It took us a few years to start our yearly summer travels and once we started we realized what we were missing out on. If you are in the making excuses stage here are a five reasons why you should just get out and travel. No excuses.
- Making family memories. Some of the favorite memories I have when I was younger are traveling with my parents and sister. I couldn’t wait until I could travel with my children so they too could have great memories of our travels. After visiting 48 states, I will say that that we have made many memories together to last us a life time and to pass on to future generations. For example when Rob flipped over and over down a sand hill at White Sands National Monument. Another great memory is when Grandma Sharp dove into their camper after a lightning strike near our campground at Arches National Park. Good times!
- There are many ways to save money while traveling. Do not let the excuse of “we can not afford to travel” stop you. We use a hotel credit card for most of our purchases. We know we would have to pay for these every day expenses so we might as well earn free hotel stays. We also pick hotels that offer free breakfast to take care of our first meal of the day. When we first started I brought my electric skillet and made dinners in our hotel room so we would save money by not eating out. We like to camp, like real camping in a tent. This allows us to alternate between hotel stays and camping, which really helps save on lodging. It is so much cheaper to sleep in a camp ground compared to a hotel. A campground can cost between $15-25 when a hotel might be between $80-120 a night. This also allowed us to stay in the middle of National Parks and experience all they have to offer without wasting time driving in and out of the parks.
- Our kids are not bored. I remember when my sister and I were younger we would be laid out in the back of the station wagon. This was before we had to use seat belts and we used the mattress from our sofa to lay on. Crazy! Today’s kids have the ability to use electronics to keep them entertained. Or they could pretend to be in the past and read a book. With real paper pages and not on a Kindle or phone. As we drive through the countryside, a city or town there are many things to look at right outside their windows. So in our case the times they are bored while on the road are rare. In the middle of Nebraska or Iowa I could see how a person could get bored though. Corn, corn as far as you can see.
- Time is against you. If you think hard enough you will always have a reason why you can not travel. As far as I am concerned I think these reasons are not good enough. Time is always going by and eventually because of health, age or other reasons will prevent you from traveling. Right now Rob and I are healthy and strong enough to do most of the things we plan on our vacations. If we were unable to do something it was because we were not prepared.
- I do not know where to go. Open an atlas, look at a paper map or look up a place online. We had our own lists of National Parks, cities or experiences we wanted to do for our trips. There would be no way we could do them all in one trip because Rob, Andrew and I work and Em is still in school. I guess we could just quit our jobs and home school but we would eventually run out of money so this is not an option. We started by picking our most wanted place to visit and looked up routes to get there and what to do in between. Our Southwest trip included New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Utah and Colorado. We stopped at most of the National Parks in those states, cities such as Las Vegas NV, Tucson AZ, Durango CO, Salt Lake City UT and a few others. We knew how long we had for vacation and made a plan so we could visit as many places as possible in that short time.