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.
Before this trip, I had never been to Texas or New Mexico. Initially, our plan was to visit only Big Bend National Park in southern Texas, near the border with Mexico. However, we stumbled upon a blog where the author mentioned that there are several other national parks not far from Big Bend. In fact, the area is home to four remarkable parks– Big Bend, Guadalupe Mountains, Carlsbad Caverns, and White Sands. Despite their proximity, these parks are incredibly distinct from one another. We thoroughly enjoyed exploring the unique natural beauty each had to offer.
After we found out that there are some flights from Willard (a regional airport in Champaign) that are inexpensive, we started flying out from here instaead of Chicago. We got a really good price of plane tickets to Seattle, so we decided to go to more national parks! The two parks that we visited were Mount Rainier and Olympic National Parks. We thought about going to North Cascade as well, but the time was limited so we planned to visit there next time. Visiting these two popular national parks in the fall was such a good choice–less crowd, nice weather, and fall foliage!
Midwest surprisingly offers us many national parks to visit all year round. One of the national parks near Illinois is the Mammoth Cave National Park in Cave City, Kentucky. We rented a car from Champaign and drove around 5 hours, excluding small stops in Indiana. We had never been to Kentucky before, and we believe that not many international students had been there. Plus, this was the first time we visited a cave in the US, and we start with the world’s longest known cave system!
We’d been thinking of visiting South Dakota to see Mount Rushmore and Badlands national park for almost a year. Then an opportunity came when one of our friends gave us a buy-one-get-one-free coupon from Delta. We did not hestitate even a bit in buying two tickets for a round trip from Chicago to Rapid City, SD. Although it was an impulsive trip, we had a lot of fun observing the wildlife in the great plains of South Dakota and North Dakota.