My First Trip Within the US

It had been nearly 4 months of continuous late night assignment submissions and early morning quizzes during my first on-campus semester in the spring of 2021 at RIT. In those 4 month, the workload was so intense that I hardly remember venturing out in city or nearby to explore new places, which was a thing I was looking forward to before coming to the states. We needed a vacation - an escape from grueling schedule we found ourselves in at that time. Our term was to end in another month or so. Although it was tough to find time to plan this, I along with my classmates would meet each weekend to narrow our search for nice place to visit once our semester got over.

We went through loads of places to visit in our search, Maine, Canandaigua, Pennsylvania, etc. All of us agreed on Boston. However, there was one friend who had already planned to visit there in June to meet his sister. He frowned upon the prospect of visiting the same place twice. So again, back to square one. This search process took almost 2-3 weeks but still we were without any place fixed yet. I remember locking up all the group members in my room just 2 days before our finals and promising to not let them leave until the place was fixed and the accommodation was fixed. After almost 2 hours of discussion, we finalized Lake George. The pictures were awesome and the individual cost was well within everyone’s budget. We booked a villa from a popular rental website.

​

Once our exams were over, the very next day we took off for our escape vacation. This was my first trip in the US and to be honest, it lived up to its hype. The drive alone was very serene. I remember back in my country a 100 mile distance would be covered in about 3-4 hours but here the roads and the way the traffic system is designed, it enables us to cover the same distance in half the time. After a peaceful journey we reached our destination and the way the weather welcomed us was excellent. It was not too chilly but very pleasant and the air was so fresh. Our villa was located at the top of a hill, which granted us an unrestricted view of a stream flowing by and it also had an outdoor bonfire setup, The high point of our journey was the stargazing experience that very night. We lit up the bonfire outside and all 10 were sitting outside, singing some of our favorite songs and that is when someone pointed out to the sky and exclaimed how many stars had lit up. I have never seen anything like that before. It was surreal. All of us stopped there and went quiet for sometime, appreciating the beauty of nature there. We also covered some of the tourist attractions there like Fort Henry and Million Dollar Beach.

This trip was truly worth the wait and I am again longing for another escape vacation like this.

​