On the road again

July 20th

I’m sorry for the silent treatment guys, but here’s another blog. We are currently cruising through Tenessee on our way to Nashville for the night. It is day five of the trip and we’ve already crossed six states. After we left New York on Sunday morning we headed to Washington where we arrived just before nightfall. We set up our camp in between all the camper vans that are bigger than most apartments I've seen. Our quarters for the comming nights are shared tents. We take turns cooking and doing dishes and stuff and my group had the night off so we got to relax around the campfire for a bit. After pasta and smores my tentmate Rachel and I headed to bed because we had a long day in DC the next day. Our goal was to see as many of the city as we could and I think we did pretty well: we went to the Air and Space museum, the Natural History museum, the Smithsonian Zoo and took a walk along the monuments at dusk. It was raining while we were at the zoo but at least it cooled down a bit and there was barely anyone else there. We wanted to see the pandas but they wouldn't come out, we did see a baby porcupine that was only three hours old though. I really loved Washington, for one, all the museums are free (and there are loads of musuems) but the city also felt less busy and stressed than New York, it was easy to navigate and the people were really nice.

I have to admit that most of my knowledge on American culture comes from tv shows and films but thankfully I’m not the only one so Rachel and I bonded over the movies the sights that we visited featured in. We got back to camp around 10 pm but I was so tired I headed straight to bed (boring, I know). Most of you probably know that I am not the biggest fan of camping, an opinion I’ve voiced on many occassions but I must admit it is not actually that bad. It gets a bit warm in the tents sometimes, there are some musquitos, it is annoying that you can’t stand up straight and the bathrooms aren’t very clean but I guess a cool roadtrip makes everything bearable because I don’t really care about all these things (although now that I’m listing them I don’t really know why anyone would ever go camping).

The next morning we packed up our camp and headed to Arlington Cemetery. It is a military cemetery where soldiers have been buried since the civil war. We got to see the changing of the guards at the tomb of the unknown solider. I have no idea how they survive in the heat with that military uniform but apparantly they even withstand storms to guard the monument. We also saw JFK’s gravesite. The cemetery was really impressive, really helps you put things in perspective. There are still so many wars being fought all around the world.. Nowadays it is not very common for soldiers to be buried there though, you have to do something really heroic.

After leaving Arlington we headed for the Appalachians. We visited Shenandoah national park where we went on a hike. Apparantly there were two paths you could take, a nice and easy one and a rocky path. My friends from South Africa probably remember that waterfall hike that I opted not to do because I was scared I would trip, slip or fall and break my neck? Well I figured I should probably not tempt faith so I should probably take the easy path. Unfortunately the people at the front of the group missed the sign and accidentally took the wrong path. And I was glad they did! The rock climbing was actually really cool (and I only got a minor scratch on my hand!) and the view was amazing. I love Virginia, it is so green, loads of trees, cute farms and the Appalachians are truly beautiful. I would love to come back in the fall and see the leaves change colour. We even saw a bear! Apparantly there are loads of black bears in the mountains. We only saw a glimpse as it was running away but I’m glad we saw some game ;) We saw some deer as well.

Another couple of hours on the bus later we arrived at our next campsite, it looked way prettier than the first one as it was surrounded by a forrest and there weren’t as many campers. We arrived pretty late though so after cooking (it was my group's turn) we spend the evening around the campfire eating smores and playing games. I went to bed around midnight but some people stayed up pretty late, I could still hear them yelling while playing never have I ever, I don’t think the families around us got much sleep that night.

We left early this morning and I think it’s another three hours before we reach Nashville. We just stopped at a liquour store where we got to do a moonshine tasting. It wasn’t as bad as I expected and some of it even tasted quite good. So that takes us to now, on the bus listening to the playlists we composed. The bus is quite comfortable with airco and wifi and good company of course. I’ll try to upload some pictures but I am not sure the wifi is good enough.

Tomorrow we’re heading to Memphis and on Friday we’ll arrive in New Orleans.