One of my fondest memories as a child was a road trip that my family and I took when I was a kid. I must have only been 10 years old, but it truly was one of the best times of my life.

For those of you that don’t know, my father has pretty much always been self employed. Up until 88, my dad was an independent contractor for banks, so he would go in and refurbish foreclosures on the banks’ behalf.

Then in 88, he invented the first ever hand crank penny press machine. So as a family, we would travel around to various attractions, amusement parks, and zoos to sell, deliver, and install these machines…. hence the purpose of this specific trip.

Anyways, it was basically a three week road trip with just me, my mom, and my dad. We started off in Ohio, we lived in Dayton at the time, and started driving east-southeast.

If I recall correctly, the route went something like this:

Ohio > West Virginia > Virginia > North Carolina > South Carolina > Georgia > Alabama > Mississippi > Louisiana > Texas > New Mexico > Arizona > Nevada > Utah > Colorado > Wyoming > Montana > North Dakota > South Dakota > Minnesota > Iowa > Illinois > Indiana > Ohio

Yes, it was as exhausting as it looks.. trust me. We practically lived in that stupid old van…spent quite a few nights sleeping in it too of course.

But just think, I saw the: New River gorge, burnings of Sherman, the French Quarter, Mesas in Texas, the O.K. Corale, the Vegas strip, the famous wind arch tunnel, Pikes Peak, Yellowstone National Park, the largest shopping mall in America (Mall of America), and the skyline of Chicago……. all on trip! How many kids to get to experience all that?

Being in Denver the past few days really revitalized those childhood memories. Seeing things I hadn’t seen in a long time (like snow and gorgeous mountain views) really made me reminisce about how much fun that trip really was. I now realize it probably wasn’t so fun for my parents… i mean who wants to be trapped in a car with an annoying 10 year old for three weeks straight?

For my next vacation, I think I want to do something similar….maybe scale this back to two weeks, because I can’t possibly miss that much work (spoken like a true work-a-holic).

I think it would be fun to experience all those things again, and share those experiences with my girlfriend and her little puppy.

Maybe drive to California and fly back.

Have you ever done a cross country road trip? Tell me about it!