The Central West End is the neighborhood we chose to stay in, which is strategically located between Forest Park and downtown St Louis. It is a safe neighborhood, and Saint Louis University’s campus is only a block away from our accommodation. Even before the trip, we were very well aware that St Louis consistently ranks among the most dangerous cities in the US every year. In fact, we heard about a high school shooting incident on TV on the second night of our stay, which occurred just 3 miles south of our accommodation. We also drove past the bright collapsible spotlights and reporters’ vans parked beside the school on the following rainy evening. It’s worth noting that the high crime areas are mainly concentrated on the north side of downtown St Louis and in East St Louis. East St Louis is technically not part of St Louis since it is located across the Mississippi River in Illinois.

We allocated a full day to explore the Gateway Arch National Park and downtown St Louis. Knowing that parking in big cities is always problematic and costly, we left our car in the parking garage for the entire day and explored by foot instead. Our combo tickets covered a tram ride to the top of the Gateway Arch, a short documentary movie, and a riverboat cruise. It was fascinating to learn about the purpose of this arch and how President Thomas Jefferson played a pivotal role in the westward expansion by acquiring the Louisiana Territory from France. On the other hand, the riverboat cruise on the Mississippi River in the afternoon was a rather forgettable experience. Apart from admiring the giant arch from different angles and enjoying the beautiful fall weather, nothing was interesting outside that area, especially on the Illinois side. In the evening, we drove across the river to watch the sunset overlooking the St Louis skyline from the Illinois side.

We visited several public parks throughout the stay to capture the fall colors. In addition, we took advantage of the free attractions in St Louis and its vicinities, such as the St Louis Zoo, St Louis Art Museum, Missouri History Museum, World Chess Hall of Fame, and Ulysses S. Grant National Historic Site. Besides covering the city attractions, we hiked in Lone Elk Park, Castlewood State Park in Missouri, and Pere Marquette State Park in Illinois. One of the trip highlights was the Anheuser-Busch Brewery tour. The guided tour was 2 hours long, and it wasn’t cheap, but we got to drink lots of beer to make up for the price. Our tour guide also shared many interesting stories, two of which stood out. One story was how the brewery founder originally wanted to name the current Busch Stadium as Budweiser Stadium. However, the Major League Baseball rules prohibited naming a venue after an alcoholic beverage. So, the owner circumvented that rule by naming it after himself and introducing Busch Beer later. The second story was about Walt Disney’s ambition to open a second theme park at St Louis Riverfront (where the Gateway Arch is currently located). However, the founder’s great-grandson vehemently opposed this idea after discovering that the theme park would not serve beer. Hence, Disney World was built in sunny Florida.

Our drive home included a stop in a small city named Hannibal. When we drove past this city on our way to St Louis, the city’s name piqued my interest. My impromptu research discovered this city is definitely not named after Hannibal Lecter (because it would be silly). Instead, it is the boyhood home of Mark Twain. I vividly remember my struggles with the college’s English reading assignments about Huckleberry Finn’s adventures. Every student was required to share their opinions after reading the assigned chapters. In the class, 2 nerdy students dominated the discussions among themselves and the teacher. Besides being lazy, the idea of speculating based on a storybook was odd to me since we could have read further chapters to learn about Finn’s next adventure. I digress. It is also worth mentioning that Samuel Clemens and Mark Twain refer to the same person, whereas the latter is the pen name of the earlier. As we drove home, we passed by a state park named Wakonda in Missouri, which we obviously had a few good chuckles at. And no, Black Panther is not a Missourian.

The overall trip was enjoyable. We were blessed with excellent weather and stunning fall colors, not to mention the gas price was considerably lower in Missouri. We tried several classic St Louis foods such as St Louis-style ribs, toasted ravioli, gooey butter cake, and pizza with Provel cheese. We also had several fantastic Chinese cuisines in the Chinatown area. Apart from a few ghetto areas we had to drive through near downtown St Louis, the rest of the neighborhoods were generally very safe for us to explore.

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Knowing that most trails have little to no shade, we visited TRNP in the early fall instead of summer to make the hikes a little more bearable. Still, it was unseasonably hot during our first 2 full days in the park. While it was very chilly in the morning, the temperature quickly rose up to the 90s before noon. We chose to stay in Dickinson instead of Medora even though the latter was literally right outside the park and the earlier was a half hour drive away. We were initially concerned that Medora would become a ghost town during the off season, and we were right. While still limited, there were more restaurant choices in Dickinson since it is the largest city near TRNP with a population of 20K whereas Medora has less than 130 people.

TRNP is the only national park named after a US President and it consists of 3 units (North, South and Elkhorn Ranch). We spent a day in the South Unit, a day in the North Unit, half a day in the Petrified Forest and skipped the Elkhorn Ranch Unit because it is located in a very remote area and may require a high clearance vehicle on unpaved roads. Although the South Unit is twice as large as the North Unit and has more visitors due to its proximity to I-94, we very much preferred the North Unit due to its rugged landscape. One interesting fact is the North Unit operates on Central time while the South Unit operates on Mountain Time. So, while we arrived at the North Unit’s entrance at 8 AM Mountain time, it was actually 9 AM Central time… just in time for the visitor center to open for us to use the restroom. Our most pleasant surprise was to witness the fall colors in TRNP with plenty of hardwoods wrapping around the long winding Little Missouri River. Although we visited Badlands National Park in South Dakota before, the North Dakota’s Badlands are older, look different and have heavier vegetation.

Many oil pumpjacks could be seen in the western North Dakota due to the existence of the Bakken Formation in this area — one of the largest contiguous deposits of oil and natural gas in the US. Unsurprisingly, North Dakota is also one of the largest producers of oil in the US. It is also worth mentioning that most lakes in the western North Dakota contain brine. As the water levels declined at this time of the year, the rings of white salt were visible along the shores of these lakes.

Unbeknownst to us, half of North Dakota’s population has German-Russian roots. Originally recruited and welcomed into Russia in the 18th century, many German people immigrated there looking for better lives. However, due to changes in Russian politics, poor economic conditions and a series of famines, many of them moved on to America in the 19th century, especially to the Great Plains to continue farming. Intrigued by this tidbit, we had lunches in Fargo on our way to TRNP and back home to try some German dishes, such as jägerschnitzel, currywurst, knoephla soup, kuchen, cabbage rolls and fleischkuechle.

To be truthful, we honestly had a very low trip expectation, but this trip turned out to be rather enjoyable — apart from the 9+ hours of boring drive. We had several memorable hikes, enjoyed the fall colors, stumbled upon wildlife and marveled at the rugged badlands in TRNP.

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The drive to the UP took about 7.5 hours and the cats-and-dogs rain throughout the drive also contributed to the long drive. Fittingly, we tuned in to Wisconsin’s Big Cheese 107.9 listening to many classic hits while making our ways to Michigan. Before arriving in Munising — the place we called home for 4 nights, we did a short hike in the rain in Laughing Whitefish Falls State Park.

We started our day at 5:30 AM everyday, and due to the time change, it was actually 4:30 AM. The main focus of this trip was to cover the attractions in Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore. Given the wet week, we made sure we were able to do the 11+ miles hike around Chapel Basin without dealing with the rain too much. This hike was by far the highlight of the entire trip — peaked fall colors along the lakeshore, emerald and turquoise water on Lake Superior, the mineral-stained streaks on the 200-foot sandstone cliffs. Simply put, the experience was mind blowing. Granted, we struggled the last 2 miles of this 8-hour hike, but we picked up our pace despite our tired legs after hearing some loud rumbling thunders in the afternoon.

Another attraction we wanted to visit is Tahquamenon Upper Falls in Tahquamenon Falls State Park — one of the largest waterfalls east of the Mississippi. To get there, we cruised along the long and straight M-28 for an hour and half from Munising. We also visited the nearby Whitefish Point and Muskallonge Lake State Park. With our new Michigan’s annual state park pass, we also covered Fayette Historic State Park, Palms Book State Park and Indian Lake State Park. We made an impromptu visit to Marquette — the largest city in the UP — and this city reminded us of Duluth in Minnesota.

On the final day, we did a 3-hour hike in Devil’s Lake State Park in Wisconsin on our way home. Coincidentally, a homicide took place in that state park on the previous day. It didn’t discourage any visitors from visiting it because it was still packed with people enjoying the beautiful Friday afternoon. While hiking on the East Bluff Trail, we stumbled upon a family of 3 from Indiana who recognized us — probably due to my bright backpack and large camera. We crossed paths during our hikes in Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore several days earlier where I recommended this state park to them. The last time we visited Devil’s Lake State Park was in 2008 during an ex co-worker’s wedding in Wisconsin Dells and since then, we vividly remembered the unique quartzite rock formation known as the Devil’s Doorway.

Traveling during this Covid-19 madness was tricky, but we took all necessary precautions by not dining outside throughout the trip and wore our masks in crowded places. This year, we owned 3 state park annual passes — Minnesota, Michigan and Wisconsin. With these passes, we covered a total of 7 state parks on this trip — 6 in Michigan and 1 in Wisconsin — and rain or shine, we hiked in most of them. We visited 2 of the 5 freshwater lakes that form the Great Lakes of North America — Lake Superior and Lake Michigan. Most importantly, we did some leaf-peeping in Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore.

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We visited Bayfield 6 years ago during a brutal winter to explore the Apostle Islands Ice Caves and this lovely small city has left us a nice memory since. On this trip, we took as many safety precautions as possible, such as, wiping down commonly touched items upon accommodation check-in, refraining ourselves from eating outside and making sure we always have masks and hand sanitizers with us. This is going to be new norms for future travelling in the coming years. On our way to Bayfield, we revisited the beautiful Copper Falls State Park, which we didn’t have much recollection of the trails because they were heavily covered in snow during our last visit. From there, we continued north to Washburn and did a short hike in the Houghton Falls State Natural Area, which is only a 15-minute drive from Bayfield.

Bayfield serves as the gateway to the Apostle Island and this year marks the 50th anniversary of the founding of Apostle Islands National Lakeshore. So, we wanted to spend some time there. We planned to do an evening cruise to the Apostle Islands, but decided against it at the very last minute because we were uncomfortable sitting with many passengers in a confined space in this interesting time. Our initial plan was to hike the 4.5-mile Lakeshore Trail, which is located on top of the sea caves, but it was closed due to storm damage that occurred 2 days before our trip.

Nevertheless, we did a 3-hour guided sea kayaking trip where we kayaked a total of 4 miles on Lake Superior from Bayfield to Red Cliffs and back. It rained heavily that morning and we experienced 2-foot waves at times, but our $2300+ 18-foot long Looksha T tandem kayak handled the choppy water with ease. We had a faint view of the 282-foot long Fedora shipwreck, but the water visibility was low due to the heavy rain and rough waves. It was surprising to know the rain actually made the water on Lake Superior much warmer — warm enough to comfortably dip our hands in the water from the kayak. Honestly speaking, the kayaking trip was a little below my expectation due to the bad weather and that we had to head back half an hour earlier because some of the first-time kayakers in our group experienced sea sickness. That said, we learned a few interesting tidbits about the Apostle Islands. The black bears can be found on any of the 21 Apostle Islands even though these islands are miles apart and the lake depth is at least 150 feet because they can easily swim from one island to another island. Although Madeline Island is the largest island in the Apostle Islands archipelago, it is not part of the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore because it was too expensive for the US government to buy out all the private residences on that island.

Known as the Berry Capital of Wisconsin, our trip coincided with the several berry picking seasons in Bayfield. We visited a few berry farms along the Bayfield Fruit Loop and picked a total of 15 lbs of cherries, blueberries and raspberries. The upside of bad weather is there weren’t too many customers picking the berries while we were there. We spent a half day hiking in Big Bay State Park by taking a 20-minute ferry ride to Madeline Island. The last time we visited this state park, we drove on the frozen Lake Superior to get to this island in the winter. On our way home, we admired the beautiful waterfalls in Amnicon Falls State Park, which is located 20-mile south east of Duluth.

Although the weather could be slightly better throughout the trip, we still managed to explore 3 very scenic state parks in Wisconsin. We enjoyed our quiet times reading on our iPads, listening to the soothing crashing waves, enjoying the cool breeze and the smell of the rain from our accommodation by Lake Superior.

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Typically we would spend several days exploring a national park. Due to various factors (limited time, logistics issue, whether the little ones would be bored or not) and the need to drive through Taroko National Park to reach our final destination in Nantou, we allocated just a little more than half a day there. The ruggedness and the untouched beauty of the landscape here was simply astounding. We chose several simpler popular hikes and timeboxed each hike to ensure we had enough daylight to safely traverse the mountains.

From Taroko National Park, we headed deeper into the rugged mountains and made a pit stop at a small beverage shop near the 3200 years old and 160 feet tall Bilu Divine Tree — the largest old tree along the Central Cross-Island Highway. Upon arrival, we were informed by the shop owner about the road closure ahead in half hour time due to road construction. So, after getting our honey coffee and honey tea, we hastily departed to reduce the possibility of getting stuck there. By 3 PM, we arrived at the Hehuanshan National Forest Recreation Area. This is the highest automobile pass in Taiwan. Given the limited time, we did a short hike to the summit of Hehuanshan Point — one of the 6 summit hikes in Hehuanshan, all above 10,000 feet in elevation. The beautiful blue sunny sky in the afternoon was deceiving as it was very windy and cold. After driving for another hour, we arrived safely at our accommodation in Nantou at 5 PM just as the daylight began to run out. We ended our day by having the fantastic local specialty urn roasted chicken and various interesting dishes for dinner with our driver.

Driving in these mountains warrant a topic of its own. Taiwan is very unique in the sense that there are lots of tall and steep mountains on a tiny island. Throughout the whole day, we drove along the Central Cross-Island Highway that cuts through the Central Mountain Range. The word “highway” is misleading because it is actually a narrow single lane road that wraps and curves around the mountains. Dubbed as one of the most dangerous roads in the world, there are several sections where the road is so narrow that both sides of traffic share the same lane without any humans or traffic lights monitoring the traffic. On top of that, motorists have to deal with low hanging clouds, blinding curves, rockfalls and landslides from heavy rains and seismic activities. For once, I was very thankful that car rentals were so outrageously expensive in Taiwan that we ended up hiring an experienced driver to bring us around because I could not handle this treacherous driving condition.

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Throughout the day, we experienced the lingering effects of Tropical Storm Fung-Wong moving north from the east side of the island. We managed to cover most of the planned attractions. In Yilan, we visited the 3-tiered Wufengqi Waterfall and wandered aimlessly at the National Center of Traditional Arts. The idyllic reflections on the flooded paddy fields were quite a sight to see. Based on our private driver, Hualien has better rice quality than Yilan due to its climate.

Given the bad weather, we skipped our visit to Nanfangao Lookout and proceeded with our journey to Hualien by taking the Suhua Highway. This cliff-hugging route is one of the most dangerous drives on this island. Being the only main road between the northern part and the eastern part of Taiwan, there are many fast moving heavy trucks transporting goods and hauling quarry stones between cities. To make matters worse, there are many blind curves, road and tunnel constructions, protruding cliff walls and debris cleanups due to landslides and falling rocks from the cliffs.

After a few hours of driving, we arrived at Qingshui Cliff. Coincidentally, the rain stopped long enough for us to stretch our legs and to witness one of the most spectacular views on this island. As part of the Taroko National Park, Qingshui Cliff is dubbed as one of the Eight Wonders in Taiwan. We admired the stunning beauty of the 3 distinct color tones of the Pacific Ocean and the sheer cliff walls — caused by collisions between the Philippine and Eurasian tectonic plates. To this date, Taiwan is still growing higher and higher.

As we departed for Qixingtan Beach, the weather took a turn for the worse again. We rushed our beach visit as the daylight ran out. Upon our arrival in Hualien, it took us a little longer to locate the AirBnb accommodation in the darkness. However, we were pleasantly greeted by the very spacious high-ceiling rooms. After checking in, we leisurely strolled to the nearby Dongdamen night market for dinner where we tried several interesting aboriginal specialties.

A couple of observations…

• There are plenty of bright neon-lit shops along the streets, especially in the cities’ outskirts and in the countryside. These shops sell one thing in common: betel nuts. Unbeknownst to us, betel nuts are widely consumed as addictive snacks in Taiwan, usually by the working class men. It is also the 4th most commonly used psychoactive substance after tobacco, alcohol and caffeinated drinks in the world. Since these nuts contain carcinogenic properties, those who chew them are 28 times more likely to develop oral cancer compared to those who don’t partake in this cultural habit.
• This was by far the most road tunnels we drove through in a day. Given the mountainous landscape, some of these tunnels are so huge and long that we literally couldn’t see the light at the end of the tunnels. While most of us slept through the drive to Yilan, we passed through the 8-mile Hsuehshan Tunnel — the longest road tunnel in Taiwan and the ninth longest in the world.

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The drive to Yangmingshan National Park took about an hour from Taipei. Known to be one of the safest places in Taiwan, this national park is surrounded by affluent neighborhoods. Before the United States severed official diplomatic relations with Taiwan in 1979, the United States built more than 200 houses for high ranking American military officers stationed there. Upon arrival, we were greeted by terrible weather in the mountains. The whiteout conditions from the low hanging clouds were so bad that we weren’t able to see or enjoy most attractions. After having a nice hot lunch to warm our bodies, we left the mountains.

The weather of the day was a tale of 2 halves — heavy rain, strong wind and thick fog in the mountains but warm and gorgeous weather at the foot of the mountains. In Beitou, we visited the Hot Spring Museum and Thermal Valley. In Tamsui, we escaped from the crowded old street and strolled along the riverfront. Our relaxing time at Tamsui riverfront was unexpectedly the highlight of our day — laid back setting, warm weather and beautiful late afternoon sun. We requested our private driver to drop us off at Shilin Night Market as our final stop. After having our dinner in a very crowded night market, we took a half hour subway ride back to our accommodation. It was a long day, and unfortunately, a few of us experienced feverish cold that night.

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Just like our visit to Parc national du Mont-Tremblant, due to the unseasonable long winter, it was still too early in the season to hike. Our initial plan was to spend the whole day hiking the 6.8 miles Les Loups trail, but it was still closed due to snow. The park warden recommended 2 shorter trails for us to hike, so we hiked the 2.5 miles Les Cascades trail and part of the 6.5 miles Les Coulées trail. With the temperature hovering between 33F and 48F, it was the coldest throughout our 12-day trip. We hiked until 3:30 PM when it started to drizzle.

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We chose to visit the park in early May after learning about the horrendous black fly season that typically affects areas in New France and New England between late May and mid June. Due to the unseasonably long winter this year, we didn’t encounter any bug problems simply because it was still too cold with lots of snow on the ground when we were there.

The 6-mile Le Centenaire trail that we wanted to hike was still closed for the season. After consulting with the park warden, we hiked the only 2 opened trails: 3.3-mile La Roche trail and 0.5-mile Les Chutes-Croches trail. These trails may be short, but they were challenging to hike because we didn’t have the proper footwear to traverse the snowy and icy trails. At times, the snow level was knee-deep. Nevertheless, we spent 4 hours in this quiet park.

On our way back to Montréal, we stopped by at the Saint Joseph’s Oratory of Mount Royal and the nearby park to enjoy the late afternoon view of the Montréal skyline.

A couple of observations…

• While Parc national du Mont-Tremblant is a “national park”, it is technically a state park. Since the Québécois always consider Québec as a nation within Canada, this province has its own national parks maintained by Sépaq (instead of Parks Canada), national day on June 24 (instead of Canada’s national day on July 1), etc.
• Driving in downtown Montréal was challenging due to the traffic, flyovers, tunnels and detours. It seems like the whole city was under road constructions. It was supposed to be a 2-hour drive from Montréal to Parc national du Mont-Tremblant, but it took us 3 hours to get there due to the morning rush hour and the fact that we took a few wrong turns because the GPS device struggled to keep up with our exact locations.
• Since the law change in 2003, the province of Québec allows right turns on red except where prohibited by a sign. However, like in New York City, it remains illegal to turn right on a red anywhere on the Island of Montréal.

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Fuzhou, the capital of Fujian province, is one of the world’s fastest growing metropolitan areas in the recent years. During the British rule from early 19th century to the 1930s, many Chinese immigrants from Fujian and Guangdong provinces came to Malaysia (or Malaya back then) to escape poverty and to seek better lives. Most Malaysian Chinese today, including us, are descended of this wave of immigrants, considered the largest influx of immigration to Malaysia.

Although we didn’t have much time for sightseeing, we managed to cover a few well known attractions. Sanfang Qixiang, included in UNESCO’s Tentative List, is largest well-preserved historical heritage site in China. Dubbed as “The Beverly Hills of imperial China”, we visited the Huang Mansion, considered the most impressive building structure in that area. Our relatives were very gracious to drive a few of us to Drum Hill after we expressed our desires to visit that area. They brought us to visit several attractions in this wonderful national park.

It was an incredible way to end our 13-day trip in China. After 10 days of guided tours, most of us were tired of predictable meals, crowded areas and long walks. Our remaining time in Fuzhou was very relaxing. We had plenty of rest. We tried many spectacular Fuzhou dishes. The elders were able to spend quality time with the relatives. Some of us managed to squeeze more shopping opportunities. Most importantly, our relatives from Fuzhou went above and beyond to make all of us feel very welcomed.

A couple of observations…

• With Fuzhou being the closest city to Taipei, the capital of Taiwan, the possibility of China’s reunification of Taiwan seems to be lingering in my mind. China recently unveiled the plan to build the world’s longest undersea railway tunnel to connect the mainland and Taiwan. With the two country leaders not seeing eye-to-eye at the moment and there are enough chatters about deploying military troops in Fuzhou in case of war, I can’t help to wonder how dire the current situation is.
• Knowing how extensive Fuzhou is under constant surveillance, the local citizens are taking it rather seriously. There was one instance where our relatives tried to coordinate amongst themselves to chauffeur all of us around with multiple vehicles and we told them we didn’t mind squeezing another person at the backseat. We were then told there cannot be more than 3 individuals at the backseat. They won’t even park their vehicles at the parallel parking slots if the vehicle cannot fit nicely in the white box. There are plenty of motion sensor cameras installed above most driving lanes where the strobe light flashes once every time a vehicle passes by. It was rather disorientating and nauseating to see constant flashing strobe lights during high traffic at night.

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