2,100 Miles, One Weekend, and a Waterfall Taller Than Niagara

I moved to the US in 2023 for my Master's in Computer Science at Rice, and the last couple of years have had their share of ups and downs - the kind that come with starting over in a new country, building a life from scratch, and figuring things out one semester and one job at a time. This year, especially the last few months, I made a quiet decision to start doing more things just for myself again. Turns out all I really needed was a full tank of gas, a rented Nissan Rogue, and an excuse to drive.

So over a long weekend, I did something I'd been wanting to do for a while: a 2,100-mile round trip from Atlanta up to the Finger Lakes region of New York and back, with my cousin along for the ride and a friend joining us partway through.

The Drive Up: Atlanta to Pittsburgh

We started from Atlanta around 1:18 PM, headed up I-85 with a full tank and no real agenda beyond "let's just drive." That plan hit its first snag almost immediately - a big traffic jam before Greenville slowed everything down and ate into our afternoon before we'd even really gotten started. By the time we finally rolled through Charlotte it was already 5:30-6 PM, later than I'd hoped, but nobody in the car seemed to mind much.

From Charlotte we picked up I-77 north, and this is the stretch I actually remember best. Somewhere around the Virginia border, the sun started setting, and the whole drive turned into one of those quietly beautiful stretches of road - mountains going orange, then pink, then grey as the light dropped out of the sky. I-77 carries you right up through Virginia and drops into West Virginia through some genuinely gorgeous terrain, all ridgelines and tunnels cut through rock.

We stopped in Beckley, West Virginia around 10 PM - gas, a Subway dinner eaten mostly in the parking lot, and a few minutes just standing around stretching our legs before getting back in. From Beckley we stayed on I-77 up toward Charleston, then swapped onto I-79 north, which is the highway that actually carries you the rest of the way into Pittsburgh. We pulled in late, and a friend of mine put us up for the night - the kind of low-key, no-questions-asked hospitality that makes a long drive feel less long.

Finger Lakes, Cayuga, and a Waterfall Taller Than Niagara

The next morning, my friend joined us, and the three of us headed north to the Finger Lakes - that whole stretch of upstate New York that's basically eleven long, narrow glacial lakes carved into the landscape, ringed with vineyards and small towns.

This is the part of the trip that genuinely surprised me. I knew the Finger Lakes were supposed to be pretty, but I didn't expect to end up standing in front of Taughannock Falls - a 215-foot single-drop waterfall that's actually taller than Niagara Falls. It doesn't have anywhere near the water volume of Niagara, obviously, but the drop itself is something else entirely: a sheer wall of rock with water falling straight down into a green, quiet gorge, and almost none of the crowds you'd expect somewhere this impressive. We stood there for a good while just taking it in, cameras out, nobody in much of a hurry to leave.

From there we drove along Cayuga Lake, the longest of the Finger Lakes, with water on one side of the road and vineyards climbing the hills on the other, and made our way into Ithaca, which sits right at the lake's southern edge. We walked around Cornell University's campus for a bit - that mix of old stone buildings and steep, green hills that Ithaca is known for - grabbed some food, and eventually settled into an Airbnb in nearby Cortland for the night, ready to actually rest for once.

Watkins Glen Gorge

The next day was all about Watkins Glen State Park, on the southern tip of Seneca Lake. The gorge trail there cuts straight through the rock - nineteen waterfalls in about two miles, past cliffs, under stone bridges, up staircases that were literally carved into the walls of the gorge itself. Photos genuinely undersell it. You're not looking at the geology from some overlook, you're walking through the middle of it, water on both sides, mist in the air the whole way.

By evening we'd made our way back to Pittsburgh, tired in the good way - legs sore from hiking, feet a little wet, head clearer than it had been in a while. We grabbed a quick dinner, talked through the day, and crashed early.

The Drive Home

We left Pittsburgh at 7:30 AM and retraced the whole route back - I-79 down to Charleston, I-77 through West Virginia and Virginia, then I-85 through North Carolina and South Carolina - rolling into Atlanta right around 7:30 PM. Twelve hours, same roads as the way up, but a completely different feeling in the car. Less "let's see what happens" energy, more quiet satisfaction, the kind that settles in after a trip actually goes the way you hoped it would.

Why This One Mattered

I've always loved cars, always loved driving. Somewhere in the middle of the last couple of years, between school and work and everything else, I stopped doing things just because I loved them - everything became about the next deadline, the next milestone, the next thing to figure out. This trip was one of the first times in a while I did something purely for myself, no other reason attached - good company, good roads, and a waterfall that put things in perspective for a minute.

2,100 miles, four states each way, and a version of me that's slowly getting back to the things he loves.

Small footnote: the car for this whole trip was a rented Nissan Rogue from Enterprise, and I'm fully in love with it now. Somewhere in 2,100 miles it earned that - enough that when I dropped it back off, the guy at Enterprise took one look and said it needed an oil change. Yeah. That's how you know it was a real road trip.

More of these to come.