We Be Trippin’

We be trippin’ as in The Husband and I are off on another adventure. This time around we are heading to the east coast and will add four more states as well as their respective capitals to the 13 we’ve visited in the last few years.

Most of The Husband’s family lives in the NY/NJ area. The next generation of them has had their bar and bat mitzvahs in recent years which we joyfully attended. After the first one, we realized the opportunity these trips presented in achieving the goal we had set for ourselves some time ago to visit/revisit the other 46 states we weren’t traveling to regularly. If you’re doing the math yourself and coming up short, it’s 50 minus the state we live in (California) as well as New York, New Jersey, and Nevada. We are frequent visitors to Las Vegas.

In November of 2015, we took our first vacation in over 20 years that was just the two of us and that wasn’t related to a family event or business trip. It was a relatively short road trip through the northern part of Arizona with a stop on the way back in Las Vegas. It wasn’t until after that initial adventure, that we incorporated visiting/revisiting the state capitals into the goal and we hadn’t made it a point to include a stop in Phoenix so that state is on our do-over list.

In the Spring of 2016, we racked up our first four capitals. Dover, Delaware, the first capital we stopped at turned out to be coincidentally the capital of the first state admitted to the union. From there, we made our way to Richmond, then to Annapolis, with our final stop being Trenton as we circled backed to spend a couple more days with family before returning home.

A few months later in Fall 2016, we were back on the east coast for another bat mitzvah. This time after the weekend’s festivities, we headed on a northerly route with the hopes of seeing some Fall foliage. Unfortunately, we missed most of it by about a week. Many of the locals told us that a storm had recently come through the area which caused a lot of the trees to drop their leaves. No matter, it was a lovely trip anyway. And rather than loop back like in our previous trip, we instead planned the trip with an endpoint that allowed us to cover more distance; New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine.

Most of the states we’re getting to on our current trip we were supposed to visit back in November 2017 when we attended yet another bat mitzvah. However, I had a gall bladder attack on the evening of our first day out which had us cutting our trip short (fingers crossed and knock-on-wood that we don’t have a medical crisis during this trip).

As 2018 rolled around, we decided to put big travel plans on hold until I retired which was about two years off by then. We’d had a four-corners states road trip planned for April 2020 in celebration of my retirement but it, of course, had to be canceled due to the first COVID shutdowns.

Finally, last summer we were able to resume our 50 states quest. Since I wrote about that trip in 21 In ’21: Highlights From A Road Trip, I’ll simply share our “in front of the capitol buildings” selfies that we take to commemorate our visits. Three new states (Oregon, Washington, Idaho) on this trip plus a visit to our own state’s capital as well as the one in Nevada.

So why are we trippin’ this time around? The younger east coast relatives have moved now on from bar and bat mitzvahs to getting married so it’s a wedding that’s the initial reason for this trip. Given the location of the event, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to visit/revisit a few more states although my preference would have been to do so in a cooler month.

TL:DR – we’re traveling so no link-up this week or next week either. However, if you’ve been putting off responding to the Tell Me About Yourself survey, I’ve included it below. Thank you to everyone who has filled it out already.

Stay well and let’s keep in touch! Subscribe, tweet, follow, friend, pin … all options are available. I look forward to hearing from you soon.

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Feature image photo credit: 15997078 © Rudall30 | Dreamstime.com; all other images MMPerez or myself.