You know that I hate traveling right? You might also know that I love doing things I hate the most. Anyway, recently I’ve decided to do the craziest road trip on a rented car with Arina and two of my friends. The trip itself took about 2300 miles (3700 km), 5 days, 11 states (NJ, MD, VA, WV, NC, TN, KY, OH, NY, MA, CT) and tons of cold beverages (including alcoholic). Here I’ll share a few thoughts and tons of photos on this amazing trip.

All of the photos below were made by either Arina or me, feel free to use them as your wallpapers, covers, or pretend you took them, we really don’t care (if you need high-res version, reach me out). Fuck the copyright. Most of them are also scrollable.

Trip route shown above. Impressive, eh?

Blue Ridge is basically a National park (with a free entrance!) spanning across a few Eastern states. It goes along Appalachian mountains threaded by a neat two-way car road (called Blue Ridge parkway) which you can drive through while enjoying the views or parking near the trails and overlooks. There are hiking trails, climbing trails, local museums exposing the life and culture of the first settlers in this area.

Just like the Blue Ridge, Smoky Mountains is another National park across the Appalachian mountains with a few roads threading it through and lots of natural wonders and overlooks. And, yes, they really are smoky, especially in the morning.

Along with the great nature, you can also see the actual (partially conserved) houses and farms of the first settlers in this area called the Cades Cove.

I think this sight doesn’t need an introduction. Although you might think that crowds of tourists from all over the world and an overall money-making environment completely abolishes the purity and wilderness of this beast, that’s not quite true. Once you stand right below even the smallest of the fall, the rest of the world goes away, leaving you one-on-one with a primal power of this eternal creation. It’s sort of ironic and powerful, that the nature itself disallows you from capturing that emotion and spirit when you’re standing either on the boat (Maid of the Myst) or down on the stairs below the American Falls. Anyway, I would suggest you forget for a moment about trying to photograph the beast and just enjoy its power.

Few final thoughts and tips

The trip itself was quite an experience. Needless to say, I never drove that much (~1100 miles) through the roads which are that complex. While I don’t really like road trips that much, and prefer spending more time in small villages or large cities rather than in wilderness, this trip was an amazing way to inspire myself for the future trip to the Southern States with a more culturally oriented intention.

Here are a few tips I can think of, which are pretty obvious, until you realize you never thought about it.

1. If you’re renting a car, it’s always better to have more clean clothes than less;
2. preload maps along the root in apps like maps.me, it’s likely you won’t have cellular connection during most of your trip;
3. having a fridge bag with ice and cold beverages helps a lot;
4. don’t drive too fast and pass cars too much on these parkways, it’s not worth the effort and time;
5. always visit the Visitor Centers at each parkway entrance/overlook etc, they have useful maps, helpful advices and restrooms ofc;
6. you’ll get wet in Niagara Falls no matter what, so be prepared and wear clothes accordingly;
7. Rock-and-Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, OH, is the best interactive museum I’ve ever been to!
8. Boston is overrated;
9. South is underrated.

Niagara Falls has this legendary boat called Maid of the Myst which approaches the main fall from below. A trip is like $20 per person, but there is a hack. You can actually go down the elevator to the pier all the way to the guy who checks the tickets. If you say something like, “oh, we have online tickets, let me grab the phone from my bag”, he will most likely just let you go through without even checking (if he checks, just say, “oh, sry no connection”, and buy the ticket online in a minute, it’s not that hard).