Why I Travel

As I walk through the security line at the airport, I notice the guy in front of me, athletic, all button-down shirt and casual cargo pants, with black thick-frame glasses that turn colors as you move in and out of the light. He  carries nothing through security but a black, almost perfectly square cooler. I figure he must have some affliction and he needs his meds kept cold (I know from experience). But appearances and our own biases can be (and very often are) deceiving. 

He pulls a plastic bag out of the cooler, with three (3) frozen solid bottles of Deer Park water. He puts them in the TSA tray and leaves the cooler open. The TSA agent warns the screening guy that “frozen water, coming up!” and moves on to help me with my bag. The athletic guy moves along through the people scanner, chewing gum, completely non-chalant and well-possessed, not even blinking. No explanation. No fuss. Like he owns the world. 

The guy behind me says to the TSA guy: “Excuse me. Umm...What is that, exactly? You are allowed to transport water bottles through TSA if the bottles are frozen?” The TSA guy goes “Yes, sir! That’s right!” The guy behind me says “Well, I don’t agree with it, but wow! Just wow!”

In my mind, I say: “Sorry, buddy, your authority nor opinion is needed here. Move along.” But yes, I am wowed too. 

After I clear security, the first thing I do is google “can you take frozen water bottles through security?” and lo and behold, yes, you can! This just completely baffled me. I have been traveling consistently by plane since 1998 - for those hard of math, that is 27 years. I have counted 10 one-way airline trips (some of them with multiple flights) this year alone and I have never known of such a rule. This was a lesson ... 

As I continue my journey, I come to my gate and we’re ready to board. They tell us, as they often do, nowadays, that the plane is full and to make sure we board quickly and sit down immediately, not to block the aisles, you know ... the usual. Then, they call people by “zones” (some airlines board by groups, some by zones). They call First Class, then Zone 1, then Zone 2. We all wait. And wait. And not one person boards in Zone 1, nor 2. I have never seen such a thing. Again, ever, in all my travels are whole “zones” completely empty with “a full flight”. The gate agent seems totally OK with this, but we’re all looking around like “are they still at the bar or what?”. I am telling myself “this is going to be a trip of firsts, I guess?”. 

After I board (with my zone - I can’t recall what it was, but I am at the end of the darn plane again, zone maybe 7 or some such unlucky number; as a matter of fact, let’s not be ungrateful - zone “never” might be unlucky; the fact that I am on a plane at all is a plus), and after all the people are in their seats, the pilot walks all the way to where I am sitting and hands over a goodie bag to a lucky passenger on account that they are a “first-time flyer”. No, not with this airline but ever. Not sure how they know this? Not sure how or if they verify this, but there it is ... I am shocked. How has someone nowadays, especially in the very large America where people are so spread apart from their families, living in this huge country, never flown? This person is not a toddler either. It’s a mature man with a head full of white hair. They are totally shocked and embarrassed and they accept the bag with a chuckle and applause follows. 

Then, to make it even more unusual, the pilot walks to two rows in front of the man he just congratulated, on the other side of the aisle, and hands over a second goodie bag to another first-time passenger completely unrelated to the first one. Now, I am thinking I must be in a dream: there is not one, but two such rare specimens on my flight. What??? You live and you learn, as the cliche goes. 

As we’re preparing to take off, they make their little announcements and there is a new one for me: they tell us that video taking is “absolutely prohibited”, and this is not an “airline policy, but an FAA policy”. And I pause. Well, if video taping is prohibited, then how come TikTok (at least this is what I hear, since I am lucky enough to not be tethered with such a curse as a TikTok account) full of videos of flight attendants being slapped by or slapping passengers all over the world? Or did the policy come in response to such videos and is new? I am not videoing but I am taking pictures, so I figured I am not in trouble, but my goodness, frozen water first, no videos second, airline rules are moving fast, even for this mildly-frequent flyer... 

As I leave the plane on my arrival to the other end of my trip, at my final destination of Orlando, FL (a destination, I feel, that should require a passport, if you’re coming from anywhere else in the US, even), I head over to the ground transportation area to call an Uber so I can head to my hotel. I was a late adopter of Uber - have been using it for about 3 years - but I have used it on two continents and tried using it on a third one, but the Gods of the travel agency protected me from using it in Africa. Long story, for another entry. 

A cheerful gentleman called Jose arrives and I see a new disclaimer on my Uber app - that Jose is “recording this trip”. Hmm ... Video forbidden on the plane, but obviously running by default in the car transportation. I do not like surprises all that much, but this trip seemed to have it all. 

These are just a few examples from my most recent trip. And this is all to say that one of the main reasons I travel (other than to get where my life takes me) is to learn. Travel is almost a free add-on or bonus of new lessons about how you should behave in the world, how you should carry yourself among other humans. It teaches you how prepared you are to just be a human firing on all your cylinders, and being the best you can be among your peers. It builds tolerance and empathy - which are becoming somewhat endangered nowadays - but this new world we live in, try as it may, I would never, as long as there is breath in my body, want to lose them. 

Travel allows me to make my thoughts, my whole being stop chattering and opinioning and just listen and watch. Assess and propose corrections in my own path. Or not. Travel keeps my senses alert. There are so many things we must be present for in travel - you cannot space out and get lost in your doom-scroll of Instagram when the TSA agent, or a passport control agent demands answers from you. You are forced to connect with the person in front of you and think. Although I like to think of myself as a minimalist when it comes to consuming social media, I still hate when precious minutes go to nothing but mindless scrolling. Travel is not mindless. It is focused, character-building (remember that 20th century concept anyone?) presence. If you don’t have that (presence) while you travel, your very life might be at stake. 

I travel  because I need new energy, from the outer world, to replenish and recharge my own depleted body which becomes stagnant after a while just being enclosed in myself. 

My sister and I grew up “in the mountains”, we call it. We were city girls by birth - born and raised in the second-largest (by population) city in Romania - but for about 3 months every year we would live with our distant relatives in the Northern Carpathian Mountains, with no running water in the house, working tireless every day for our food which came from cows, sheep, chickens, or foraging for wild berries and mushrooms in the woods. This is how we learned physical, manual labor. Life on the land was very different from life in the city. In the city, we learned how to be pedestrians and how to ride with civility in a public transport vehicle. In the mountains, we learned how to listen to nature, and know dangers unknown to the city dweller - like the call of a wolf, or the scratch of a mouse in the attic eating through corn, or getting splinters out of our soft, city hands when we split wood in the woodshed behind the house to make fires every night to heat our rooms in the wood-burning stoves or in our water heater boiler every week for our shower.

Travel reminds me  a bit of those times - when we were forced to live in a completely new environment and we were absolutely forced to develop a new set of skills that would not have been developed otherwise. 

I travel because I know my perception of the world is biased. And I need hard proof for the truth. 

I travel because I am consumed by wanting to know the truth. Is the world really as bleak as the media and social sites claim? Are people as angry and evil? Are they truly hating one another? Travel shows you a different picture of that. Or certifies it for you. But you will never know for sure unless it becomes your experience. 

I travel for food and for new-ness. For taking myself outside of my cocoon of safety and forcing myself to react, to feel, to truly know, and to truly form an opinion. I travel for the surprise of it and its shock value as much as I travel to realize that I had the weirdness and diversity of the world within my soul all along. But I just didn’t know it. 

Travel forces you to think quickly and outside the box. And make do with what’s in front of you. 

Travel forces you to look deeply into your soul and assess - do you like what you see? Here, there are alternatives, would you like to reconsider? I never speak to myself more honestly than when I am traveling - because it forces me to be present and to stay awake and aware for the simple reason to be safe. It also forces me to be awake because everything seems to be new. I cherish getting lessons from everything that I open myself up for. 

I travel because travel leads me to books. And books lead me to travel. And books have been the one, only, constant in my entire life that has never disappointed. Boyd Varty’s Cathedral of the Wild led me to Londolozi which changed my life. Then, Londolozi led me to The Elephant Whisperer which enriched my understanding of human kindness and nature kindness and nature intelligence as well. And the examples are many from so many of my other travels: the innumerable books I read about English and American authors growing up that took me to England and later America where I found my soul, eventually. 

Travel brought me to wonders like the South African wild this year - and what a quantum leap that was! I emerged transformed only with a fraction of my old self from the African bush. It tapped into senses I didn’t know I had. Our over-technological suburban world dims those senses, or, in some cases, completely exterminates them. But going out of our comfort zone (something that is intrinsic to travel) allows our minds and sometimes even our bodies, to develop abilities that otherwise lay dormant or are in danger of becoming extinct because of our lack of need to use them. When you are called to react to things you don’t encounter every day - like a leopard on the hunt, or a pride of 9 lions completely wild, with no circus director to tame them in sight, or a river full of crocs opening their huge jowls at you, or even foods you have never seen but are called upon out of respect to try - you cannot help but learn new lessons and new abilities that you might not have thought you had. 

I turned 50 this year. I read a lot of thoughts on what and who you’re supposed to be when you turn 50 or when you reach your mid-life. Some people are told they are old. Some people fight this concept and feel young or do meaningful things to feel young. Because I live inside this 50 year old body, I feel just like I did when I was 10 or 20. 50 seems to me to be just a number. 

For me, the one thing I want to be or to do going forward (which has not changed just because my ID says I am not a different age), the only thing that I hope will define me in my next decade and beyond and always is the desire to continuously learn. To avidly and voraciously keep learning, with every day, with every trip, with every person or any other being that I encounter. Keep learning and becoming and changing and morphing into who I will eventually leave as my finished “product” on this planet, once my time is up in this realm. 

I cannot think how I would be able to learn without traveling. Just like I have said many times before, stopping traveling is like stopping to breathe for me. I felt like I needed a reminder to reassess why I do it - I do it to remain whole and to keep becoming. Becoming is my now and my future. That is all ... And that is all that matters ... 

One of the places that stays with me, 28 years later: the thermal pools of Pamukkale (or “Cotton Castle”) in South-Western Turkey - I took this picture after I climbed this mountain barefoot with hot streams under my feet on a 100F degree day in August 1997. 

Highlights of a 10-Day Road Trip Through Eastern North America

1 year, 11 months, 12 days. This is how long it’d been since our last long trip (which was a drive to Florida that launched a weeklong cruise in The Bahamas in November 2019). We did take smaller trips since then, some overnight ones, and many day trips, but we almost never left our state (North Carolina) during this time. Crossing the border for a few hours into Virginia during this time doesn’t really count as “leaving the state”.

But this year, prompted by a milestone birthday in Michigan that we simply could not miss and the fact that hey, we were in the neighborhood of Canada where we have more close family, we had to venture out, COVID19 precautions and all, and take a longer vacation.

Almost 10 days later we would have traveled through 8 states, one Canadian province, two countries, more than 2000 miles and would have learned so much! We chose to do all this in a huge road trip, with zero flying. As much as I miss traveling and really long trips, flying is still not on my list for the time being. Airlines cannot space out people on planes and people are so inconsiderate when it comes to hygiene in close spaces. Not to mention that, to my knowledge (and belief!) the COVID19 pandemic is far, oh, so far, from being “over” yet. So this trip had to be a driving one, where we could have a bit more control of our surroundings.

Traveling now is nothing like traveling in 2019, as you can imagine, unless you have lived under a rock for the past two years. The logistics are different, but also our fears, our caution, our “paranoia”, if you will, is a new thing to get used to and embrace. Yes, I say “embrace” because despite all the worry that you’re out there, in the world, exposed to all sorts of human garbage, despite the fact that some people are stupid and selfish and … wrong … you still must try to have some fun, make some memories and save something for your family album. Otherwise, all the travel and the bother would not be worth it …

There are a lot of things that will remain with us from this marathon trip. A lot of new things we experienced for the very first time which taught us so much. I really don’t have the time (nor you to read such long belaboring) or the memory for it all, but I did not want this trip to go unnoticed, so I am summarizing some of the highlights in this journal.

West Virginia toll roads. Seriously, West Virginia! $4 a pop times three to cross your state (on the same road) is a bit steep! Also: West Virginia, have you heard of these nifty little things called credit cards, yet? All of the tolls must be paid in cash in WV. I remember that my Canadian family drove through there in 2018 and they did not have any American cash so they could not pay the tolls. Well, three years later, there are still no credit cards allowed in West Virginia. All cash or get off the toll roads and navigate the back country roads for free.

By the time we crossed the state we were $12 down in tolls alone through a state that, albeit beautiful, does not impress in road quality. As a traveler, always looking for interesting things, I suppose this is meant to slow you down to take life in, or something. But you are on a busy highway, so stopping, getting your wallet out, counting your dollars, waiting to receive change (especially in a time where everywhere else in the country cash transactions are rare because of virus transmissibility…) is a bit odd. But it’s how they do it in WV, so be warned.  

Cuyahoga Valley National Park, OH. I have this crazy goal to visit all of the National Parks before I die. So, when we drive past one now, I will try to make it through it at least for a couple of hours. Cuyahoga Valley was achieving a small piece of such a goal. The one surprising thing was that although a park of almost exclusively deciduous trees, the leaves were hardly turned yet on October 23^rd! I would have thought that Northern US, so close to the border with Canada, would have been past-peak for leaves-turning by that date, but the leaves were mostly green … We had time just for a very short hike, which was peaceful and made for a couple of good photo ops of bridges and train tracks. The park is very easy to just drive through. No fee required.

The Ohio Turnpike bridge seen from the Cuyahoga Valley National Park

Egrets on Lake Erie! Again: too late in the year to see these beautiful warm-weather (we thought!) birds as far North as the Canadian border. But there they were … A whole flock of them just chilling on a marsh outside Lake Erie. Can we assume global warming?! Perhaps …

Egrets outside Lake Erie

Speaking of Lake Erie. We got to see several Great Lakes on this trip: Erie, Ontario, and Michigan. We skirted around Lake Huron, but we never so much as got a glimpse of it. I remember learning about them in geography classes in middle school, back in Romania. They told us they look and feel like seas or mini-oceans, with minimal tides and big waves. They were not wrong. I grew up on the Black Sea coast and I can tell you – there is not much of a difference between any of the Great Lakes and a sea such as the Black Sea which I am most familiar with. Sure, the lakes are full of fresh water and the a sea would be full of salty water, but if you’re not swimming in them to know this, there is not much of a difference between them by just looking at them. They are vast, impressive bodies of water and they do not ever feel like peaceful “lakes” but more like troubled, angry, and restless seas or even oceans …

South Haven lighthouse on Lake Michigan

Crossing the border into Canada in times of pandemic. Now, this was the real adventure. Many months before our trip, when the border opened in Canada to Americans to be allowed to visit, my sister who lives in Montreal educated me about how to cross into Canada who has a very strict system for contact tracing and enforcing pandemic rules (vaccinations and masking). We had to sign up for this app called ArriveCAN which would hold all of our information (passport, vaccination card, Canadian address, reason for visit, personal data, etc) 72 hours before we cross the border. We even had to tell them the approximate time of when we will be at the border and which border crossing we would be using. This system looked intimidating and impressive. I know of nothing remotely similar in the US. When the borders originally opened, the rule was that Americans can cross into Canada by car, train, or ferry only with a proof of vaccination and that a 72-hour negative Covid19 test was only needed for people flying there. Well, we were driving, so we figured – no test.

Two days before getting ready to cross into Canada, we were in Michigan visiting with family and I decided that it’s time to finish signing up and completing all the information for the ArriveCAN system. As I was finishing that process up, I found out that we did, after all, need to present a negative PCR test (which is not the “rapid test”, of course – that would have been too convenient and too easy) that could take up to 48 hours to come back. So, this would have meant that if we took it that day, it might be back the very day we were supposed to cross into Canada so we could be in Toronto for our hotel reservation.

We had researched before the trip places where we could get a test in Michigan, should we need one, for any reason, so we already had this one place mapped out. We did not need an appointment, luckily, so we just drove through, and they took our samples and we filled out a form. We were told it’d be up to 48 hours but it’s more like 24 hours from what they’ve seen in the last little bit to get the results. The test itself ran extremely smoothly. We were impressed by how Michigan seemed to have everything down to a science almost.

We were supposed to get our results through email. The next day (24 hours) we kept refreshing our emails compulsively. Neither one of us got anything. So, that “it’s more like 24 hours” did not turn out to be true, after all. The second day, which was the day we were supposed to head out to Toronto, we practically did not turn our email app off and just stared at it all morning, refreshing and waiting … and panicking! Nothing.

I have worked with bureaucracy (and the medical field which is the worst of all in bureaucracy!) long enough to know that you do not rush these people. That when they say “48 hours” you better make damn sure you count down the very last second before you raise your hand and ask. But at about 45 hours (10 AM instead of 1PM when the test had been performed 2 days before) I lost my patience and I called. There was no answer, naturally! They placed you on this eternal hold where you knew no one would ever rescue you from.

I was picturing my cute little nephews waiting for us at the hotel that night and us not able to cross over and not able to be there to check everyone in (the hotel was in my name). They would have had to travel for hours from Montreal to Toronto, they had to interrupt school, our hopes and dream of finally meeting up after more than two years shattered. Because of COVID. Because of two governments in the “civilized” world that should have gotten their crap together already. I was angry. Disappointed. Mostly angry.

So I called. And called and called incessantly. I did not wait on hold. I dialed and if the on-hold voice came on, I hung up and called again. Till finally someone did pick up! The most helpful lady came on and explained that they had been trying to reach us the day before but I had not left a phone number (they told us they would send it through an email!) and they could not. It also turned out that they had misread my husband’s phone number and they probably called that, but they were calling the wrong person.

She asked me what my name was and she told me that they misread my handwriting and that the test is negative but the name on the test is different than my name so now she has to file a correction with the lab to have the negative test reissued. Every time I hear of someone having to “file” something … I know it’ll take a while. So I pleaded with her to please hurry because if it spills into another day I am losing thousands of dollars in hotel fees alone … Long story short: she sent me my husband’s proof of the negative test in my email (why they did not send his to his email will forever be a murky mystery to us) but I had to wait two extra hours for mine to be “corrected”. But we got our negative tests. Yay. Onward to Canada, negative test and ArriveCAN app ready and all. The border crossing should be a breeze now.

Only … not so fast.

We were both so nervous going towards Canada that during the two and a half hour journey from our family’s house in Michigan to the Port Huron – Sarnia border crossing we hardly spoke 10 words to each other. And mostly they were comments about the dark, foggy, gray day we were driving through.

At the border with Canada, this very friendly, masked lady officer asked us all the usual questions about why we were coming to Canada on a Wednesday (I didn’t know there was a special day you were supposed to travel to Canada, or in general?!), what we were bringing (“Did you know mace and pepper spray are considered weapons in Canada?”), and how much pot and cannabis products we were carrying. She looked at our passports and she asked for our negative tests (I have been more proud of a piece of paper in my life only when I got my American citizenship “diploma”. I was bubbling with pride for that hard-earned negative PCR COVID test, I tell you!).

She never once asked us for our ArriveCAN QR code where all of our information should have been stored. But right then and there, negative test in hand, she tells us that “Oops, this is not me doing this. But my computer just randomly picked you both to be tested today. So, here are your testing kits and you will go to this tent over there (she waived us) and get tested.”

So, here we were, just barely over the Canadian border, 48 hours since our last test (I suppose not official enough for Canada?) and taking another PCR test across the wall … Sigh. They asked us to sign up for yet another “system” called SwitchHealth. This is their contact-tracing system which seems to be very efficient, from what my family tells me. They, too, just like ArriveCAN, asked all the possible information about who we are, where we are going and we had to sign off upon threat of perjury that should we test positive that day, we would have to quarantine for 14 days at the address we were staying in Toronto (which was our hotel).

So now, let me tell you: you wanna know everything there is to know about me, my husband, our health, passport numbers, height, eye color, shoe size? Ask Canada! Between ArriveCAN and SwitchHealth, they’d be able to dig something up! We did receive the results on the SwitchHealth online portal (with an email notification), just like they told us at the border, in almost exactly 48 hours. They were very certain it will not be less than that and they were right. Like clockwork.

Two days was all we were spending in Toronto anyway, so we were wondering what would have happened if the results came in right as we were leaving – we would have “escaped” without quarantining, but … thank goodness we didn’t have to find that out!

Canada abounded in these signs - this one just as we entered Toronto

Canada was such a good visit! As scared and threatened by inconsiderate and lying people as I feel in the US about whatever they carry and expose me to, I felt 100% safe there. They truly have hand sanitizer dispensers every 10 feet in any indoor public space and during our stay there was not one of them that was not working or empty. They are all touchless too. You need a mask for all indoor places, no tolerance for unmasked people. You also need proof of vaccination for all the restaurants, hotels, and all the museums you want to visit. Museum entry is timed, so they allow only so many people at once in there. Again, zero tolerance for the proof of vaccination: you don’t have that, you are not allowed entry. And everyone complies. Everyone is polite and moves about their business and everyone still goes and sees places and has a good time, without having to feel like they ingest COVID boogers with every breath because of 10,000 lying inconsiderate you-know-what’s around them.

This was quite a lesson! I am sure every border crossing will be different from now on for the rest of our lives. I am sure that going to Europe will be different than this – the demands and restrictions will be different with each country and means of transport. But I digress.

Toronto is a great, big city but it is incredibly clean! Even my 10 year old nephew who lives outside Montreal noticed that “Toronto is so much cleaner than Montreal”. People are kind and patient, never rushed, like in our Northern big cities. They are helpful and welcoming. I was surprised how many vegan options I found in restaurants, even at our hotel: it is not just a matter of tolerance there, but it feels like true inclusion.

We did touristy, Toronto-related things while here, like climbing up to the glass floor in the CN Tower and visiting the exhibits of the Royal Ontario Museum. But there were two activities that stood out for me: a walk around Toronto Islands was a welcome surprise. A short ferry ride takes you to the middle of Lake Ontario and you truly get a sense of what the currents are like on this enormous lake! The winds are nothing short of amazing, even on a sunny fall day. Walking through parks and neighborhoods along the water with the wind blowing my hair every which direction and turning me into a banshee was refreshing … All worries washed out … There are several neighborhoods on Ward’s Island, even a school – it’s like a mini-small town outside of Toronto. The yards were overgrown with tired flowers and bushes, only a pale testimony of how green and lush they once were in the summer. I was trying to imagine how these people live in the winter when the winds are the cruelest and the lake freezes over, so the ferry service must stop. It would be nice for writer’s isolation, but not productive living, I am sure. We spent a couple of hours on these islands just walking and having family time. No services were open, so restaurants, cafes and the amusement park were closed. But the quiet, the peace, the isolation, minutes away from a bustling city across the water will stay with us.

Some views from our walk around Toronto Islands

My second Toronto highlight was Casa Loma (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casa_Loma). Built at the beginning of the 20^th century by Sir Henry Pellatt, a banker, investor, and British knight, it is an amazing construction, a large private residence and lastly, a castle. I saw Casa Loma in a Toronto advertisement going across my screen when I was booking the hotel for this trip and something about it called my name: the British, almost medieval look, the secrecy and grandeur, and the fact that it is in Toronto, Canada of all places (when it should be in Scotland or Ireland or some other place) just spoke to me. It did not disappoint. If you are into architecture, or history (especially British and North American history), it is a must-see when you are in Canada. I came home with a book about the family who built it and the building process and the history of the home after the family’s status fell and they were forced to sell it piece by piece. It just fascinated me as if maybe many generations ago my own family might have lived there (very seriously doubting this).

The impressive Casa Loma

After two full days in the capital of Ontario, saddened that we were parting with family and unknowing of when our next get-together might happen, we started our long journey back towards the US to come home. Crossing the border back to the US was nothing like crossing it into Canada. In a symbolic testimony of how the US does the COVID pandemic, the border officer was not masked and the first thing he ordered us to do in a gruff and unfriendly tone was “Masks down!”. Then, he waved us through after checking our passports.

We stopped briefly to the Niagara Falls State Park for some pictures and then away we went to reach our next destination in Harrisburg, PA that last night on the road. We drove through beautiful places that day in Western New York state, rolling hills clad in autumn colors, but the rain and fog were so thick the pictures we took do them no justice. The following day, we stopped in Lancaster County, PA to take in some of the Amish countryside, but we could really not partake into any of the offerings as it was Sunday and everything was closed.

It was a whirlwind of a trip, with mixed feelings, much love and many meaningful hugs (which were the most important, to me). With lots of new places and people watching, something we have been hungry for for too long. Stresses we never had before and joys, too, that were new.

One thing I know for sure: I never did much of this before, but now I know that I will never take the privilege of traveling for granted again. Travels have taught me so much, always, but especially now, when we’re trying to understand a new world, you find that every action, every stop, every person you interact with truly teaches you something new. You cannot help but learn so many new ways in which others do life. Ways you would never dream of when you’re just watching life go by from your couch. There are new learnings everywhere, close and far, but when you do go far, the learnings are exponentially bigger. Exposing yourself to the world, making yourself vulnerable only empowers you.

Happy, mindful, respectful, and safe travels, you all!

Click on the CN Tower picture to see all the pictures from this trip

Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained

From a place of humility rather than from one of bragging, I can say that I have traveled quite a bit for a girl from a small, Eastern European country. I climbed many a mountain in my day, in several places in Romania, Turkey, all over the American Rockies and Smokies, as well as climbed a few cliffs and rocky Mayan temples in the Central American jungle. I have been hiking and climbing since I was 6 or 7 years old – not the professional, competitive type, I am a home body at heart, but the easy, relaxing type of hiking, where you can take it easy and stop (often) for a break and for pictures. Always stop for pictures. Trails and I are good friends. The best of them, really.

I even climbed a limestone mountain covered by thermal spring water in the heart of the Turkish dessert. I might have slipped here and there in my journeys, but never (that I can remember) fell. No. The fall was going to be on this skinny trail in the middle (not quite) of the Atlantic Ocean. At sea level, surrounded by nothing but water, with all the pelicans and gulls to watch over me and laugh.

I was fed up with the house. We have still been mostly isolating (less than last year, but still not back to our normal travel schedule yet), still being in the house too much this summer. We had to give up weekends and could not go anywhere because one time there was a shortage of gas (we could not venture too far from our town for fear of running out of it and not being able to find a gas station to refill). We had to give up a couple of weekends because of constant rain (tropical storm season!), or health reasons (ah, well, what can you do about that?!). But this weekend, we were going to be out, darn it. Come hell or high water, we were going to drive to the beach and just shoot some birds for a few hours. (Spoiler: nothing ever good will happen when you say “hell or high water”).

We had a lovely seafood meal at Elijah’s on Wilmington’s waterfront of the Cape Fear river, we walked the streets of the city in 108 degree (according to my car’s thermometer) heat, we visited The Bellamy Mansion on Market Street – a gorgeous ante-bellum mansion that speaks volumes about that gone with the wind era, and we finally headed to Carolina/ Kure beach to walk around Fort Fisher, a military fort since the times of the American Civil War.

The Cape Fear Memorial Bridge - Wilmington, NC

I have never seen this boardwalk this empty

Empty streets at Chandler's Warf in downtown Wilmington. The extreme heat at 1 PM sent everyone indoors, no doubt. 

The Bellamy Mansion, 1861

On the map, trying to plan for the trip to The Fort, I had seen these formations in the water that looked like a dam made of rocks piled together. The dam started at Fort Fisher and it kinda disappeared into the ocean, according to Apple Maps. It looked like a great place to shoot some water birds, fishermen’s boats, the Fort Fisher Ferry.

We parked outside The Fort and walked across some sand dunes towards the water. Then, we saw the dam – long, winding through the calm waters, the Cape Fear river on the right, the Atlantic Ocean on the left. Sea gulls, pelicans, cormorants were flying above and we were trying to catch some with our cameras. Crabs were burying in the sand and dragon flies were sunning on reeds. The air was paralyzed with heat. You could not even smell the salt of the ocean, because there was no breeze – everything was sleepy and silent, except for the chatty gulls every now and again.

Various shots around Fort Fisher and from The Rocks

A shot from The Rocks, looking out to their "end" which we did not reach...

I wanted us to walk those rocks as far as we could walk them. And we did. For as far … until bam! I went down like a billion pound sack of potatoes and rattled the world! The dam had not for one second seemed wet or slippery! I personally had not seen any warning signs that it might be. There were people on it, walking and taking in the ocean air, people fishing, kids running around, dogs prancing. The rocks were porous and dry, with the hot early afternoon sun baking them – 108 degrees, remember?!  I did not see one person losing a footing or wobbling in the very least. The fact that my foot all of a sudden slipped like I was walking on ice was a total shock. And down I went – sun glasses flew one way, my camera (around my neck) hit the ground hard, and my left thigh, knee, ankle, wrist, and elbow all served as cushion between the rest of my body and the black, grimy, probably algae-covered rock, where oyster shells were cemented probably for centuries, sharp side up (of course!) … The rock scraped my skin off my thigh in two areas about the size of dollar bills. The shells cut deep into my flesh in so many spots I can’t count. My first thoughts were: “Oh, please don’t let any bacteria run into my blood stream from this sea muck!” and “Ouch! That’s gonna hurt tomorrow!”

My husband was livid with worry, ensuring nothing was broken (nothing seemed broken or not working). We started walking towards the car. I guess this was as far as we could go.

Another couple with a dog saw this and offered help, even chocolate. I politely declined, but during our exchange both the lady and I noticed their dog was bleeding from one foot – the dog, too, had slid earlier, they shared, and probably cut one of the paws in the sharp oyster shells. I was walking just fine, but I could tell my thigh was starting to swell up. Thank goodness I am loaded with hand sanitizer, so, I bathed all the wounds in it even before we got to the car where we had disinfecting alcohol.

Back home, I did a little research on The Rocks, as the dam is called. Almost every site that had a story on them (a long rock jetty built and completed in 1881 to aid navigation by stopping shoaling in the Cape Fear River) warned against walking on them because they are slippery and sharp (who knew?!). They also said they connected Fort Fisher to Zeke’s Island and at high tide they become completely covered leaving tourists who walk them all the way stranded on the island. They mentioned in several spots how the local authorities are called frequently to tend to cuts and cruises from the frequent falls of unassuming foot travelers like us.

I hope you agree from some of the pictures – the walk was all worth it. It’s one of those “end of the world” feeling this place has, where the Cape Fear pours into the ocean. Would I do it again or recommend it: probably, yes to both, but … do your research before you go there, not after like me! Get some good shoes (people were walking in thong flipflops, I had hiking shoes on, and still!) with serious rubber grips and walk slowly! It’s definitely a place I wanted to explore, because it’s like no other I have ever explored. Now, I also have a heck of a tale to tell that will make it even more memorable. My childhood best friend’s grandpa used to tell us all the time that you never want a trip to be eventless, because you’ll never remember it. Well this one, friends, will be remembered for a long while to come …