Wander anywhere in the United States, and you’ll still find somewhere to explore, something to contemplate
Americans love water so much that their country must be Cancerian. Their Independence Day is July 4, after all. This spring I made my way westward across the U.S.A., perhaps not as lyrically as Jack Kerouac or Lana Del Rey have, but still easy riding across the physical immensity of these continental States. At one end of my trip was rural lakeside New Hampshire; at the other was the aquamarine Pacific Ocean. It is both a cliché and a truism that America is coast to coast.
My last lakeside visit was more than a decade ago when I visited a Cornell University physicist who was once my college roommate. We drove to Ithaca, located on Cayuga Lake, one of those that comprise the Finger Lakes region in upstate New York. The elongated lakes point away from Lake Ontario and Niagara Falls. Not surprisingly, American lakes are blue and translucent: no bathing buffaloes, no cement factories. Lakes here remind you to go swimming or boating or fishing; or just laze and take in the beauty of the New World. On the way we even stopped at the Corning Museum of Glass, in Corning, New York, famous for Corningware. The Museum is, perhaps intentionally, a surrealist palace of optical illusion; and a must visit. Glass, glassy lakes: something sparkles about America.
This story is from the October 2017 edition of National Geographic Traveller India.
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This story is from the October 2017 edition of National Geographic Traveller India.
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