Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Top 10 Family Vacations

Our family loves to travel together more than anything else in the world. We spend a great deal of our conversations talking about trips we have already taken, trips we would like to take, or trips we are currently planning. I am writing this less than a week after our family returned from our first cruise and only a couple of months after we traveled to Yellowstone. I sat wondering, why is it that our family travels so often, where others do not? Then, I realized that we make traveling one of our top priorities. We don't have tons of money, but what we DO have, we basically spend on travel. We have never felt it really important to give our kids lots of "things", but instead choose to give our children our time and new experiences. Although we would love to have it, we do not have new cars, four wheelers, boats, or other luxury items. Almost every item of clothing we own comes from the thrift store and we rarely ever go out to eat. We typically travel in a camper and eat our own groceries, although a couple of our favorite trips, did not involve a camper. We use our tax money, gift money, overtime money, and any change we can dig out of the couch to put toward our next trip. Our love for travel is top on our list for how we spend our money. I have never regretted any of the money we spent of a vacation.
The idea of this "Top 10 Vacations" came about while traveling, of course. That is when our family has our best and most meaningful conversations. We were coming home from our cruise and we were discussing with the boys which trips they liked the best out of all the trips we had taken. We were interested to hear that we all were picking basically the same trips as our favorites and least favorites. We decided to make a list of all of the trips we had taken as a family and each rank them from 1-10. We then compiled our list and made our overall family list. The following is a list of our current "Top 10 Family Vacations". It will be interesting to see in the future, which vacations nudge out those that are already on the list.

#10 - Atlanta (Coca-Cola Factory and Aquarium)





#9 Dauphin Island, AL





#8 - Jekyll Island, GA




#7 - Mammoth Cave National Park, KY








#5 - Panama City Beach, FL

#4 - Cruise to Cozumel, Mexico



#3 - San Antonio, Texas

#2 - Disney Fort Wilderness Resort Campground
#1 - Yellowstone National Park


(Grand Tetons, Badlands, Mt. Rushmore, Wind Cave)


















#6 - Disney World Resort - Port Orleans