Cross-Country Road Trip: Day 1, Ohio & Indiana

I know its been awhile. I mean, I kind of left ya'll hanging with those Turkey blogs. Long story short: Turkey was fantastic and there were many more adventures from that trip that will just have to go undocumented.

Lets catch you up to speed. This past week I finished my last year of grad school! Ah, can you believe it! This girl has a Masters! :)

My life in bags

It has been a long and tedious journey, but also an incredible one. To finish my program out I will have to complete a final level II psycho-social fieldwork. I'm excited to publicly announce that this summer I have been accepted to complete it through University of Utah's Refugee Resettlement Program in Salt Lake City, UT! I am feeling so incredibly grateful and excited to see where this new chapter will take me.

So today I literally took the plunge. I started my cross-country road trip with the end point of Utah!

I've always wanted to do a cross-country road trip. When I was in ninth grade I remember printing out a map of the USA and pinning it to my wall. I took a big black sharpie and marked a route I thought would be best at the time. I didn't even have my license yet.

So I can't believe that I am actually doing it-this is real, and it is happening now. If only I could see ninth grade Becca's map to see how far off I am from her plans!

The next 10 days I will be driving across the United States hiking high points, seeing quirky offbeat tourist attractions, and of course experiencing national parks and monuments.

So yes, indeed today I started the trip. Leading up to today there was a whirlwind of goodbyes, packing, and planning  (Hence why I didn't blog about it yet). Now that I have a day's worth of travel under my belt and the wanderlust is keeping me awake I'm here to give you the low down on whats happened so far.

DAY ONE:

This morning I woke up at 5 am to do some final packing and to check through my things. My lovely roommate and friend got up with me to do some final goodbye hugs and a send off. After getting gas and money from the ATM I was en route!

The "Over Look" 

Honestly the driving was a blur, the first 5 hours went surprisingly fast. The next 2 weren't as fun.
Eventually a made it to my first destination: the high point of Ohio!

This high point was so funny to me and very unexpected. It was literally in the back of a random career center. You had to park at the career center and walk up a small concrete hill in order to get to the high point.

At the actual site there are a few signs detailing facts about the area along with a flag. While poking around two other older gentlemen from the area joined me. They graciously took pictures for me as well as told me some other fun facts they knew about the high point. After getting some fresh air and signing the guest book I went inside to make a quick bathroom break before making my way to Indiana.

Campbell Hill! 

I ended up having a conversation with two elderly women who were working in the main office of the career center. I told them about my high point dreams as well as my travel/internship plans. They were incredibly impressed and went on about how adventurous I was, especially since I was traveling alone. I was really surprised by their enthusiasm because I guess at that point the trip didn't feel hard, challenging, or even remotely difficult (Side note- the actual traveling part was not hard. The planning process is an entirely different story...) Anyways, it was extremely affirming and was much needed in order to get through the next 2 hours of driving for the day.


Eventually I made it to Richmond, Indiana where I am staying for the night. Richmond is just a few miles from the Ohio border and I choose to stay here because it is very close to the high point of Indiana.

Indiana's high point was well... not so high. What do you expect though, it's Indiana. However, it did have it's charm. So the high point in Indiana doesn't really have an address. Its smack dab in the middle of nowhere, nuzzled in between farmland. I went on a mini back roading adventure and got slightly lost trying to find this place. I eventually found it and got super excited because it actually looked like a trail. An actual trail which would lead me to have an actual hike.

SURPRISE. No hike, not even really a walk. I think the "high" point was a solid 6 feet from where I parked my car. I did have some good fun looking through the guest book and trying to explore some of the wooded area behind the high point. It was very strange to have a high point with no overlook whatsoever. Certainly an interesting experience.

Tomorrow I will have my longest day of driving and I am actually dreading it. I will be driving through Iowa.... I am expecting it to be very flat with lots of corn and not much to entertain me. Hopefully I'll be surprised.

Until tomorrow! 

xoxo, Becca 

High Point Contemplation 

How did I find this place??

Donde Esta?