Miss Mandie

Charish & Mandie – Across the USA

In case you were wondering exactly what I am up to right now, I am travelling across the USA with my great friend, Charish (who I met when we were volunteering together in Thailand). We spent a week first after girl’s weekend travelling around Minnesota, chilling out with Charish’s family who are scattered the state and giving me a taste of life in the mid-west.

Our plan was then to purchase 30-day Amtrak rail passes, which allows us to travel to any rail destination within the US (and some parts of Canada) as much as we like for the month. Despite a last minute flurry of indecision (mostly fueled by too much champagne) about taking off instead to some place more exotic like Mexico, the Caribbean or even France, we decided to stick to our rail pass idea. Its a tall order to see as much as we can across this huge country, but we are determined women with a mission! From Minnesota to San Francisco – here we go!

Today marks our half-way mark (only 2 weeks – god!), and I have seen the bicycle-friendly city of Chicago, visited family in Michigan, spent a night in Buffalo visiting a fellow CouchSurfing volunteer, seen Niagara Falls, partied and shopped my butt off in New York City, drank coffee in Baltimore and toured the nation’s capital, Washington DC.

I’m telling you if Minnesota is the land of 10,000 lakes, then Washington DC is the land of 10,000 musuems! You could spend an entire month here and still not get around to see everything within this city. And it was a painful process prying ourselves away from New York…am already hatching an idea to go back before the end of the year!

Tomorrow we set off again…next stop is Charleston, South Carolina – Charish has an Aunt there who we are descending upon. And so far, no set plans thereafter. Although our plans for an easy trip to New Orleans has been foiled as the most direct rail line connecting Charleston to the deeper south was washed away by Hurricane Katrina. At this stage, it looks like we will have to trek back up to Washington DC to get back down again. Oh well! Thankfully we both love the chill out time on the train, so we aren’t tragically impositioned by this extra travel time. Think about it – how often do we allow ourselves the luxury of just sitting, doing nothing but watch the world pass us by for hours on end, blissfully content that there is nothing else we can be doing? Yep, the train has a definite advantage over the frantic pace of time-saving plane travel.