Around The US In 5 Weeks

Bala J Raman, co-founder and president, Congruent Solutions wanted to do something different for a family vacation. How about driving 12,000 miles through 30 US states in a van!

It was the summer of 2003 and there we were asking ourselves what we could do different this time for a vacation. We wanted the zing of adventure plus to see as many places as possible. That is when, in a moment of inspiration, I hit upon it. We would do a drive and what's more, see the length and breadth of the United States in the process. The more we thought of it, the more it appeared to be a very good idea. There was the fact that my wife, Vineetha, is a good and enthusiastic driver herself and our children, Sanjana, 11, and Aditya, 9, were old enough to take the trip without too many complaints. We had our roomy Toyota Van with the right accessories like a TV with a VCR, Nintendo Gameboys etc. to take the weariness off the travelling. That the van had 115,000 miles on it did not deter us as we knew through experience that the vehicle had at least another 50,000 miles before we needed to touch any part of the engine or the transmission. It could easily endure the drive of more than 12,000 miles. And experience was to prove us correct. Besides a minor brake job and a regular servicing of the van, everything went perfectly with the vehicle. That we did the whole trip without a single traffic violation or a speeding ticket made it all the more satisfactory.

To start off with, we got the American Automobile Association (AAA) to plan our routing for the trip. It turned out to be an incredibly detailed tour plan made with painstaking effort. As a result we were armed with each leg of the journey contained in separate booklets. Each booklet had a detailed map of the route we would take, the eating-places on the way as well as 'places of interest' along the whole route. To cap it all, there was a list of hotels at our place of overnight stay with the ratings and the contact information.

We started by heading south from our home in Cupertino in the San Francisco Bay area towards Los Angeles and headed east all along the southern tip of the US till we reached Florida. We drove up the East Coast and went all the way to Boston and even crossed over to Nashua, New Hampshire, for a few hours. The return trip was westwards all along the northern part of the US, through Illinois, South Dakota, and then down to Yellowstone National Park, Salt Lake City, Utah, Reno, Nevada and then back home via Sacramento. Since we had made a trip to the Grand Canyon and Las Vegas just a few months before this road trip, we did not include them in the travel itinerary.

One of the first stops after we hit the road was the 'Caverns' in New Mexico - a whole new world of sand and rock formation under ground. Chemical deposits have turned the sand into magnificently formed shapes and forms and the beauty of nature is simply awe-inspiring.

From there were headed to Austin, Texas where we witnessed the July 4th celebrations with astonishing fireworks. Another highlight in Austin was the cloud of bats that take off from underneath a bridge every evening at dusk. And the term 'cloud' is not an exaggeration - there are hundreds of thousands of bats that emerge for their nocturnal hunting within a space of 15 minutes. Other highlights in Texas were the riverside walk in San Antonio, Texas - America's answer to Venice in a very small way and the JFK Memorial in Dallas which captures through video, audio commentaries and hundreds of photographs one of the most significant moment in US history in the 20th Century - the assassination of President John F Kennedy.

Our next stop was the jazz capital of the world - New Orleans in Louisiana. The Hurricane cocktail at Pat O'Brien's in the French Quarters was an 'elevating' experience, and listening to the live jazz band on the dinner cruise on the Mississippi river was the perfect way to spend a lovely summer evening. And how can we forget the divine tasting Beignets at the Café du Monde along with the fabulous Café au laity?

Off from New Orleans, we drove through blinding rains in Alabama and Georgia along the Gulf of Mexico to enter Florida. The beautiful near-white beach at Daytona provided us with an idea of how different the coastline here was from the rocky beaches of the West Coast in and around San Francisco. The Disney theme park, Epcot Centre in Orlando, was like visiting several countries of the world in a day and the elaborate detailing of each country's pavilion gave a good insight into the different cultures around the world. The kids loved the fireworks in the middle of the lake from our ringside view seats in the Mexican restaurant, where we were digging our teeth into some sumptuous Chalupas and Enchiladas.

We started moving Northward from Florida up the East Coast through Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina and then on to Virginia. The beach in the town of Virginia Beach was one of cleanest expanses of fine, yellow sand and the water was comfortably warm in the summer.

We stopped at the nation's capital - Washington D.C. The sights and the museums in this city are way too many and famous to be listed down, but the Smithsonian really stands out as does the Capitol building.

Further North we went and spent a week being based in New Jersey where we soaked in the amazing skyline of Manhattan, the Statue of Liberty and the solemn sights at Ground Zero. We also climbed to the top of the Empire State Building and to cap it all, squeezed in a Broadway Show. One can spend weeks in New York and still miss out on a lot. But walking along the streets of Manhattan really makes one feel at home, among so many different kinds of people. New York is indeed a unique place in the whole world for its diversity and character.

While in New Jersey, we did a weekend trip to the Niagara Falls - and what a wonderfully uplifting experience it was! The magnificent beauty of the fall, combined with its fury, takes one's breath away. The ride on the Maid of the Mist really took us as close to the Horseshoe Falls as one can possibly get. We also drove to Boston and Nashua, New Hampshire to do justice to the north-eastern part of the US.

Finally, we started our travel westwards back home - this time covering as much as possible on the northern part of the country. Our first stopover was at the 'City of Bridges', Pittsburgh, where three rivers meet and our own Lord Venkateswara (Balaji) of Tirupati has found an abode in the west.

Then on to Chicago - whose sheer spread as well as the Sears Towers are worth mentioning. We then drove to see the incredible feat of man-made sculpture of the American Presidents' faces at Mt Rushmore in South Dakota. This is where we ran into what seemed like a billion motorcycles, most of them Harley Davidsons, on the roads, much like a swarm of locusts! On further enquiry, we found out that it was the annual bikers' rally, which is held every year at Sturgis, South Dakota. Being a motorcycle fan myself, I was tempted to join in the rally, but the family felt it was not such a great idea.

We ended the trip with the incomparable natural beauty and variety that the Yellowstone National Park had to offer. We drove through the park in the middle of the night to get to our hotel at the western side of the park and were lucky enough to see two wolves in the wild along the way. The Old Faithful spring that erupts every 90 to 100 minutes was truly the old faithful and the prediction of when it would erupt was pretty accurate. The hot water springing up more than 150 feet into the air was quite a sight. Other springs like the yellow sulphur spring and the blue lagoon spring were a pointer to the diversity of nature.

Finally, on the last stretch on way back from Salt Lake City to Cupertino, one had to stop in Reno, Nevada to squeeze in an hour of blackjack and slot machines at the casino, without which the trip would have seemed incomplete, considering that we had skipped Las Vegas!

The trip was enriched by the fact that we met with so many of our friends and relatives throughout the US, which would not have been possible otherwise. The trip was definitely a once-in-a-lifetime experience. We had the privilege and pleasure of meeting, staying with and enjoying the company of so many people and seeing places that we normally only read about. At the end of our trip we had driven through 30 of the 50 states in the US for a total of almost 12,000 miles. Everywhere we went American people told us that we were doing what they all have been dreaming about. And now, and we hope to create a similar memory by driving around India as well.