Like most teenagers, I have always dreamed of traveling around the United States, if not traveling the whole world. I always imagined myself traveling across the country after I graduate college, but I never thought I would be lucky enough to experience my first cross-country road trip as a nineteen-year-old.
I began this summer following my freshman year planning to work my butt off and dividing my time between an internship, a part-time restaurant job, and a new position proctoring at a summer camp for six weeks. I didn't have a plan for any vacations, let alone a cross-country road trip.
I was only home from college for a week and a half when my best friend told me about the road trip from Massachusetts to Washington she would be taking with her older sister later that week. As I exclaimed my jealousy and excitement for her, she jokingly suggested that I tag along with them. At first, I scoffed at the idea, thinking of all the responsibilities I had at my two jobs.
The more I thought about it, the more I realized that this was an opportunity I could not pass up. This conversation was only four days before they were set to begin their trip, and by the next day, I had asked for the time off from work and purchased my plane ticket home.
Four days later and we set off. Here's our road trip map: Massachusetts to Niagara Falls (Buffalo, New York), Niagara Falls to Cuyahoga Valley National Park (Cuyahoga, Ohio) to Oakwood, Illinois, Illinois to the Grotto of Redemption (West Bend, Iowa), Grotto to the Badlands (Rapid City, South Dakota), the Badlands to Wind Cave National Park (Custer, South Dakota) to the eastern entrance of Yellowstone (Cody, Wyoming), a day in Yellowstone, then to our final destination in Spokane, Washington.
The farthest west I had ever been prior to this trip was Missouri and I had never been to a National Park, so the opportunity to go all the way to the Washington and visit four National Parks was amazing. I could not believe that I not only got to have these unreal experiences, but the decision to getting there was not something I would normally do.
As far as I can remember, I have always been the type of person who plans everything down to the minute. Even if it was a family vacation, I wanted to know a plan for every single day to know exactly what was happening. Even in my daily life, I did not leave much room for flexibility.
In January 2018, I made my New Year's resolution to be more spontaneous, and I thought I did a good job achieving this goal during the past six months. I never imagined that I would be spontaneous enough to go on a week long cross-country road trip that I committed to only three days before departing, but it taught me that sometimes you just need to go along for the ride and see where life takes you.
