Where it all Began

A walk (or should I say drive) down memory lane…

I Love Road Trips!

My love of road trips came from my parents who took us all over the country. I remember my dad getting his big box of maps and travel catalogs out of the closet and he’d study them. There was no internet back then to aid in the research, but somehow he always found the roads with pretty scenery and the occasional place to stop. My mom was the one who packed the bags and made the sandwiches for along the way. It took me years of travel before I decided to try actual cooking on a trip, but my mom always brought her electric frying pan along and we’d eat Hamburger Helper in the hotel room. Every morning, she’d put together more sandwiches before we could leave the motel and we’d eat them in the car, along with pudding cups for dessert.

A Bit of Nostalgia

Our family road trips are what I remember most about growing up. I had six states checked off by the time I was six months old: South Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, and Missouri. My aunt and uncle, Louise and Jim, lived in Missouri and that was my first big road trip as a baby. There are very few photos from our road trips, but I copied these from my mom’s photo albums years ago, with the intention of telling stories on scrapbook pages someday.

By the time I was three, I had visited another five states: Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and Colorado. That brought my total up to eleven states. My aunt and uncle, Bernice and John, lived in Arizona and later in Colorado, so we visited them quite a few times. I remember chasing Bernice’s cat up and down the stairs. That cat was probably so happy to see us leave.

Louise and Jim moved to Ohio so visiting their new home added another four states: Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, and Ohio. We celebrated my fifth birthday in Ohio where Louise baked me a cake shaped like a cat! (These two aunts both loved their cats!) I had visited 15 states by age 5.

We didn’t venture outside of that collection of states for many years. We did cross the border into Arkansas on a trip to Branson once, making that my 16th state, but we were not there more than a few minutes before turning around. There were always new adventures to familiar states, though. We visited the aunts and uncles often, spending several Thanksgivings in Ohio. We went to places like the Alamo in Texas, Little House on the Prairie in Kansas, and Silver Dollar City in Missouri. We visited the Gateway Arch and toured the Anheiser-Busch Brewery in St. Louis, Missouri. We went to Pikes Peak, Mile High Stadium, and the Denver Mint in Colorado. There was a glass-bottom boat somewhere along the way, and a theme park with a Smurf dark ride. So many memories were made from so many miles on the road.

Our last road trip as a family was right after I graduated from high school. We added Wyoming and Utah, bringing me to 18 states at age 18. I remember Dad asking which way we should go when we got to the highway and we said “west.” Not sure what his plan would’ve been if we had declared “east,” but I suspect he’d have made it work out for where he wanted to go anyway. We visited the amazing Bryce Canyon National Park and the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. I never realized how lucky I was to have seen so much of the country at such a young age. Somehow, I thought this was what every family did growing up.

A New Generation of Family Road Trips

I slowly checked off more states as years went by. I went to Fargo, North Dakota for a Garth Brooks concert, honeymooned in Tennessee and visited the Biltmore Estate in North Carolina. Joey was a year old when we took a trip to Door County, Wisconsin to see lighthouses and fall color. I had visited 22 states and he had his first 3.

Megan’s first trip was not a road trip. She was 10 months old when we visited Walt Disney World in Florida for the first time. (I have no idea how we survived hauling around two strollers, a three year old, a baby, plus bags…on an airplane!) We didn’t venture too far for many years after that, just the random road trip with my mom to scrapbook conventions at the Mall of America in Minnesota or the Henry Doorly Zoo in Nebraska. The first “road trip” I took all on my own with the kids was to Orange City, Iowa to see the tulip festival. Orange City is not even two hours from home, but going that far with two little kids by myself, felt like an accomplishment. We, of course, took our sandwiches along for lunch!

On the Road Again

Joey and Megan got their first real taste of road tripping when we rode along one fall with Mom and Dad on a trip to Silver Dollar City in Missouri. Megan was three and perhaps, the least enthused out of all of us about a ten hour ride to get there. We amused her by getting her to say Silver Dollar City, which she proudly pronounced “Yiddo Daddo Yitty.” The kids racked up a few more states when we visited Louise and Jim at their historic home in Ohio, where we collected fossils from the stream bed in their backyard. We added a legit drive through Arkansas on the way to a new state, Louisiana, on a road trip to a John Deere tractor auction in Texas. We picked up Montana on another tractor road trip with my parents and brother, Tim. We visited Glacier National Park while we were in the neighborhood. By the time Joey was 10 and Megan was 8, he had 19 states and she had 18. (She wasn’t around yet for that trip to Wisconsin.) My state count was up to 25.

Tent Sweet Tent

We learned to tent camp one summer and I immediately knew this might be the way to do road trips for cheap. Eventually, I planned a six day road trip that we took with the friend who taught us to tent camp. We checked off three more states: Idaho, Washington, and Oregon, and fell in love with tent camping. There is simply nothing like waking up to the sound of the birds chirping, and when you step out of the tent, you have a view that looks like this.

The Stories I Want to Tell

Since then, the three of us have travelled thousands of miles, tent camped in 17 states, and caught Megan up on her missing Wisconsin. We added Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, and California, bringing our totals to 32 states for me and 30 for them. We’ve locked ourselves out of our Durango, been stalked by hungry chipmunks, and set up our tent in the dark more times than I can count. We’ve learned how the tundra is shrinking in Rocky Mountain National Park and and we saw a baby black bear on our way to the bottom of Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park. These adventures are the stories I plan to tell here.

I hatched this idea of writing a blog in 2017. The three of us had just completed our third and biggest road trip on our own, which was how I came up with the name Road Trip Three. I love traveling with these two and hope they have as many fond memories of family road trips as I have!

If you have your own fond memories of family road trips, or you enjoy reading trip reports, or maybe you’re just curious to find out how you, too, can visit the national parks on a tent camping budget, please consider subscribing!

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Thanks for reading Road Trip Three!