Austin to Boston

Probably the coolest thing I did this summer was go on a roadtrip across the US (well, part of it) from Austin to Boston. According to Google, that's just a little above a 30 hour ride. What. The longest I had ever been in a car was about 6/7ish hours, so 30 seemed like a death wish. I have always dreamed about driving across state lines while taking photos of their welcome signs, but when I found out this dream would finally become a reality, I worried that I wouldn't be able to handle it. What does one do sitting down for 30 hours?? And is dying of boredom an actual thing? (I looked into it. It's not.)


Thankfully, the ride wasn't bad. At all, actually. We entertained ourselves with music, concentration games like naming a movie for every letter of the alphabet (I totally dominated by the way), and a big book of mad libs (which really proved just how immature we are, haha). Arkansas was a somewhat dull state to drive through, not much to see. Tennessee was pretty, lots of greenery. And I got to see the Mississippi River for the first time too! We stopped for the night in Nashville and got to visit the Grand Ole Opry. I'm not a big country music fan, but it was kind of cool to see this iconic building I've heard so much about.

The Virginia state line wasn't too far away from Nashville, so we arrived within a couple hours on the second day of our trip (with help from a Starbucks pick-me-up of course). Virginia was a gorgeous state. It was also our last chance to eat Chick-Fil-A before it basically became non-existent in the northern states. We had to drive a little off course, but it was worth it. As my grandma always says, "good chicken sandwiches are always worth it." Okay, she never said that, but that doesn't make it any less true.

On the second night, we stopped in some random town in Pennsylvania. I wish we could have gone to Philadelphia, but I guess that will have to wait until another trip. We passed by the West Virginia and Maryland welcome signs as well, but I didn't want to make this post into too big of a photo dump. I'm already starting to feel like an elderly person forcing their grandkids to watch a slideshow of their bad vacation photos to the Grand Canyon.

New Jersey was a quick state to drive through, and from it I got to see New York City from a distance! There's a certain rush of excitement I get when I see that skyline. I've only been to NYC once when I was 14-years-old, but I still remember everything from that trip. I mean, those of us who have been know that NYC isn't just a city you can easily forget. We eventually got to drive through New York for what seemed like a total of 5 seconds. But what a glorious 5 seconds it was.

On the third day, we finally made it to Massachusetts! What's weird is that I was so excited to finally have arrived at our destination, but at the same time I was sad that my roadtrip was coming to an end. It was a new experience, and I loved the feeling of adventure and seeing sides of the country I had never known before. I already want to do another trip and visit the other states I've never seen. I wanna go right now. Seriously, let's do it. Who's down?

xx