For most of my life when we took family trips we always seemed to visit the cities by the ocean. We had fantastic trips to Florida and I certainly do not regret any of those times. Our family had a great time and my brother and family live in Florida so it was nice to see them as well at the time.
It was just 4 years ago that my family and I took a trip to Colorado to visit Rocky Mountain National Park (RMNP). This was a very big change of pace from any other trip. I am so thankful we took that vacation. It really opened up my eyes to how many more fantastic places like RMNP I would like to visit. I had been to a lot places over the years with my work but never really went out into the National Parks or truly ventured out much into the big cities to see what they had to offer.
Now I regret not starting to visit these places much earlier in life. Admittedly it is easy to say this now – how soon I forget how impossible some of these trips would have been when we were raising our young family.
I envy the younger generations now who seem to visit far flung places even across the oceans as easily as I went from Ohio to South Carolina. I don’t think many of them realize how fortunate they are in this regard.
Since that trip four years ago I have been very “purposeful” in making efforts to visit new places every year. My daughter and her family have been living on the East coast so a number of trips have been made in that direction and I have also headed west to see beautiful parks in California, Nevada, and Utah, & Oregon. By the way, I find it amazing how inexpensively you can fly from coast to coast in this country at this time. When I was young, I don’t think I flew in a plane until after high school – it simply cost far too much!
