My most memorable vacation was a road trip to Colorado in May 2017. A group of 5 of my friends and I decided to take a different kind of senior trip after our graduation. The rest of the kids in our class were all planning trips to the beach, and we wanted to go on a road trip to camp and hike in the Rocky Mountains. As 18 year old kids right out of high school, we didn’t have the best of cars, and it took a lot of compromising to get our parents on board with this trip. They not only didn’t want us to drive 27 hours in our cars, but they also weren’t very enthused by the fact that we would be camping in the wilderness across the country. To convince them, we bought all the right supplies and materials and made a planned rotation for drivers. It was a group of 6 kids with two old cars packed fully with camping gear. Although the drive was long and exhausting, it was one of the best parts of the trip. Speeding across the country with your friends is a great experience. As soon as we left, we threw the driver rotation away and we tried to see who could drive for the longest time. One of the cars we took was my 2004 Toyota Camry, so I wanted to drive it the whole way. After 24 hours straight and 6 red bulls, I had to switch drivers. We finally made it to Rocky Mountain National park and set up camp. We decided that it would be smart to do all of our hiking off trail. Every time we reached a peak, we would set up a little camp and smoke cigars to celebrate. The 10 days of fun did not come without a few scares. At one point, we were at a peak when a thunderstorm hit. We managed to hide between to large boulders while lightning struck the ground around us. We also split up going down from a snowy peak at one point. Three of us followed a frozen river down to the base, while two of us followed the ridge line. The other one just slid straight down in the snow and we thought we lost him for about 5 hours. We all ended up meeting at our camp, and we were all okay. One thing we didn’t plan for was the cold nights in Colorado. Even though it was the Summer and 70 degrees during the day, the temperature would drop to the 30’s at night time and we froze all week in our tent. We never let that bring us down and we still had an amazing trip. I would definitely recommend a long road trip and camping with your friends.