USA Travel Diaries – Most Epic Road Trip

In reminiscent of last year same month, I am wandering my memory lanes and dreaming about re living that vacation again. If I could summarize the vacation in one liner: 1 SUV, 4 people, 6 days, 2800 miles stopping by 4 states covering 2 national parks and 2 party cities.

Hey Covid 19, you might ruin some of my dreams, but my spirits are high. I am hopeful to enjoy 2020 December holidays with same zeal albeit differently ensuring safety of myself and people around me.

It was most adventurous, ecstatic, fun road trip accompanying friends in late 20’s and early 30’s. Friends were known for long enough? Err, No. It was mix of friends and their friends. Super exciting trip where you get to meet new people from different background and age group, time to interact with different minds on various topics embracing differences. So, did we plan for long and to enough detail before commencing the trip? Ah, a bit yes and a bit no. Some details were chalked out like rental car and places to stay but we kept part of trip flexible to go with flow and decide as we go along. That made it even more exciting as we got some surprise elements, modified plans on fly and kept on relishing each moment as we lived.

So the trip started on note of little mismanagement where one of the friend coming from top of Michigan overslept and missed his bus to reach start point of our trip. But, we run our trip in super agile modeJ Modify as per new condition! He was picked from his midway (extra 400 miles to and fro drive though). Never the less we began our trip somewhat in afternoon and I took a challenge to drive single handedly till first stop over. I never drove more than 3-4 hours alone before. And this was 9 hours’ drive. Yeah, completed successfully with sense of achievement.

And, here we reached first stop at Music City- Nashville, Tennessee. Super tired! though we reached by late night, everyone was in mood to check out the city. So here comes the picture from that night relishing some live music, shaking a leg or two.

Nashville is known for its country music; how could we skip the beats! Everyone enjoyed the night, and went to bed early morning. Again ruining next day early morning plan to reach Mammoth caves. By the time we checked in to national park, it was 3 PM. Still we could catch up with last guided tour to the deep caves.

Its December, we were running away from Michigan’s cold weather. Thankfully, as we proceeded down south, weather was at our mercy.

Ah, another interesting, mind boggling, traumatic incident was awaiting before we checked in at NOLA (New Orleans), Louisiana. Do you want to know? Hold on your breath, I am here to spill all the beans…

So we checked in at hotel, took our luggage out. Two of us went to park the car, another two entered room to freshen up. Here, one got caught up in bathroom with some broken lock. There, both of them could not find keys to lock the car. Its push button engine start, and they were able to restart the engine but unable to lock the car. Key got to be somewhere in the car! Here, I called reception to get some help which took lot of time as the mechanic misunderstood and went to top floor thinking the guy is stuck in swimming pool changing room. One hour passed by, I was entertaining and passing some snacks from the little opening of the door side. Finally, mechanic came.  First question was – how old is the kid inside, can he assemble the knob himself if I pass it underneath. Haha, the guy inside is mechanical engineer, masters in his job. Finally, he could assemble the door knob and come outside like genie by rubbing the knob.

Meanwhile, other two friends were jumping with pressure to pee and still unable to find the keys even after searching every nook and corner inside. They could not leave the car unlocked in public parking.

Amidst all this mess, our brains were searching for all alternatives so that we could come out of this mess as quickly as possible to enjoy remaining night. It was Christmas eve; rentals were closed early. We considered going to airport car rental and get another car. Other two went to room to relieve themselves, and we took the command of the situation. Evaluating all the options, and giving a final search in and around car – Suddenly, I exclaimed.  Hey, here is the monster we were searching all the while hanging on the windshield wiper;) I wonder how is the push button concept design, isn’t the key supposed to be inside to make the engine run? Whatever, we were lucky enough that keys did not fall from wiper on highway (almost 150 miles stretch).

Then came Christmas day, it was holiday and unlike India, almost every restaurant was closed. Hungry us, could only find IHOP to shut up the rodents growling, squeaking inside our tummies.

Overall NOLA was enjoyable, we had not planned what would we do in return journey. So sitting in that restaurant, while waiting for our food, we finalized Smokey’s Mountain as our next stop. Booked a hotel in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. We reached midnight. Oh, how amazing is this town! Fully decorated with light and cute little structures all over welcoming us. This town surprised us totally.  Sometimes random plans bring more surprises when you expect none.  Still in awe with epic Road trip of 2019-year end! I wish for more in years to come…