Road Trip!

Spent the whole afternoon mapping our road trip(s) in the US for this summer, one of which will involve driving 12 hours to Z's college for a one-day orientation program! Not that I am complaining as road trips are one of the highlights for our family vacations.

In the days before Mapquest & Google Maps (horrors! in my sons' eyes!), A & I would arm ourselves with our handy ol' Rand McNally Atlas, strap our boys into their car seats & off we would go! Lodging would be in a local motel chain like Comfort Inn or Quality Suites, or Hampton Inn; nothing 5-star for us budget-watchers! But it would still be fun family time for us as these motels usually have huge rooms with two double beds that could fit our family of four, and there's something about hotel rooms that kids love.

We have done road trips in the South-east, the East Coast, the New England area, the West Coast and the mother of all road trips - our trek across the continent of North America from Philadelphia to San Francisco just before our trans-global migration to the Eastern hemisphere. What a way to see the country -driving through plains & deserts & Rocky Mountain roads - seeing the Kansas roads stretch for miles ahead in a straight line bordered by fields of green on both sides; being buffeted by the Colorado winds as we crawled along the mountainous winding roads of the Rockies; seeing the great Salt Lakes of Utah & its surrounding desert; being awed by the majesty of the tall redwood forests of the North-west. To me, this is the best way to appreciate any country's beauty.

This summer, we will do a road trip in the South, an area we have never visited before. We will visit the home of rock & roll & blues, Jazz country, guitar factories, music museums & throw in a couple of college visits for W at the same time (sigh - it starts again).

With Z starting college in the fall, I really can't say when we will do another one of these family road trips again.

I certainly hope we will see many more to come.