Over the summer I went on a couple of college visits with my mother. Don’t ask me what college I’m going to because I have no idea. Every time I’m asked I give a random answer depending on absolutely nothing. As a result, every person that I know has an entirely different idea of what the rest of my life might look like. This strategy has left my future plans shrouded in a mist of confusion between my family and friends.

Regardless, in June, my mom and I visited two colleges: Letourneau and the University of Alabama. The idea was for me to see the differences between the two vastly different schools. While Alabama lured me in with their merit scholarships, Letourneau offered an amazing engineering program. Don’t ask me which school I preferred, because I still have no idea. I will probably give you an entirely different school to throw you off your rhythm. Now I’m not going to give you a synopsis of my college visits, as I’m pretty sure you know what most college visits are like. Instead, I’m going to tell you about travelling with my mom.

My mother, Adele Harbick, is an exciting person to travel with. If success was measured by knowledge of song lyrics and 80s movie quotes, Adele would be raking in more cash than McDonald’s. Our trip involved a lot of driving (not to mention the 10-hour detour to Arkansas to visit her friend) so this extensive song knowledge came in handy. Neither of us had ever been to the South before so a good part of our trip consisted of finding and trying the most Southern foods we could find. This food tasting was exciting and a great way to be adventurous. However, our hunger for adventure did not stop there.

When we found ourselves with extra time on our hands, my mom and I took to driving around to find weird things to explore during our travels. In Birmingham this led us to Vulcan, a giant statue of a Roman god that you can climb to the top of for amazing views of the city. We also found ourselves exploring Sloss Furnaces, an old iron blast furnace, turned into a museum. In Tuscaloosa, our adventurous spirit led us to accidentally finding ourselves in the middle of three different wedding preparations. Yes. On a separate occasion, we found ourselves driving around old abandoned buildings to take pictures. Each new adventure we got braver; a recipe for disaster. We drove under a bridge because “it looked fun” and ended up almost driving into what might’ve been a crime scene. There was also that time that what looked like an alligator swam up to the dock we were standing on.

Overall, travelling with my mom turned out to be one of the best parts of my summer. We bonded over our interest in old places, and got somewhat of a look into what college might look like for me.