The one good thing about nerves is that every second seems to stretch on for forever. Now that it's week two of my road trip and my nerves are gone, another day seems to disappear every time I blink! But as my adventure draws to an end, another begins. By the time this article is published, I will be settling into my new home at Washington and Lee University as a freshman in the Class of 2020! Hopefully there will be fewer brushes with death...
Day 8
I have decided that if I am ever insane enough to move to the desert, I want to move to Moab, Utah. The town is 10 minutes away from Arches National Park and 30 minutes away from Canyonlands National Park, and its downtown is best described as adventure-hippie-chic. Canyonlands (above) was spectacularly gorgeous! I explored a few of the shorter hikes, and I was pleased to find that I'd grown used to the southwest's stifling heat. I didn't even faint once.
After Canyonlands I explored Dead Horse Point State Park. (Side note: Why are so many towns and parks named after horse heads or bodies or corpses? As a horse lover, I'm saddened. As a human being, I'm concerned.) The park was nothing compared to Canyonlands, but I did discover some caves that I quickly entered and claimed for myself. I could see both the dry, dusty canyon and the snow-tipped Colorado Rockies simultaneously, a sight that took my breath away.
Day 9
Day 9 marked the day that my trip radically changed. I went from photographing cacti to photographing tall oaks and redwoods, and from fighting off heat stroke to fighting off persistent murderous insects. My first stop was Rifle Falls State Park (above), nestled in between the trees of northern Colorado. The spray from the waterfalls made me laugh out loud (people nearby shot me concerned looks). And I thought I had been water deprived in California!
Spurred on by the sight of water, I drove forward. I stopped in the adorable town of Glenwood Springs on the way and peered into a few souvenir shops, where approximately 98 percent of the trinkets had to do with weed. After opting for a sugar high and buying ice cream, I went to Hanging Lake, a place so beautiful it looked straight out of a fantasy movie. I half expected Anne Hathaway from "Ella Enchanted" to peer around one of the boulders, searching for Prince Charming.
Day 10
I woke up the morning of Day 10 in the only Bed & Breakfast of my trip, though "Bed & Breakfast" in central Colorado means a tiny hotel with multiple moose heads and what you hope are fake bear pelts on the walls. I headed out early because the sun was streaming through my window and my "Oriental" themed room did not have curtains. As I drove out of town, through, I spotted a group of horses with four newborn foals, and because the street was so empty I simply put my car in park in the middle of the road and took pictures for a good five minutes while begging the startled horses to please stop running away.
The highlight of my drive through Colorado was definitely the Paint Mines (above) in Calhan. The colors in the rock were fantastic! I wrapped up the day with a few more hours of driving, in the end through Kansas. I made one stop posing next to a huge recreation of a Van Gogh painting on an easel because a large easel is about the only interesting thing in Kansas.
Day 11
In the spirit of total honesty, this is the only picture I have from Day 11. Actually, that is a lie. I have no pictures from Day 11; this is a picture from the night of Day 10 because I thought the sunset at my hotel was pretty (but really, where aren't sunsets pretty??). So I guess what I am trying to say is that Kansas is boring. Don't visit.
Day 12
Though the weather got worse (humidity, ew) my trip got undoubtably better on Day 12. I started off the day seeing the World's Largest Fork in St. Louis, Missouri. Though that sounds like another "large easel" fiasco, the fork was actually pretty cool, though it ended up making me hungry. On my way to Blue Spring (above), I saw a sign advertising the Laura Ingels Wilder museum, and I swung by and geeked over that for a couple of hours.
When I reached Blue Spring (a little-known landmark so beautiful the National Parks Service actually gushes about it on their website), I was dismayed to find a single car in the parking area. As a "small blonde girl," I am aware that driving alone across the country is not the safest of options to get to college, so I peered in the truck. I found ten empty beer cans in the bed of the truck, which I conceded was probably not the best of signs. Deciding that if I went ahead and these men didn't kill me my mother definitely would, I sat in my car and read my book for a few minutes until two grungy-looking men emerged from the forest, grunted a hello, and left. I dashed out of my car and down the path, and I found the most spectacularly gorgeous place I have ever seen. Blue Spring looks as though someone ordered every aqua highlighter in existence and emptied every ounce of the ink into the water.
Day 13
Day 13 was the most civilization-packed day of my whole trip. After leaving the hotel when a creepy middle-aged man asked if he could sit with me (I told him my family was coming, stuffed an entire biscuit in my mouth, and dashed out the door), I drove to Bald Knob Cross of Peace, which is basically a huge metallic cross. I was hoping to get some cool sunrise pictures, but the fog was so dense that I couldn't even see the cross from 50 feet away! So I drove on, but not without taking a picture in front of Superman in his "hometown" of Metropolis, Illinois because why not? After driving through western Kentucky, I finally entered Nashville, Tennessee for the first time. For a huge country music fan like myself, it felt like coming home. I nearly jumped out of my skin when I got to see the dress Carrie Underwood wore when she won American Idol. After walking through ten different boot stores knowing that even the cheapest pairs were about $300 out of my price range, I left Nashville reluctantly, blasting country radio in my car as I drove off.
Day 14
Day 14 proved that Tennessee is good for more than just music. My first stop was Rock Island State Park. I hiked down to the water carefully in my Nike running shoes, but gave up when I saw the gorgeous waterfalls, opting to stand directly underneath them and completely drench myself instead. I put on an actual swimsuit to check out the park's large swimming area. I was having a great time until a pesky bug kept following me, and I ended up thrashing and splashing in the middle of the lake. When the bug at last left and I looked up, 10 or 15 hawks had congregated and were soaring in circles right above me. Now, I know hawks don't eat people, but that doesn't make the fact that they thought I was lunch any more comforting, so I stayed very still until they dispersed.
After Rock Island State Park I drove to Tennessee's beloved Fall Creek Falls (clever name, I know) and hiked up and down for a few solid hours before finding the waterfall, no thanks to the park's terrible map. The hiking was worth it, though, because the towering waterfall (above) was positively gorgeous.
See more pictures on Instagram on my travel account, @roadtripgeek
