When Hubby and I first married, a woman told me, “Your traveling days are over.” That confused me since my family didn’t travel all that much before I was married. How could something I never had be over? Our once-a-year getaway was usually to my grandparents’ houses and rarely anywhere else.
Time proved that woman didn’t know what she was talking about. I traveled more after getting married than I ever did before. In fact, we traveled so much, I got a US map and started marking the roads we drove over to get a better idea of where we’d been. Over our four decades of marriage, we’ve put a lot of miles under our wheels.
We’ve traveled extensively in the west, mostly because that’s where we live. At first, we mainly traveled in the Four Corners area, but as our family grew, we took more trips to South Dakota. Different routes there provided different sights.
Hubby’s work provided a lot of opportunities to travel. If we could work it out, the whole family accompanied him on his trips, and we could add more green lines to our map. He worked during the day while the kids and I toured town. At night, we regaled him with all our stories.
Between Daughter’s junior and senior year in high school, we traveled to the east coast. She even donated enough babysitting money to pay for gas. It was a memorable trip, going to Gettysburg and Washington DC, driving down the Blue Ridge Parkway, and touring Nashville. We still talk about how much fun that trip was. A lot of green was added that year.
Even as empty nesters, I track our travels as they expanded to cover a lot of the Pacific Northwest and Hawaii. We saw lots of new country and roads after I retired. I love adding more of those green lines.
The map also shows me where we haven’t been. I hope we can fill in some of those areas that we’ve never been to. There’s bound to be interesting people, sights, and history there too.
Get your children their own maps. Let them track where they go. Whether it be a national map or a state map, they’ll get to see the places they’ve been and give them motivation to go see the rest. It’s a fun way to record your travels, and it helps bring back happy memories long after you get back home.
Fun idea!
What an awesome idea, wish I had done that. We too never traveled much as kids. when there are 4 little girls makes it difficult very expensive to go any where. We always traveled to the black hills for our small 3 day vacation. I may have to get a map and see where we have been; although most of my travels have been through the air than on highways.