For the month of November I’m participating in a daily gratitude challenge posted by the journaling app that I use, Day One, and here’s today’s prompt:

What is a place I feel grateful to have visited?

Interesting that today’s prompt is about travel. I’m a couple weeks away from going on my first trip to Hawaii for the Christmas holidays and my first plane trip in years. My last extended (week long) trip was driving to San Diego and back almost two Christmases ago for mom’s memorial service. In the before (COVID) time I was always up for a road trip whenever possible.

My first summer living in Las Vegas, 2017, I had just driven cross-country the previous summer moving from Orlando to Las Vegas. Because I realized that was getting paid year-round, there was no requirement that I stay in Las Vegas and there was conference in San Antonio coming up at the end of June… Having made the trip the previous year, I knew that after the conference I was only two days away from Orlando and I could spend my 59th birthday there with friends. A Orlando friend, who was a frequent traveler, offered to let me stay at her place, which she was setting up to become an Airbnb. So I stayed at her place in Orlando for free for 14 days. Then, I realized that I didn’t want to just drive back to Las Vegas. Someone suggested that I should just keep going. I contacted friends and relatives and set a course to drive up to DC/NYC, sightsee while staying with my nephew in Brooklyn, then over to Chicago/Madison/Minneapolis and stay with a friend and my niece, then down to Oklahoma City and overnight with a friend who had moved there from Orlando, then back across the top of the panhandle to Albuquerque then Meteor Crater and home. In all I was 41 days on the road.

It was so much fun, meeting and staying with friends and family. I noticed at the beginning I tried to drive eight or more hours to get to where I wanted to be. But as the trip wore on I realized that shorter driving days meant that I had more energy to enjoy where ever that day’s stop-over was going to be. I was able to find some place to cool my jets and enjoy an IPA at every berg and city along the way.

It was only six years ago, but based on my recent one-day trip to Palmdale and back I’m not sure that my eyes would put up with very much night driving. So I might have to resort to other forms of travel in the future. But with driving myself, I do enjoy having the freedom to go as far as I want to go, to explore whatever I might find and just enjoy the change in scenery.

I didn’t really answer the prompt about any particular place that I’m grateful for having visited… I seriously can’t pick one. I have greatly enjoyed the freedom to travel whenever I’ve had that elusive combination of time and adequate finances. When I get back from Hawaii we’ll see how soon I can talk myself into another road trip. Happy trails, y’all