This year, for the first time in college, I decided to take a Spring Break adventure. I first thought about going to a beach somewhere, but after discussing options with my friends, we decided that it would be so exciting to take a road trip. After a long decision process, we settled on visiting the Grand Canyon – only one of my friends had ever been there, and the rest of us had never even travelled that far west before. I quickly contacted my friend Natalie, who recently graduated from Penn and now is an intern at the Grand Canyon, to ask for tips and recommendations for the area. Without hesitation, she kindly invited us to stay with her while we were there. Another one of my friends, Hannah, who lives in Illinois, also offered to let us stay with her while we made our way across the country. Just as we started worrying about accommodations elsewhere, a family member kindly gifted us hotel points, so we could stay in multiple places for free! Everything fell into place so wonderfully, and we were so excited to begin our trip.
We set off from Penn Campus on March 8th, equipped with a trunk full of clothes, groceries, books, and the spreadsheet that I had made detailing every 5 hours of our journey (I know it sounds wild but I wanted to be as prepared as possible, okay?). Our first stop was Hannah’s house, where she and her mother were incredibly hospitable to all of us. We talked for hours, played with her dog, Coco, and ate the most amazing donuts I’ve ever had in my life.
After Illinois, we headed out to Denver, Colorado. The drive was mostly flat land, but driving through Iowa was so beautiful. One of my favorite parts of driving through the midwest was seeing evidence of sustainable energy in wind turbines. They. Were. Everywhere. Entire fields were full of the giant white pinwheels, slowly circling as the wind whipped across the plains.
The morning after sleeping over in Denver, we got stuck in a HUGE snowstorm with whiteout conditions. It was terrifying (especially because I was the one driving), and I was worried we would have to pull off into a small town and stay there until the storm passed by us. Luckily, we made it out alive (and avoided being buried in snow while driving through a clearly marked avalanche area), and by the end of the day we were driving through Arches National Park in the desert terrain of Utah.
The Grand Canyon was everything I expected and more. Words can’t even describe how beautiful and terrifying it is to stand at the edge of it. Natalie got the chance to watch sunset and sunrise with us, which was absolutely breathtaking. We each had our small moments of tearfulness – mine was when Natalie softly spoke to me during the sunrise, giving me a mini geology lesson about the layers of the canyon. We came to the conclusion that being there was like traveling in time. Each time we hiked up and down the side of the canyon, we were traversing ages and ages of history. I was overwhelmed with the beauty of such a place – the vastness and frightening depths, the warmth of my friends and the slow rising sun… I cried like a baby.
After we left the canyon, we stopped at Petrified Forest National Park before moving through Amarillo, Texas, Little Rock, Arkansas, and Roanoke, Virginia before heading home. Although the trip home from the canyon didn’t feel as magical (mostly it was exhausting), it was still beautiful. Driving through Arizona and New Mexico was incredible – I can’t even find the words to describe how it felt to drive past so many beautiful mountain ranges and breathe in the dry desert air. I fell in love with the Southwestern US on the trip, and I don’t there’s any going back!
My friends and I agreed that it would be really fun to try and visit as many national parks as we can in the near future, which I’m really looking forward to. Sometimes we all need to be grounded by nature, and seeing all the beautiful sites that we did really made an impact on my well being.
