-dried rice and beef for the first time. For a connoisseur of preserved ready-to-eat meals, I enjoyed it. We saw monolithic wind turbines and some solar fields. As soon as we crossed the state border, we saw cacti growing everywhere. It was as if the cacti had all collectively decided they would grow in Arizona.
As the sun was setting, we arrived in the first major city in our journey, Phoenix. Phoenix was big and new. Everywhere you looked there would be some kind of construction project underway. The state itself would remind you that it was founded in 1912 with its many signs placed in 2012 to commemorate the centennial of its statehood. Everything was incredibly clean and tidy. The gardens in the city hosted local desert vegetation such as cacti and shrubs while not having as many succulents as you see in Southern California. The air was pleasantly dry and warm and the city was eerily quiet, few people or cars in sight. That is, until one would roar by you with startling speed and ear-piercing screech. This happened periodically every couple of minutes if you were standing in the right spot.
After driving by the local University and doing a little sightseeing in the car, we stopped in Tempe, a university town. We booked the nearest hotel and, before going to bed, went on a walk around the artificial lake which I later learned was created by damming off and re-routing part of the nearby Salt River. It was quite a nice area. There were many teenagers on scooters and a heavy concrete bridge across the pitch-black lake that reflected the lights of nearby commercial buildings and street lights.
In the morning I used the hotel room coffee maker to make myself a cup of coffee. Normally I’m not exactly a coffee drinker but some time after or during that event I decided that I would make myself a cup of coffee in every single hotel I stayed at during the trip, to see how they compare, or just for fun. I mean who can resist listening to the satisfying sounds of the machine as the water bubbles inside and releases a stream of hot coffee, slowly filling up the paper cup under it, filling the room with that sweet, chocolatey smell?
Something interesting that I found about Tempe was the geography. When you were there you could tell you were in the desert because of the iconic Arizona rocks in and around the city. One of these large rocks was right across from the concrete hotel parking lot. Before leaving Tempe, we decided to have breakfast for the day in a nearby cafe. I had a breakfast burrito, (which was very good) and suggested to my dad that we scale the boulder, which was right across the street from the cafe. He was hesitant, as he had just eaten and going hiking on a full stomach isn't exactly the smartest idea, but agreed eventually. There were many hikers, mostly university students. We scaled the mountain and gazed over the town below for a while. It was a sunny day with no clouds in sight. Every once in a while a plane would fly overhead from the local airport.
After scaling the mountain, we left Tempe and drove East for Texas. Somewhere along the way, we came across a particularly curious oddity. The Thing? What is it? See The Thing? Come see The Thing! Dozens of these billboards dotted the barren and uninspiring desert landscape about 60 miles from the New Mexico border. I, naturally, bugged my dad about it and we took an exit to see The Thing. It was a modestly sized long single-story rectangular building with a Shell gas station in the front and a Dairy Queen building attached on the right. It opened up to a gift shop that took up about half the building, stocked with all sorts of alien-themed merchandise and Mexican imports. After taking a look at everything for a short while, we bought tickets at the ticket booth on the left end of the building for five dollars each and entered the museum. Once we explored the museum, we bought a couple of souvenirs and went to the Dairy Queen where I would have my first ever famous Dairy Queen gravity-defying legally-not-ice-cream-due-to-FDA-qualifications-regarding milk fat-content. I picked the pecan flavor and enjoyed it a lot. As for the contents of the museum and The Thing itself, it would be a lot more fun if I left it up to you to find out for yourself.
Part 3: Texas
On the second day, we arrived in El Paso. My dad was very surprised when we were greeted with beautiful tall Art Deco skyscrapers and a cityscape similar to that of New York because he had never heard of El Paso and thought it would be some sort of obscure border town in the middle of nowhere, Texas. We stayed at a fancy hotel built in the 1930s.
Something that I enjoyed a lot about El Paso was the culture. It was interesting to see all the Mexican influence and how it shaped the city. After reading a little of the city’s history, I found out that it was a major trading hub and served as a sort of gateway to Mexico. There were many musical and performing arts theatres that were closed because of the pandemic, but I am sure when they were open the city was a hub for arts and culture. The people were friendly and there was evidently a lot more activity than in Tempe. Overall a very great city, I hope to visit it again after this pandemic is over and recommend you do too!
After spending the night in El Paso, we headed for San Antonio. The ride was very long because, as I am sure you all know, Texas is big. Something that was interesting during the ride to San Antonio was the change in climate and geography. A dry, sunny, desert landscape gradually started turning into a wet, green, and cloudy one. If you pull up satellite view on Google Earth, you can see just how this change happens. This was my first ever taste of the South’s humid climate.
On the outskirts of Houston, I had a very good Texan burger while my dad had a plant based version.
When we arrived in San Antonio the sun had already set and we were looking for a hotel to spend the night in. I, rather foolishly, suggested to my dad that we stay at the historic hotel down the street. After a nearly sleepless night of listening to guests loudly talking on the balcony through the thin walls, I was taught a valuable lesson about choosing hotels. My dad said the best part of staying at a bad hotel was that you want to leave as fast as possible, that’s exactly what we did the next morning. I did have a very good burrito, though.
Part 4: Louisiana
Louisiana was the wettest place I’ve ever been to in my entire life. In Arizona, there were dust storm warnings, here, there were flash flood warnings. Water, everywhere. The deeper we got in Louisiana, the more of it there was. Water on the ground, water from the sky, water on the road, roads that go over water. It was inescapable. Luckily, the rain subsided by the time we arrived in New Orleans.
New Orleans was the most interesting city I’ve been to in the US because it was so uncharacteristic of the country. The culture, the architecture, everything. It felt as if there was some kind of mix up, and it ended up in the wrong country. I mean, in a way that is accurate, I doubt that the countless French living there saw it coming when their entire territory was sold to the US. It also felt like a time machine. The American part of the city had colonial architecture everywhere, it felt more like you were in Disneyland or something rather than an actual genuine neighborhood where real people live. There was a huge historic cemetery where people had been getting buried for ages. The French quarter was even more strange. The stone streets were narrow and there were many, many, people walking on them. There were Jazz bands playing their giant brass instruments on the streets as they were watched by the crowds. For some odd reason, you feel at home on the streets of New Orleans, like you have been there before or even lived there for a while. For our time there, it was incredibly rainy. There could be an almost clear and sunny sky, and then, in a matter of seconds, it would start pouring out of nowhere. When we rented a bicycle to look around the many parts of the city we got completely soaked and had to buy plastic raincoats.
Compared to the racket of the French Quarter, the Mississippi was very peaceful and quiet. I took multiple walks along the shore and watched the faux steamboats for tourists and the big barges. During the day, when one of those steamboats was being boarded, a lady would start pressing buttons on the roof of the steamboat to control a sort of steam organ. A large crowd would form to watch the loud melodies coming out of the instrument.
On New Year’s day, I stayed up until 12:00 AM and watched the fireworks that covered the entire horizon through the hotel window.
Since people love reading about crazy foods, I guess this is the part where I talk about how I tried crocodile for the first time. Yes, it does taste like chicken. If eating crocodile is not morally objectionable in your particular set of beliefs, I strongly recommend trying it! Cajun and Creole cuisine in New Orleans is also very good in general!
While I have done my best to describe it here, the only way to truly understand New Orleans is to visit it yourself. It is hard to describe in words.
Originally, New Orleans was going to be the end of our journey, but we decided we were going to traverse the whole country, from coast to coast, all the way to Miami, Florida! After spending three nights in New Orleans, we packed our bags and left for Jacksonville.
Part 5: Florida
Jacksonville, Florida wasn’t exactly out of this world. I imagine in the summer it had a thriving tourism industry, but now it looked deserted. We checked out the beach for a short while and then went to bed in a hotel. We had made it to the East Coast, but we were going to end the trip with a bang. We were going to Miami.
Miami was breathtaking. The summer weather, the white sandy beaches, the laid back atmosphere, the people, the food, it felt like we flew to an exotic Latin country for vacation. I don’t know exactly what I was expecting from Miami, but I was pleasantly surprised. We went to a busy Cuban restaurant in South Beach, enjoyed some very good food, bought swimming trunks, had a quick dip in the incredibly warm ocean, changed, returned the rental SUV, and headed for the airport.
I remember standing in the airport with my huge backpack, hugging a rolled-up sleeping bag in my hands and thinking, “I’ve made it. I’ve traversed the entire country and had plenty of interesting experiences along the way. I’ve made the longest journey by car in my entire life and it passed by like it was a couple of days!” After making this journey, I can definitely say that I came out more adventurous than before and urge you to try something out like this for yourself!
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