Friday, August 19, 2011

Friday Five - Road Trips

Today's Friday Five is all about road trips. Particularly, listing five road trips we've taken. This is a tough one for me because I haven't taken that many road trips! When I was a kid that just wasn't something we did. We'd drive to our vacation destination, but it was usually all about the single destination, not the adventures along the way. However, now that I'm a grown up I like the idea of them more and more.

I started off thinking I'd only ever been on one, but the more I thought and wrote, the more I realized that we did in fact take one as a family when I was a kid. I have happy memories of it, but from a practical standpoint I realize that it was kind of a disaster and understand why we didn't do more of these. My dad hated the idea of doing anything except getting where you were going as fast as possible, so "adventure" wasn't high on the priority list. We went to Washington, DC and Williamsburg, VA. Then my aunt drove over from Ohio to take me and my brother home with her for a week to visit. I can laugh about the mis-adventure of so much of it now that we have survived, but I can't imagine the stress on my family at the time!

Our Honeymoon: Birmingham, Atlanta, Savannah, and Tybee Island. The whole goal we had for our honeymoon was to go someplace we had been before so we could just relax and enjoy our time together. Neither of us had ever been to Tybee, but my mom lived in Savannah for a few years so I remembered her telling us about it as kids so it was a nice, sentimental way of sort of involving her and her memory in it. We had a wonderful time and are looking to do it again!

We have discussed the idea of taking a few more trips, the earliest possibly being next May. So here are a few of the trips I would like to take

1) Midwestern Loop: From Alabama, loop up through St. Louis and stop to see relatives in Des Moines, then over to Mt. Rushmore and Devil's Tower, down through Colorado and Oklahoma and finally scooting back through Arkansas to get back home.

2) East Coast: Go down to Key West and work our way all the way up to Maine and maybe even slipping into Canada for a while. This one will probably have to be several years down the road!

3) Grand Canyon/Las Vegas: This is one of Jeff's dream trips and I have to admit it does sound very appealing. It would probably have to involve flying and renting a car rather than driving the whole way, but it's also on the short list!

4) Alaska: More specifically, drive to Alaska. I'm still undecided about whether to fly to Portland to see Jeff's step-sister and start from there or if we'd want to drive the whole thing from Alabama. An RV would definitely have to be involved in this one. This trip is probably many years away, too!

The ultimate goal is to visit all 50 states. I'm not particular about how we do it, but road trips seem to be the easiest and most economical way of seeing the most places. We have no idea when we'll go on a trip like this or what it would look like, but as long as we get to spend it together I'm not too particular!

5 comments:

  1. My cousin has just 2 more states to visit to make all 50. When he and his wife were married, they set a goal of spending at least a week in each state. In Sept. they will complete their quest by visiting North and South Dakota!

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  2. It sounds like you have some great adventures ahead of you! I heartily recommend the Grand Canyon and I wasn't thinking anything could be that impressive. It truly is! I haven't been to Las Vegas, though, and it's on my mental list.

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  3. Glad you are including Maine in your future travels! I hope your future trips are fun and trouble-free.

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  4. Somehow, my comment just disappeared. Your dad's destination-motivation reminded me of my father, too. My husband tends in that direction, too. Hope you get to go on all those trips!

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  5. My ultimate goal is to visit all 50 states too! (A little more difficult given it involves a minimum of a 7 hour flight across the Atlantic...). So far, 9 down, just 41 to go...but I've never driven a car in the US yet!

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