Writing a post about traveling under the letter L might be a bit of a stretch, but I already had too many good ideas for T and not enough for L. I love to travel, and I’m lucky to have a family that travels pretty frequently. I’ve never been outside of the country, but I’ve been to at least half of the states. I’m hoping to get to all 50 states in my lifetime, and at least one National Park in each state! I grew up in a family that rarely went to the beach (and if we did, we never sat there all day), partially because no matter how hard we try that would result in awful sunburn for most of us. Instead, we spent a lot of time hiking and we rarely went on the same trip twice unless we were visiting family. I love to see new places (and try the new foods there) so there are many great trips I’d love to talk about – North Carolina, Vegas and Arizona, and even some trips I hardly remember like Crater Lake in Oregon – but for the sake of a blog post I picked three. A lot of my favorite trips have been road trips. One surprisingly memorable trip was a Labor Day weekend during high school. My dad made us whitewater rafting reservations for Monday, but there was no set itinerary for the rest of the weekend. We drove west for a few hours and stopped whenever we came across something we wanted to do. We ended up visiting some very unique places that we probably never would have come across if we had planned our trip. That trip taught me that sometimes things can be more fun without a plan. My favorite road trip came a few years later. After high school graduation, most people from my high school go to the beach. My parents offered me a road trip I’d been dreaming of since middle school instead, and I quickly took them up on it. I could go to the beach with my friends anytime, but a road trip to CMAFest in Nashville? That was too good to pass up. My dad and I went on an amazing trip, stopping to go rafting on the New River, explore Mammoth Caverns, and hike in various parks on our way to and from Nashville. Our days in Nashville were non-stop country music (10am til after midnight) and I absolutely cannot wait to go back. Since the only trips we regularly repeat are to visit family, I’m lucky I have a lot of family in Maine since that’s one of my favorite states to visit. We get to see family and visit some amazing places all in one trip! We usually drive up which is long but allows us the flexibility to stop anywhere on our way – the Cabot and Ben & Jerrys factories are some memorable stops. Anyway, my family lives pretty close to Acadia National Park so we’ve done quite a few hikes there. One of my favorite places doesn’t require any hiking though, it’s just a big rock scramble. Schoodic Point is rarely crowded but always beautiful. Even on a foggy day it’s interesting. When we’re in Maine, I also love to visit Eagle Island on the Penobscot Bay. My aunt and uncle own a house out there and it’s a great place to relax and disconnect from the world. There’s so much to explore and it's so easy to forget any worries for a while! In 2013, about two months before my relapse was diagnosed, my family went to Hawaii for my parents’ anniversary. That’s right, our parents are so great that they took us on their anniversary trip. Over two weeks we visited Kauai, Oahu, and Hawaii (the big island). Kauai was easily my favorite since it was the least developed and most beautiful of the three. I knew I was anemic, but I was taking iron pills so I was slowly getting more energy. While we were on Kauai, we hiked the Kalalau Trail. We hiked two miles in to a beach, and then I was planning to relax there with my mom while my dad and siblings hiked an additional 2 miles up to a huge waterfall. I decided I was curious about the waterfall, so we headed after them. We could see it long before we got to it, but once I could see it I figured we were getting close so I kept going even though my mom insisted we could turn around at any point. It doesn’t look that big in the picture, but we were still really far away when I took that. Up closer, it was impossible to get even half of the waterfall in one shot. I swam in the freezing cold waterfall, which felt good for a few seconds but it took me forever to get warm again once I got out. By the time we hiked the four miles back to the car, I felt so sick and tired. I could barely eat dinner and I had a terrible headache but I’m glad I did it. During treatment, if I ever thought I couldn’t do something, I had that hike to think about. First of all, it was gorgeous, but really, I did it, I hiked 8 miles to that waterfall, leukemia and all. Sure, it wasn’t diagnosed yet but I was already very sick. (Just now I realized leukemia is an L word, but I didn’t need a whole post for that). I’ve always thought Alaska was interesting but now that I’ve been to Hawaii, I really want to go to the other faraway state. There’s a show on HGTV where people are looking for houses in Alaska and it looks gorgeous! What’s next on your travel list?
3 Comments
4/20/2015 02:54:12 am
These sound like wonderful trips. I love exploring the U.S.
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The Worst Best Thing
4/20/2015 03:46:25 am
Thanks for commenting Arlee!
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AuthorI’m Karen. I was originally diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL) in August 2004 when I was 10 years old. When I was working on my college and scholarship application essays two years ago, I wrote about my journey. Although it was a rough few years, it became such an influential part of my life that I can’t, and wouldn’t want to, imagine my life without having had cancer. I called it the worst best thing that ever happened to me. Archives
April 2022
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