They say a picture is worth a thousand words. I have two thoughts concerning that statement.

First, why not just…use a thousand words?

And second, why not use both?

But I digress. I guess one can suffice if the other fails. Allow me to try and paint said word picture for you.

It’s 5am. I’m at the wheel, wide awake, with an earbud in my left ear so I can listen to music without waking my passengers. Aaron, my brother two years younger than myself, is conked out in the shotgun seat, curled up as comfortably as our tiny hatchback allows. Maddy, our 16-year-old sister, is stretched out on the back, snoozing away. I’d normally be exhausted by now, thus making it unsafe to sit in the drivers seat – but I’m good. About three hours ago, I gulped a 5-Hour Energy like a shot, and it’s still working its magic, pumping my veins full of caffeine and fighting off sleep so we can drive straight through the night.

The sky is starting to change. It’s been pitch black for hours, but now it’s starting to turn gray. The colors change by the minute – now, deep hues of melancholy blue are added to the atmosphere as the sun announces its arrival from afar. I can see a single, bright morning star on the horizon. Now, the pale, ghostly light of dawn shows me the soft edges of the hills of western New York. We’ve just crossed the state line.

We’re on an adventure.

For the past year, little brother William has been at a Christian recovery center in the hills of Deering, New Hampshire. It’s an intense program, and we’ve had minimal contact with him. He’s finally graduating, and my siblings and I decided, hey – let’s make a road trip out of this!

The first leg of the trip passed us by, relatively uneventfully. Our route to New Hampshire brought us through Chicago (the bane of any road trip in this part of the U.S.), and then scraped us along the southernmost edge of Michigan. After that, it was a straight shot to Cleveland, Ohio; a hiccup of Pennsylvania, and into what is now one of my favorite states – New York. If you’ve never been, it isn’t mountainous, per se…but compared to the brief hills of Wisconsin, New York has mountains. And driving through them at 5am whilst experiencing a sunrise? Absolutely breathtaking.

I may have shed a tear or two, early that morning. Maybe it was mostly the large amounts of caffeine in my system giving me unnecessary moodswings, or the lack of sleep amplifying my emotions – or both. But still…there’s something ethereal about experiencing God’s creation in a place that’s far away from everything you know. There’s an innocent, childlike glee to be found in laying your eyes on something magnificent, something beautiful, and soaking it all in – breathing it all in, like you’ve been underwater and are just now coming up for air, and you can’t stop from gulping in the fresh, sweet oxygen.

The long night was capped off when we pulled into beautiful Chautauqua Lake Rest Stop & New York Welcome Center.

After being heartily welcomed into New York state by the coziest rest stop I’ve ever visited, we continued to take the scenic route – which never got old – for the rest of the day (with minimal photo evidence, evidently).

We took turns driving, of course. Maddy handled the bulk of New York State, and Aaron and I buried ourselves in our respective entertainments (Call Of Duty Mobile, Season 10 of The Walking Dead on Netflix, etc.) – but only when we weren’t enjoying the scenery. The hills of New York rolled on and on until we crossed over into New Hampshire and arrived at His Mansion Ministries.