Introduction

Growing up, I always loved to travel.  I got to travel with my dad sometimes when he traveled as a salesman for work.   Our family frequently traveled for vacation and drove to most of our destinations.  By the time I was married, I had been to most of the states east of the Mississippi River.  My husband, Mister Rogers or Phil, did not travel much growing up, but when he was 16, his family went full time on the road in ministry to raise money for missions.   So for 18 months of his initial adult life, he was constantly on the road.   

Once we got married, traveling became our thing.   We vacation almost every year, often going to the same destinations over and over, Maryland, Washington DC, Florida or the Outerbanks of North Carolina.   In 2015, we became part of an organization that supports exchange students in our area.  Our annual meeting for this organization is located in various cities around the US.   Traveling with EF broadened our scope of travel and took us to places we had never been before.    We found ourselves taking a new trip every February and having a weekend getaway for ourselves.   

This year things have slowed down with EF for us and we did not qualify for the national meeting.  This sparked within us a desire to do this sort of "new place" traveling by ourselves.   But we wanted a system of deciding where to go rather than just randomly traveling the US.   In this conversation, our goal of traveling all 50 states was born.   We decided on a few rules.   

1.  We have to DO something there, we can't just drive through.

2.  We can only count locations that we've been to together at the same time.  For example, I've been to Hawaii, but Phil didn't go with me, so it doesn't count yet.   Until this year, we had both been to Dallas, but not at the same time. 

This blog will document all of our trips, even ones outside of the US, but will highlight when we visit a new state and check another one off the list.  

To date, we've been to 21 states.   We will document those trips here, digging into the past, but also add trips as we go on them into the future.  

Here we go....

Autumn