October 2024 was a month very different from others. After 15 years, I visited another continent. But let’s take things in order.

The beginning of October wasn’t, in fact, too interesting. My country was still dealing with the aftermath of the September floods so hiking was on hold. I have instead put my time into finishing some materials for the hiking club’s next year’s plan as well as wrapping things up at work before my holiday as much as possible. The second week then had me preparing for the journey, especially planning what to take – especially considering part of the stay would be in a warm area and part in the mountains.

On the 12th, after 6 weeks, I finally went for a hike, the first after the floods. This was a relaxing, even if chilly at first, hike that led me through fields and woods colored by the advancing autumn. And it worked well to get my mind off the long journey awaiting me the next day.

The next morning, I departed with my parents towards the airport in Krakow (which turned out to be easier than flying from Prague) and shortly after the noon, we started our journey westward. The skies were cloudy so even though I was lucky to “win” a window seat, I ended up reading through most of the first leg of the journey. Things became a bit more challenging once we landed – the airport in Amsterdam is quite huge and it took us some effort to get our bearings. Fortunately, my mother (who was taking care of the flight planning) opted for some time “padding” and we have a bit over two hours at the airport, so going through passport control and finding the next gate (out of maybe 150 of them) went relatively fine.

I couldn’t say that about our departure from the Netherlands, but that’s probably because I’m unused to flying. The airplane was moving around for an endless time, and by the time we were crossing the third highway, I was wondering whether the pilot wanted to take us all the way to the English Channel before taking off. After that, things went relatively well – the pilot mentioned “minor turbulences” but I’ve driven on roads that were bumpier than that. Unfortunately, we landed in Atlanta with almost 30-minute delay, and getting our bearings to make it through passport control in time to get our final flight has been a bit more stressful. Fortunately, Sunday evening meant that the 3 people in the booths seemed to want to go home already and let us through without much hassle. We reached the gate some 10 minutes before opening and, eventually, landed at the shores of North Carolina a while before midnight.

I’ll delve into more detail about the two-week trip in the following weeks, for now, I’ll say that we spent the first two days at the shore, then headed to the hills for some time in nature. Given how large America is, that meant almost a whole day in the car, followed by 5 days in the hills and another day on our way back. I can say right away that autumn in the mountains of North Carolina has its charm, and even the smaller waterfalls there put my small European country to shame.

The way we spent our time in the hills was much different than my usual way – quite often, instead of doing a full-day hike, we walked a short distance, then drove a bit further, and walked a bit. I guess this is mostly because many of the waterfalls were just near a major road. Even some of the places we visited seemed, individually, quite small but I believe some of that was because many areas in NC were still closed down after the September storm (so here comes some shared misery between Europe and America – we were hit at a similar same time, despite being half of the world apart).

In fact, some of the trails were re-opened just a day or two before our visit. Even with that, my uncle was improvising a fair amount to make the most of our stay there.

After our return to the shore, I spent the morning at the beach, then we had a Czech cookout for uncle’s friends (both of Czech and American origin), and the final two days before our journey home were spent seeing some local landmarks.

I spent most of my downtime (the time spent in car, as well as the morning and evenings) reading, and managed to read almost 4 whole books during those two weeks, which is a pace I haven’t had in a while – partially thanks to extremely expensive data roaming fees, so I was minimizing the time spent on my phone (and limited that to Wi-Fi).

The journey back was quite smooth, though I ended up struggling with jet lag much more than the first time, and even with Monday off (as a public holiday here), I needed the remaining three days of the month to get back in sync with my usual routine.

In conclusion, it was an interesting journey, but I know I probably won’t try to repeat it anytime soon – probably no sooner than a decade.

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So, that’s a look back at my October. As mentioned, I’ll go more in-depth about the journey in the coming weeks, as I sort through hundreds of photos. And, in the meantime, I hope November will be a good month – for you and me alike.