My family loves to travel. My family rarely flies; there are just too many of us for it to be cost effective. So we drive. We have a family tradition that every five years we take an extraordinary two week vacation. But that’s not the only time we travel. We travel near and far whenever we get the chance.
Most recently, my sisters, my mom, and I flew to Boston and the surrounding areas for an extended weekend. In the planning of this trip we made sure we made stops where everyone wanted to go. We toured the mansions of Newport, Rhode Island, because all of us love architecture and/or history. We made a stop at the International Tennis Hall of Fame for my mother, a lover of all things tennis. We went to the JFK Library and Museum for me because he is my favorite president.
The last trip before that was our big trip, and as a family we decided to go to California. As this was all six of us, flying was not an option. But my family is used to being in the car together, after our yearly road trips to Florida every spring break. This had been out first trip together in a while, because we are all adults and living our own lives, but this was something special for us so we all made the time. Driving for us is a part of the trip. We don’t just drive straight through to our destination. We make our drive easy and make stops in notable places along the way. One stop that surprised me the most was Omaha, Nebraska. Nebraska has a reputation for being boring, but Omaha was a gorgeous town well versed in culture. It was a larger town with that small town feel, and I loved it.
As we journeyed to California, we continued to make stops along the way, including stopping for a soccer game in Salt Lake City, Utah. We finally reached our destination, a small island in the middle of the Sacramento River, where we had rented a house. We had a great few of the river and it was a peaceful and relaxing place to stay after out long days in San Francisco, or the nearby redwood forests, or the world famous golf course, Pebble Beach Golf Links.
Our trip was not complete in the San Francisco area. After a few days there, we travel to Yosemite, where we had rented yet another house on the edge of the national park. In side of Yosemite, there is largest girthed trees I have ever seen. These trees are unfathomably big. I have seen no other plant as majestic as those trees. They all have great stories, and have seen so many things. I would love to hear what they have seen. After a few days in the forest, we started our journey home; continuing our pattern of stopping, with a night in Vegas.
On both these trips, I saw beautiful wonderful things. Every second was filled with awes unmatched by anything I had known before. But these beautiful things are nothing compared to the memories I created with my family. Many of my favorite parts of those trips have nothing to do with where we went or what we saw. They were just the funny, stupid, weird things my family did that made the trip. The journey to the destination, over powered the destination. I would trade nothing for those long car trips with my family, my favorite people in the world to travel with.
