The return journey I love most...
Sorry, folks…what with the holidays and life and travel, the Friday Fun Thread is coming to you a day late!
I just got back from my tour of the Low Countries with MamaSharper—more on that later—and was reading a stack of Vanity Fairs on the plane. One of the best questions in VF‘s mini-interview at the end of the magazine is always “What is your favorite journey?” It’s a good question, with wildly varying answers.
My favorite journey, without question, is the Delta Shuttle from LaGuardia to National. The aerial views of New York and DC are always spectacular, but also a huge nostalgia trip. When I fly back to my hometown, the plane glides over the Potomac, low enough that I can see the house where I grew up. At night I can see the eternal flame on JFK’s grave glinting through the trees in Arlington Cemetery. Going back to New York, the plane flies straight up over the Harbor and up the East River. Instead of checking out the Manhattan skyscraper view, I like to look out over Brooklyn and Queens and pick out all the different neighborhoods I love. The flight down reminds me of how much I love my family and my hometown, the flight back reminds me how much I love my adopted city and the life I’ve made there.
What’s your favorite journey? Is it from one place to another? Or something else entirely?
This is cheesy, but my relationship with a particular friend is one of my favorite journeys. We almost didn’t make it, but when I moved away we started writing to each other regularly and somehow that discourse brought us closer than we’ve ever been.
As for more conventional journeys, one of my favorites was when Mr. Tall and I drove from Kansas to Yellowstone and back a few years ago. Yellowstone is one of the most amazing places I’ve ever been, but the drive was so peaceful and fun, and we got to see a lot of Wyoming, which is a beautiful state.
@Tall – I hear you about the journey with your friend. Thanks to letter writing I am closer with my youngest sisters than I was when growing up.
My favourite flying over something journey has to be the views over Darwin (Northern Territory, Australia), especially when flying into the airport. You can see the coastline so clearly, the mangroves, the beaches, everything. Usually the plane needs to go out across the sea before coming back to land, and that view is just magnificant.
My favourite childhood journey, was the barge crossing to Moreton Island (off Brisbane, Queensland, Australia), going across Moreton Bay to go camping.
Life. This is my favorite journey and it’s not over yet.
The trip that sticks out the most is the swirl of feelings I had when we (deployed troops) landed in Kyrgyzstan. It’s a realtively baby nation and when we got off the plane I looked around: mountains everywhere, HUGE ones and completely taken over by a soft white snow.
It was about ten bellow and my eyelashes instantly started to freeze but it was so quiet and dead still. I remember we seemed so alien and out of place in the nature of it all. And when I left after my tour was done I recall the same quiet and a slightly warmer climate but those mountains still had snow on the tops. I think honestly I will remember that skyline and the mountains for the rest of my life.
My favorite journey is whenever I have occasion to drive from Los Angeles to San Diego, ESPECIALLY in March or April. The hills to your left are so green, and to your right is the Pacific Ocean forever, and the views are absolutely beautiful!
My favorite flight is always SF to Boston – I flew that route many times in grad school and in the years afterward.
I also love the drive along Highway 1 in Sonoma and Mendocino counties.
I love a low flying flight from Milwaukee to Chicago in the dead of winter. Lake Michigan is frozen over and all you can see anywhere is the lake and it’s coating of white ice and snow. So peaceful.
Another big fave is coming from pretty much any place in the upper mid-west/east coast and flying into Seattle. If you come over via the western part of the state, the flights generally follow the long, green, and snake-y Columbia River. So cool. (This one generally needs to be a fairly low-flying flight as well, and fortunately they usually are…)
@alexia: I agree! That drive to San Diego is gorgeous, particular when you go under the big arch.
Actually, another of my favorite trips was a drive from San Francisco to Santa Cruz – gorgeous!
But my favorite trip that I’ve made the most often is the drive across Lake Ponchartrain when I travel from my hometown of Baton Rouge, LA to New Orleans. The lake is huge and the drive is long – well over 20 minutes – and it contains scenery that is unique to South Louisiana. Nothing makes me feel at home more than that drive.
I can’t say that it is my favorite, because I’m pretty happy wherever I land, but a spectacular journey is driving from Duluth, MN to Thunder Bay, ON on highway 61. The road runs right on the shore of Lake Superior for almost the entire way and on the opposite side of the road is this dark old growth forest. The deer, moose, etc. stroll back and forth across the road to the water completely unfazed by the presence of humans. It is almost too beautiful to be real.
[...] What’s your favorite journey? It can be literal or spiritual. I’m all ears. [...]
I haven’t made this journey in a few years, but my favorite journey is driving from Austin to Dallas, because on the way, you can stop at the Czech Stop–this amazing kolache restaurant by the highway (or you can stop at the even-better kolache place inside the town of West, TX).
I have a lot of good kolache-related memories from those trips… nom nom nom
New York to San Francisco, especially as the plane’s landing and looks like we’re going to hit the bay right until the moment when the the wheels hit the tarmac.
Also, my girlfriend lives in the Bay Area, so that might help a little bit too.
My favorite non-conventional journey is probably my relationship with her. We met when I was 21 and she was 18, in our college anime club. I was the bridesmaid at her wedding (it remains my only bridesmaid duty to date), and I held her hand through a really difficult year last year and convinced her that it was time to go back to school and finish her biology degree.
And we’ll have been dating for three months on the 11th.
I have a few…one of my favourite journeys used to be when my dad would drive me back to my city, after I’d spent a weekend back home. He always insisted on doing it; before I went to university, our relationship wasn’t very good for a number of reasons, and those moments really turned a conflicted relationship into a really good one. But that’s been over for a while now.
I have a special affection for Scotland, I’ve been there nearly every year since I was fourteen, so taking the plane to Edinburgh is always a happy moment for me.
And there’s a journey I have yet to make, which will be going home; I’ve been living in Taiwan for eight months, am planning on staying here a few years, and I’m going back home to France in June to spend the summer with my family, so I’m pretty excited about that trip.
@Alecto – London to Edinburgh is actually my favourite journey. I grew up in Edinburgh from the ages of 11-16 and something about getting off the train at Waverly Station preferably in winter always makes me feel like I’ve come home, even though it’s over ten years since I last lived in Scotland.
I also love the journey from Heathrow to my family in the Cotswolds just because that’s about seeing people I haven’t seen for so long and knowing that the next few days will be fantastic.
I really hate travel. I’m not afraid of flying, and I love visiting new places and seeing people and things, but the actual journey part? Ugh. Hurry up and wait! Stupid arbitrary rules galore (thanks, TSA, for confiscating my pickled jalapenos; they were clearly a threat to national security)! Unexplained delays. Dehydration, recycled air, cramped seating, crap food (although I had an exquisite ploughman’s sandwich on a train between Cardiff and London)…pretty much hate it all.
Maybe if I had more cash, for cabs, for something other than coach, etc., I’d like it more.
All that said, the driving tour we did of Ireland a number of years ago was amazing. We just got ourselves a little Fiat Punto and a map, and headed off down the “wrong side” of the street. Old cities, big highways, teeny, walled-in farm roads, a ferry across the Shannon… it was wonderful. I do love a roadtrip. Must be that midwestern, car-centric upbringing.
@PhDork: I’m with ya. The actual getting to and from SUCKS, especially these days when it comes to air travel. Experience has taught me how to grit my teeth and endure it, but I HATE HATE HATE that part. If it weren’t for Ambien, carbs and crossword puzzles, I would be basket case on some of the long-haul trips.
@PhDork: I also had a midwestern, car-centric upbringing, and I hate car trips with a passion.
But that might be because I was inevitably stuck in the far back of a minivan on 12 hour drives to Minnesota for vacation.
Up a mountain. I’m not a great mountaineer, but I find something so awe-inspiring and about mountains in general. They don’t care about me at all, and somehow you can sense that. When climbing, fear and exhiliration are tied together. It’s very powerful, and also a very calming and back-to-basics experience for me, to do nothing but think of the next step up, feeding, drinking, which route to take, which dangers to consider, sometimes where to sleep.
Otherwise, I love train journeys. @emilyanne: I took that journey twice and loved it. Especially the part up North.