College Road Trip 3.0

 Hello and welcome to a Green Mountain State Saturday here at the Wannaskan Almanac. Today is June 10th.

Yep, folks, it finally happened - the WAKWIR* became a senior! In our house, this means a college road trip adventure to see what the world (at least the U.S.) has to offer in terms of higher education. This year's trip brought us to the East Coast where we kicked off the tours with a weekend in Burlington, Vermont where The Oldest is doing an internship this summer.

Similar to how "Land of 10,000 Lakes" pretty much sums up Minnesota, "The Green Mountain State" is the perfect moniker for Vermont because it IS green and mountainous. We flew at night, then drove up from Boston in the middle of the night to a gradual dawning of day over lush, green mountains that made me think of the Organic Valley milk cartons, which don't have mountains on them at all, but really should.

We spent the weekend at an Airbnb in South Hero, a town in the Lake Champlain Islands. While we breakfasted on Wally's Place bagels, visited a farmer's market, and walked down the Island Line Rail Trail (we didn't have bikes but still took the ferry), on Sunday, we were happy to just be together and binge-watched New Girl on Hulu.

Refreshed and ready to hit the road, on Monday, we headed south to New York City. Now, I have to say that, while we may grumble about everything being so far from Wannaska, all that distance driving does prepare one to hoof it when called upon to do so. So, for us, driving the 5+ hours down to NYC was no biggie. Been there, done that, right?

The wins for the NYC adventure included learning how to use an app to find an affordable parking garage near campus as well as reserving and paying for it, getting to see Greenwich Village and Washington Square, and the WAKWIR getting a firsthand whiff of pot. It's good, I think, when a kid can apply all that drug-free awareness curriculum to real-world settings. While the Washington Square vendors made sales on edibles, non-edibles, and t-shirts - we got a crash-course tour of NYU. I'd like to tell you more, but honestly, our student ambassador spoke so quickly, I missed most of the content. The fatigue from the drive settling in, all I really wanted was a coffee and a nap which I eventually got on a park bench in Washington Square, never mind the earthy essence pervading the park. There was good live music and even better people watching. Ah, New York... I really do love it. The WAKWIR, on the other hand, while glad to have experienced it, was ready to hit the road and reach our next destination.

God has blessed this entire trip and an example of that is the smooth sailing drive out of Manhattan and into New Jersey. "That never happens," our hosts in Philadelphia said when we arrived at their house at a reasonable 8pm.

Tuesday morning, we headed into Philly for our next stop, Drexel University. We were greeted with immediate good vibes. Drexel is kitty corner from the University of Pennsylvania. One thing I really enjoy about these urban schools is that they hang colorful banners from light posts denoting campus buildings. These banners add some festive color to all the architectural colors - gray, beige, brown - as well as create a sense of identity and community. Drexel's eye-popping yellow and blue (Go, Dragons!) banners definitely emoted more Rah! Rah! Rah! than Penn's sulkier white, blue and red.

After a quick jaunt through the world-renowned Longwood Gardens, on Wednesday we headed to Lancaster County west of Philadelphia to Millersville University. This school was a sweet surprise in the more rural, small-town countryside outside of Lancaster. Fun fact: Lady Gaga was spotted grabbing a coffee in Lancaster (the city) the week prior because there is a major recording studio and live event company in the area called Rock Lititz making Millersville an excellent choice for music technology and/or production. 

By Millersville, like most people on the East Coast, we were watching the Air Quality Index (AQI) as the smoke from Canadian fires descended upon the U.S. We mostly encountered haze and cooler-than-normal temperatures.

Thursday had us at American University in Washington D.C. Excuse me - The American University. Everything about this school was a bust. Shabby furniture, a PowerPoint presentation that looked like something a high school sophomore would throw together right before it's due - and the sophomore would probably do an even better job. To top all that wah-wah-wah of a welcome, the tours got called off due to the AQI. Not impressive for a $ 70k-a-year school. But all was salvaged when we headed over to the National Mall. All was redeemed when we took in the Washington Monument, Lincoln Monument, WWII, Korean, and Vietnam Memorials. Seeing the White House, the U.S. Capitol and all the sights in between stirred my sense of citizenship. The WAKWIR wondered aloud if all this electric collective sense of community we were feeling was due to being in the actual physical spaces where change on a national scale happened and continues to happen. In our far-flung Wannaska home, it's all too easy to be "out of sight, out of mind."

The last college stop of the week was the Peabody Institute at Johns Hopkins University. Excuse me, The Johns Hopkins University. We went in dubious. So far, the biggest name institutions had lackluster (at best) welcomes and presentations (and no swag), which made sense because these schools don't need to recruit students; they're famous! However, Peabody was pretty impressive. While it is part of The JHU, it behaves like a separate entity with its own admissions, housing, dining, student affairs, and financial aid office. Jake from Wisconsin was our tour guide and I snapped a pic of the Washington Monument right outside the window.

Finally, it was time to hit the road, back to the Green Mountain State. Driving back through New York, we reflected on our week. The WAKWIR said, "You know, I'm really glad we started the week off with New York. It was so big and it just made all the other cities seem smaller."

Greetings from the Green Mountain State where we are munching on snacks in a cozy Airbnb tucked into the mountains at the end of the road in the middle of nowhere.

*Wannaskan Almanac Kid Writer-in-Residence