Adventure #1: The world’s longest pedestrian walkway? Oh, hail, yes!

On Friday morning I woke up with a bit of wanderlust. I’m still a year away from setting off on my epic world tour, and I’ve been reading and thinking and I want my adventures to start today! One of the things I’ve been reading about is solo travel, particularly for women. I will admit, the idea of going to a foreign country by myself is a little daunting. I just finished reading two books, The One-Way Ticket Plan: Find and Fund Your Purpose While Traveling the World by Alexa West and A Trip of One’s Own: Hope, Heartbreak, and Why Traveling Solo Could Change Your Life by Kate Wills. Man, did these books get me excited.

I decided to start small. A week ago I went to the movies by myself. This sounds like the tiniest thing, but I’ve literally never done it before. It was awesome! I got to choose whatever movie I wanted, no idle chit chat before and after the movie (or worse, during!). It was a matinee so the ticket was only $8. What a great way to spend an afternoon. I will definitely be doing that again.

Emboldened by this glimpse of solo adventure, I decided to take a road trip by myself. I recently took up cycling so I fired up the biking app and searched for a scenic 30-mile loop within a 1-2 hour drive. One look at the Walkway over the Hudson in Poughkeepsie, and I knew I’d found my destination. Who knew that the world’s longest elevated pedestrian bridge was just an hour and a half up the road?

Excited, I began to plan my trip in earnest. I found an inexpensive hotel about 10 minutes from the walkway. I made a reservation, with check-in at 3 pm. Then I searched for restaurants in the area and found that there was a highly rated Mexican restaurant called La Catrina just half a mile down the road. I searched for movie theaters and found one in Poughkeepsie. I figured I’d drive up, check into the hotel, catch a 4 pm movie, eat at the restaurant, hang out in the hotel room until bedtime, then head out for my long bike ride in the morning before driving back home. A perfect plan (see Lesson #1, below).

I decided to break out my new travel backpack. It was definitely overkill for this 24-hour trip, but I was excited to test it out. It’s an Osprey Fairview 55L and this thing is SO well designed. I swear, every time I watch a review about this backpack I learn about another new feature. Between gear for the bike ride and my overnight stay I ended up with an embarrassing amount of stuff, and it took me hours to get out the door. So long, in fact, that I ended up leaving after 3 pm and missed the movie I had picked out. I will have to work on being much more efficient with packing, both in terms of time and quantity. I threw together a quick cheese sandwich, tucked it into the outside pocket of my backpack, and hit the road.

The drive up to Poughkeepsie was fairly uneventful, it’s a beautiful stretch of the Taconic State Parkway. I had a full tank of gas and a full stomach, and I was excited to be on my way. At one point I drove through a lightning storm. At first there was no rain, so I could really see the lightning bolts. Then the skies opened. Waze took me off the highway and I found myself driving 20 miles an hour through pouring rain behind a car with its hazard lights on, slow enough that I could see into the storefronts of a quaint little town called Pleasant Valley. I heard a strange sound, and then pea-sized balls of ice started bouncing off my windshield – hail! What a rare treat.

I finally got to the hotel around 4:30 pm and checked in. My room was tiny, with barely enough room to stash my bike at the foot of the bed. But it was clean, and it was all mine. I unpacked my things and tried to decide what time to head to the restaurant. I googled “how long does it take to eat dinner at the bar in a restaurant?” and decided to give it 90 minutes, just to be safe. It only took an hour.

La Catrina is adorable. I sat down at the bar and was immediately served a basket of warm tortilla chips with side dishes of salsa and refried beans with cotija cheese. I ordered a margarita from the friendly female bartender, and was delighted when it arrived in a giant hand-blown stemmed glass. I ordered three street tacos and read Love in the Time of Cholera on my Kindle while I ate them. It was peaceful, and delicious. I took a picture of my food, to remember it later. And to share it with you. That got me thinking about how I want to document my adventures. I certainly don’t want to miss out on an experience because I’m too busy trying to get it on camera. I will strive to find that balance in time (see Lesson #2).

In a fortuitous turn of events, there was a movie theater two doors down from the restaurant. This theater looks like it came straight out of 1980. It reminded me of the theater I grew up with, The Warwick, where all my earliest memories of going to the movies are from. I had planned to go to a 6:45 pm showing of Deadpool & Wolverine, but I finished dinner so early that I ended up going to a 6:15 pm 3D showing instead. The movie was entertaining. I went back to the room and hung out until it was time to go to sleep.

I slept terribly. I always sleep badly the first night in a new place. I woke up at 8 am and saw that the temperature was already in the mid-70s. I wolfed down coffee and free breakfast in the lobby and hit the road. My bike ride was long, and hot, but so enjoyable. At the end of the 30-mile loop I took a detour and biked across the Hudson. The views from the walkway were incredible, the highlight of the trip. It would have been a fantastic adventure, even without the amazing scenery. I got back in the car and made my way home. Tired but exhilarated, I had now completed my first of many adventures.