7 Days, 7 States, 1800 miles - A Road Trip in the Northeastern US
- Skanda Bharadwaj
- Sep 7, 2019
- 10 min read
Updated: Nov 23, 2019
I never missed a travel plan with my friends ever since my undergrad years. I always made sure that I was a part of the trip despite the occasional resentment of my parents. After my undergrad, it took about a year and a half to find and form a gang of travel-enthusiasts friends at Continental. Since 2017, I started taking tremendous journeys with this team. I embarked on the 1,000km formidable bike ride through the world-famous Leh-Ladak trail. I then visited the state of Gujarat to explore its beauty. In 2018, I arranged a family getaway to the Andaman Nicobar Islands for my parents to have a taste of adventurous experiences that they never had in their life before. Shortly after this, I embarked on the most adventurous trip of my life – Roopkund Trek; a week-long trek to a whopping 16,000ft in the Himalayas with some pre-trek adventures like bungee jumping and white-water rafting through the Ganges.
Things changed drastically after this trek. On the 18th of October 2018, I received an admit from Pennsylvania State University to pursue my Master’s in Computer Science. The fruit of the four-year-long journey of trials and tribulations. The saddest part was that I had to leave my family and friends and fly all the way to the US. I left India on 29th of December 2018 and started my Master’s at Penn State in the first week of January. I barely had any time to understand what was going on. I only had a week between the last date at Continental and my flight to the US. I only had a week before my classes commenced since I reached the US. And in the wink of an eye, the spring semester was over and I had also started working on my summer semester research. What I missed the most during this time was; travelling. I hadn’t travelled for almost a year and a half. Although I was busy getting accustomed to the new lifestyle, every now and then I was bugged by the fact that I hadn’t visited any place in spite of living in an exotic state like Pennsylvania. The fall semester was just around the corner. I knew that if I missed an opportunity to travel before the fall semester commenced, I would never make it for the next one year. So Sumukha, my eight-year-old friend from PESIT and my flatmate here at State College, and I decided to go on road-trip through the northeastern states of the US. We decided to make it a week-long road trip. We contacted our friends and drew up an exciting itinerary. A 7-days 7-states 1800-miles road-trip. We just couldn’t wait to embark on this stunning trip.
We decided to start on the 15th of August and return on the 21st of August 2019. A send-off party for our dear friend Sujay was also scheduled on the 15th of August. This trip was possible only because of him. He is the one who helped us get the driver’s license. And most importantly, he was a Kannadiga. So we couldn’t miss it at any cost. So we decided to leave on the 16th of August. After having a nice pot-luck dinner at the send-off party, we came back home at around 12:45 pm. I wasn’t able to get any sleep in spite of trying every other position. According to the itinerary, our first destination was Boston via Upstate New York and Vermont, which was almost a 9 hr drive. Adding pit-stops it would take up to 12 hrs. I took a peek at my mobile and saw that it was 3:15 am. I freaked out. I had less than 4 hours to sleep. Finally, I was able to get some sleep. I woke up at 7 in the morning, prepared a sandwich for breakfast and tortillas for lunch. We had borrowed some chole masala from previous night’s potluck. We had asked the enterprise for an 8 am pick up from our home. The car arrived at around 8:15 am. It was a Nissan Altima SR 2020. The driver took us to the Enterprise at the Blue Course Drive, completed all the formalities and we drove it back home. We had packed everything the previous night. We had our breakfast. We loaded everything into the car and we were ready to hit the road by 11 am.
Our happiness knew no bounds. We were on our first trip in the US. It was the first time we ever rented a car and drove by ourselves in the US. The first destination was Boston. A really long drive for a day. Sumukha took the first drive. We drove for the next two hours and, guess what? We got bored !!! Two hours of straight wide roads through the interstate highway. We stopped for a while to stretch ourselves. It was my turn now. Nothing changed for the next hour. But, what came next was an unexpected surprise. We entered Upstate New York. The entire landscape changed! We took a deviation from the highway and entered the roads of the neighbourhood. The landscape was resplendent. It was picturesque. The next hour just passed in no time. We then stopped for lunch and resumed our travel. It was Sumukha’s turn and it started raining cats and dogs. There was almost no visibility. Several cars had stopped on the side. But, we continued because it was just too beautiful. We then entered Vermont, which is yet another splendid state to drive through. I drove through the Green Mountain National Forest. Words run short to describe the beauty of nature. We stopped here and there to savour the striking beauty of nature. By dusk, we had entered Massachusetts. By 10:30 pm we reached Sushma’s house who extended us a very warm and loving welcome. We had our dinner with Sushma and her husband Adithya. We spent the entire conversation speaking about her mom’s delicious food that we used to have back during our Engineering days.
Next day was reserved to roam around Boston. We asked another friend of our's from PESIT, Shashank TR, a resident at Boston, to join us. He was more than happy to show us around. This is one of the reasons we chose this itinerary. We met 7 of our old friends on this trip. Shashank arrived at Sushma’s house and took us around Boston. We visited Boston Common, Trinity Church, Boston Public library, The New England Holocaust Memorial and the popular Quincy’s market. TR then drove back to his house and we made our way to the Museum of Science for the world-famous Boston Duck Tour. We were lucky to have Chef Wolfgang Duck as our tour guide. We drove through the streets of Boston and through the Charles River. I did not hesitate to put my hand up when the Chef asked, “Who wanted to drive the duck?”. After a long day at Boston, we came back to Sushma’s house for dinner and then went all the way to TR’s house again to spend the night. What happened there is a perfect example to back the statement – “The world is small”. His flatmate is my colleague from Continental. Abhishek Suttar and I joined Continental together. He worked there for about 2 years and came to the US for his Master's. Out-of-the-blue, I learn that he is staying at TR’s house. Small World indeed.
Next day was a bit more adventurous. We had planned to visit Mt. Washington of the White Mountain National Forest in New Hampshire. We drove for 3 hours through the rustic beauty of New Hampshire to reach the base of Mt. Washington. Having stayed in Boston for 1 year, TR knew nook and corner of the place. We started the ascent of Mt. Washington slowly. It is an 8-mile ascent that takes about 45-50 min to reach the top. Mt. Washington is known for its notorious weather behaviour. The sky was clear up until we drove past the 4-mile milestone. Thereinafter, the visibility reduced drastically as the space around us got completely covered with fog. It wasn’t a hard drive though. We easily made it to the top of the mountain. The view from up there was absolutely stunning. It was an absolute treat for the eyes. We saw a great part of White Mountain Nation Forrest from up there, which spans an area of 750,852 acres. Lush green thick forest with the Presidential Mountain Range. We visited the Tip-Top House, the Museum and came outside to only find that the visibility was absolute zero. We literally could not see anything past 20 feet. Apparently, Mt. Washington has recorded a wind speed of 231 miles/hour in the great storm of April 1934, which is notoriously high. Thankfully Mother Nature was very kind, pleasant and composed on the day of our visit. After spending a couple of hours, we drove back to the base stopping every now and then to cool down the breaks. On the way back, we visited the magnificent Omni Mount Washington Resort. Our plan to visit the Franconia Notch Park did not work out. We were too late to pay a visit there. Instead, we just stopped at the Crawford Notch State Park and took a small 20-minute hike in the forest. We then drove back to Boston via Franconia Notch Park, which I guess was the best route of the entire trip. It was just gorgeous. We then stopped at Ritu’s Spice Utsav for dinner and came back to TR’s house to rest for the day.
Next day was a lot different. We had planned to visit Martha’s Vineyard Island. Since it was Monday, TR could not join us. Sumukha and I started our journey towards Cape Cod. We had to take a 40-minute ferry ride from Cape Cod to Martha’s Vineyard. The interesting part was that we had no plan about what to do in Martha’s Vineyard. We reached Cape Cod at around 11:30 in the morning and we made a beeline to Steamship Authority’s Woods Hole terminal. We took a ferry to Vineyard Haven. To be frank, the ferry ride was kinda boring. Once we reached Vineyard Haven, we decided to rent bikes to roam around the island. I guess this was a stroke of brilliance. We found Martha’s Bike Rentals shop close to the ferry terminal and borrowed a couple of short-range E-bikes that cost $45 each for 3 hrs. We rode all the way to Edgar town to visit the lighthouse. Edgar town is a beautiful town that looks much like European towns (that we often see in pictures). Small roads with shops on either side of the roads decorated with colourful flowers, a lot of tourists walking their bikes along the sidewalks. It was a visual treat. But, the lighthouse was rather disappointing. It was a small 2 storied cylindrical building! We were disappointed. We then rode all the way to Oaks Bluff and visited the Ginger Bread Houses. This was a different world altogether. It was as if we entered into a fantasy toy land with colourfully decorated houses. It was a pensioners’ paradise. By then, it was time to get back return the bikes and catch our ferry back to Woods Hole. We reached Woods Hole around 7 pm and drove back TR’s house. A Sumptuous South Indian dinner was awaiting our arrival. Having had our dinner, we rested for the day.
Our time at Boston was up and we had to leave Boston for the next part of the trip. Our next stop was at our dear old friend Ramya's house. She was as excited as we were to meet up after a really long time. To add to our excitement, even Ramya’s parents were in town. They were on a 2-month visit to the US to spend time with their daughter. It was just two and half hour drive to Stamford, Connecticut from Boston. But we decided to drive via Newport, Rhode Island just to visit the cliff walk. When we reached the cliff walk, we had a very hard time finding a place to park our car. We went in search of a parking place and accidentally happened to pass by a magnificent mansion. Tourists made their way into the huge black gates of the mansion. Hundreds of cars were parked in the mansion’s parking lot. So, we decided to pay a visit to this mansion. Yes! It was the Breakers! It was just magnificent. Owned by the Vanderbilt’s, the mansion had every facility that we could possibly think of! Let alone the facilities, the luxury and the decoration extravaganza was dumbfounding. It’s a must-visit place if you’re in Rhode Island. It almost took an hour and a half to just roam around the mansion. After having seen the mansion, we drove all the way to Stamford. After almost one and a half years, we got to see Ramya and her family. They extended us a very warm welcome and were ready to serve us with delicious lunch. Having had our lunch (at around 5:30 pm, ‘coz, we didn’t want to miss it !!), we took a train to Manhattan, New York. Anuj, my college friend, practising medicine at Brooklyn, came to meet us at the Grand Central. We visited the Rockefeller Center and went all the way up to 70th floor (On Top of the Rock) to see the New York City. It was just lights, lights and lights! Skyscrapers all around us kissing the skies, thousands and thousands of vehicles moving around like small toys, it was as if you were standing in front of a toy city built out of lego. We then visited the glamorous Time Square and headed back to Anuj’s house to rest for the day.
Next day was all about roaming around New York. We went to the Brooklyn bridge park and then to the 9/11 memorial hall through the Brooklyn bridge. We spent almost 3 to 3.5 hrs at the memorial. It was so disheartening to learn about the darkest day in the history of America. We then got to meet Namita, my engineering classmate and a neighbour back in Bangalore. We spent about an hour cherishing old memories. We then came back to Stamford to Ramya’s house. We enjoyed the dinner and the group video call with all our friends and rested for the day.
It was finally time to finish the trip and get back to State College. We roamed around Stamford visiting Indian restaurants till noon and drove all the way to State College. It was one heck of a trip. In fact, it was too much to digest. It was very diverse. We drove, we hiked, we visited mountains, forests, an island and the capital city of the world! We had covered 1800 miles and 7 states in 7 days meeting good old friends after a really long time. Deciding to go on this trip was an absolute stroke of brilliance. We were now rejuvenated to begin our Fall semester.
Dream. Travel. Explore.
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