Our road trip across the USA was one of the most exhilarating yet diverse set of travel experiences I’ve had! It helps that each state has it’s own unique character and selling point but spending weeks on the road added a variability to the mix that you would struggle to get any other way.
For the uninitiated, we drove from Miami (via many diversions) to LA. And yes, it was everything fantastic that you’d expect and so much more! It’s an experience I would heartily recommend you do as soon as you get the chance to – if you haven’t already. Here however are a few random experiences I wasn’t expecting on the road trip but are inextricably wedged into my memory of the trip…
1.) Watching someone playing with a (real) live alligator! (It was the first day I’d seen one too but I just thought they were left to do their thing in the wild)
2.) Getting to hold one. It felt so weird… (How manic does Yaya look in this photo? Haha!)
3.) Bumping into someone off the telly in California. (Gossip Girl fans know who this is….)
4.) Waiting impatiently for Islands of Adventures in Universal Studios, Orlando to open! We were quite literally the first people in the park. We also go to go explore the park an hour before it opened! Kids in a candy store much?
5.) Skipping hand-in-hand across Monument Valley… If our road trip could have a cover photo, it would be this one.
6.) Unpacking and re-packing in the dessert… (don’t ask why)
7.) Running from a hurricane. A huge hurricane was threatening to hit the southern states of the USA at the same time we were meant to be visiting said states.I wanna act calm but it was all over the news and everyone was panicking and driving out of the states so we kinda realised this was gonna be a huge one. I say ‘running’ though but we basically just carried on with our plans as usual and hoped that it wouldn’t hit. Thankfully, it tailed off and turned into very heavy rain – which we ended up avoiding anyway! 🙂
8.) Stopping for a drink in Moe’s Tavern!
9.) Unexpectedly gate-crashing this couple’s wedding.
10.) Driving for over 8 hours non-stop across Florida! Thankfully this was a one-off but boy, was it a long drive!
Other random experiences that went un-photographed:
11.) Getting a tad lost and ending up in Chattahoochee at which point we stop for gas and when we go in to pay, the attendant in a strong Southern accent loudly proclaims with a huge smile “Why, what are y’all doing in Chattahoochee? Nothing ever happens in Chattahoochee!”
12.) Going tubing down perhaps the most pristine river in Florida and swimming with wild Manatees!
13.) Searching for Key Lime pie in Florida Keys and eventually finding an amazing one – in Birmingham, Alabama (still counts, right?)
14.) Experiencing an almost 30C temperature change within a few hours! Talk about extreme weather.
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