Tulip time festival, Holland, MI
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I have seen many people in the midwest area go see tulip fields every April and May. This year I decided to go to Holland, Michigan, which is known for their tulip festival. The trip was planned quite implusively as I was not sure if I would have time during the end of Spring 2024 semester. We are so happy that we went there. It was a nice little trip to finish off my third year of Ph.D.
To start off, we first went to “Tulip Immersion Garden”, which was 15 minutes away from the downtown. We booked a ticket without knowing that we could also see the tulips almost everywhere in the town. However, it was not a ripoff or anything. The place was gorgeous though not very large. Their tulips were the freshest and most well-maintained compared to other places in the town. We spent a good hour there and bought a cute porcelain cow back home as well.
The second tulip field that we went to was the permanent tulip farm called “Windmill Island”. It is located in the heart of the town and features a real Dutch windmill called “De Zwaan”. There are many kind of tulips that you can look around but some of them also got stepped by the careless crowd. We really like how they arranged the flowers along with many decorations. We then went to the downtown to see if there were anything interesting. Surprisingly, the town took the festival very seriously. They set many portable toilet all over the town and had food trucks at more than 4 spots in their small city. We got a jumbo corndog and a soda to refresh ourselves.
On the second day, we started off with one of the best breakfast we had in the US at “Windmill Restaurant”. We lined up for 15 minutes before we got called, but the service was actually very quick and their waitresses were very nice. We ordered a regular dish like hashbrown, bacon, and eggs and also a rolled up pancake. They were made perfectly! On the way back to Champaign, we also stopped by Indiana Dunes National Park. The park is not big but enjoyable. We strolled along the beach for a bit and were headed back to Champaign.
At the end of Summer 2025, we embarked on a grand tour of the northern United States. Our goal was to explore a mix of popular national parks and hidden gems across Montana, Wyoming, Oregon, and Washington. The journey took us through breathtaking mountain ranges and bountiful wilderness teeming with wildlife. Thanks to booking our flights more than six months in advance, we were lucky enough to fly directly out of Champaign, a perfect start to our adventure!
This past July, we embarked on a whirlwind three-day trip to visit some of California’s national parks that were still on our list, namely, Channel Islands, Pinnacles, and Kings Canyon. While they may be less famous than their neighbors, we found them to be refreshing, full of fun, and wonderfully family-friendly. The trip was a showcase of California’s diverse wildlife, giving us our first-ever sightings of whales, island foxes, scrub jays, and California quails, and that’s not even counting the school of dolphins that raced our ferry to and from the Channel Islands!
This trip was a triumphant redemption for our failed attempt last year, exactly one year prior, when Frontier Airlines unexpectedly canceled our flight just eight hours before departure, derailing our Fourth of July plans. This year’s adventure, thankfully, proved to be the best redemption ever! We successfully visited all the national parks in Colorado and even managed to include Wind Cave National Park in South Dakota, which we’d missed last summer.
We had the chance to return to England for Poy’s graduation at Oxford University—a trip filled with celebration, friends, and family. It was such a joy to revisit familiar places and explore new ones, like Canterbury and Hampton Court Palace, which took us a bit outside the city. Accompanied by Poy’s family and my college bestie, Emma, the trip was packed with laughter, meaningful moments, and plenty of walking—over 15,000 steps a day!