Road Trip

I know this wasn’t in Manhattan, but bear with me. This outdoor experience was the culmination of a massive, spontaneous, 6-day, 49-hour, 3000-mile road trip starting in Manhattan and ending in Fayetteville, Arkansas before our 5-hour drive home. This whole road trip was unplanned and entirely on the fly yet we spent less than $300 per person to go through eleven states and stay on the beach in Destin, Florida. Along the way I had the opportunity to visit one of the most beautiful outdoor areas I’ve ever experienced on Lake Cumberland in Jamestown, Kentucky. A friend of ours had found out about our road trip and invited us to stop by his lake house for the day on the way through Tennessee. My two friends and I, along with the two girls we were staying with, drove up from Knoxville to Jamestown to meet our friend AJ at his lake house. When we got there, he pulled his two jet skis from their shed and we took them to the dock. After that was one of the most amazing. Lake Cumberland is a man-made reservoir in Southern Kentucky, but every inch of it feels as natural as any other lake out there. The color of the water was a clear greenish-blue and the trees were as green as can be. It was a very calm day so the water was as smooth as glass and the weather was pleasant. Warm enough to swim in the lake but cloudy to prevent the sun from making things uncomfortable. At first, we put three full grown adults on a jet ski and had some issues. We knocked it down to two and had some success, but once you were on that thing solo, it was the most incredible feeling. You don’t realize how fast 50 miles per hour is until the wind is whipping your hair in your face and you’re doing fishtails in open water on a jet ski. The best part about this is the spontaneity of it all. We had no plans for anything like this to happen, yet we ran into so many people that were willing to help us have a memorable summer that culminated with an amazing outdoor experience. If you ever get the chance to ride a jet ski on a lake like this, I encourage you to do it. There is a bit of a learning curve to driving a jet ski but I promise you that its worth it. Of course you need to find a jet ski to use one, but that’s why it’s such a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Lots of large lakes or beaches will give the opportunity to rent jet skis for often reasonable prices, and its truly one of the best outdoor experiences I have ever had.

Written by H Hess