The Joys of Domestic Travel

Given my children’s ages (5 and not quite 4), it’s tough to do much international travel until they’re a little older. While I’m sure those far-flung trips will come, we’ve done our best to see as much of the U.S. as we can in the meantime. 

With so many different countries to visit, it’s easy to forget how much there is to explore right in our own backyard.

In 2023, we went back to San Diego, where my son was born, and explored Ventura and Santa Barbara counties for spring break. That summer, we visited my wife’s grandmother in Tucson. In summer 2024, we went to Boulder and Denver. Last summer, we took our own tour of Oregon, from Portland to the coast to Bend, experiencing as much of the outdoors as we could. The freak hailstorm on our hike to a waterfall wasn’t popular, nor was the birthday dinner at a nice restaurant in Portland after a long drive, but we had fun overall.

This year, over the Fourth of July, we drove to the Twin Cities and northern Wisconsin. On the way up, we spent a couple of nights in Minneapolis. We checked out the Bell Museum, getting a taste of natural history and the planetarium. Then we finally got our waterfall, with a visit to Minnehaha Falls, conveniently located right in town in a regional park on the banks of the Mississippi River. 

Then we piled back in the car and drove to the Northwoods and the southwestern shore of Lake Superior near the Apostle Islands. We ate brats, lit fireworks and (unsuccessfully) tried our hand at fishing. We played with our friends’ dogs – something the 3-year-old has not stopped talking about since we got back. On the way back, we stopped in St. Paul for the night to visit my sister and meet some cousins. 

All in all, we had a great time. The trips will get bigger as the kids get bigger, and I hope we never lose that spirit of adventure. No matter where our travels take us in the future, I’ll always cherish our little getaways in this great big country of ours.