This past summer was the summer of travel, especially for my daughter and me. We live in Colorado, and love the summers here. There is a saying here, “People visit Colorado for the winters, but move to Colorado for the summers.” In our family’s case, it was the opposite. We visited Denver & Vail in June of 2019, with us all agreeing that we would work hard to find jobs and move out west the following summer…. two weeks later I was accepting a job as a principal and less than a month later we were moving our family and yellow lab across the country and have never looked back.
Over the past years we’ve lived in Colorado, my daughter and I travel regularly to Philadelphia to see my family. However, this summer we spent 5 weeks out of the 10 weeks of summer break on the East Coast, or traveling there. The trips were all very different and took lots of planning and organization, but I can’t think of a better way to spend summer vacation…. even if hubby and I worked from the road, a major perk of my new career change.
The first trip was to Boston and the cute coastal town of Salem, Massachusetts. Hubby was originally supposed to be on a work trip in Nebraska, and after weeks of me taunting him about going to tornado alley, his trip rescheduled and he agreed to accompany us to my cousin’s wedding. I shared the good news with my pessimistic, anxious mother and her response was, “That’s wonderful Laura, it will be so nice to see you both at a happy occasion while we still can. In a few more years you kids will be traveling home for funerals instead.” Thanks mom, that was a positive twist to put on my good news!
My cousin Chelsea had a beautiful wedding in Salem, my daughter checked whale watching off her bucket list, and I ate seafood for a week straight (even finishing my husband’s left-over lobster mac & cheese for dinner in our airport hotel on the last night). After the weekend festivities ended and all my relatives were driving home to Pennsylvania, the three of us headed to Boston for the next four days. This was hubby’s first visit to Boston and he didn’t realize how much he would love it. I tried to tell him he might not feel that way in mid-winter (Florida boy has it good with the Denver winters), but I’d always be open to moving to Boston. Check out more about our Boston & Salem trip here https://lauramariemyers.com/wanderlust/
To end a wonderful trip to New England we had a tough run of luck on our flights home. After a 2 hour delay and change of aircraft, crew & terminal in Boston we finally arrived in Detroit. Just to hear our flight listed as one of the many missed connections. I had the foresight to rebook our connecting flights before we left Boston, but it was a good thing I confirmed them, because my husband was not confirmed on the flight! Since we didn’t originally book our flights together, we were on two different reservations with two lovely Delta workers rebooking us simultaneously. My girl completed the job and our new boarding passes were in my wallet as I was walking on the late Boston to Detroit flight. However, the dude that was doing Ken’s reservation got distracted and didn’t finish the job. Poor hubby was not even booked on the flight out of Detroit. After a conversation with the most empathetic gate agent we’ve ever met, all three of us were seated together on the plane and had $90 in meal vouchers… and a very long eight hours to spend in the Detroit airport!
We ate a yummy meal at Longhorn Steakhouse and tried to come up with a plan. Across the terminal from Longhorn I saw something called Minute Suites. I checked them out and decided to book a 2 hour time slot so that we can all take a nap and relax in a contained room. Except for a loud train that drives across the terminal every 3.5 minutes, this was a great solution. There was a daybed with a pullout, a desk & chair and lots of outlets, ports and media devices to plug into during our stay. I should’ve booked 3 or 4 hours, since we spent so much time at Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport. We eventually made it home to Denver, after midnight & very tired, to the rudest airport shuttle driver in history!
I could hear my husband’s words, “Why would you ever book a layover if you have the option of nonstop?” To save a butt-ton of money! Why else would any sane traveler choose to book a layover if they didn’t have to? To his credit, he never rubbed it in my face, however I certainly remembered this warning when booking flights for Philadelphia at the end of summer. I didn’t heed that warning (at least not for one way), but I’m starting to try to relax some of my “cheapest flight-longest walk” mentality that my years of world travel roots have left instilled deep in my core. I do need to get back to being a more condensed European packer, I seem to have let that go a bit in recent family travel years. Pack less, nonstop flights…maybe I’ll remember it if it becomes my mantra.
Thankfully, our next trip was a road trip because Ken was a little salty on the airline industry for a few months. We moved from South Florida to Colorado about five years ago and Ken’s family still lives there. We tried to go back for an annual visit as well, but this year we decided to drive instead of fly on purpose, since we’d be moving Ken’s mom home to Colorado with us.. Our plan was to drive three, 10-hour days from Denver to Orlando, spend a few days visiting family there and then finally ending up in Ft. Lauderdale. Check out more about our road trip to South Florida on the blog post here https://lauramariemyers.com/florida-road-trip/
Our first leg of the trip was from Denver, Colorado to Topeka, Kansas. There isn’t much to see on the first day, but the boys got to add Kansas to their list of states visited. On day two we traveled through both Kansas City, Kansas and Missouri and through St. Louis before heading south in Tennessee to Nashville. A few tips for booking hotels when taking a road trip, don’t book close to downtown and touristy areas and stick to hotels right off the highways you’re traveling. Once you plan approximately where you are going to stop for the night, pull up your hotel’s app (always book direct for points) and use the map feature to follow your route out of town and into significant savings. There are lots of chain hotels that you can quickly build points on during trips like this, especially since the hotels just need to be clean and sleep all of us. We like Choice hotels, IHG, Hyatt and Hilton and you know what standard to expect at each. On this trip, we did Choice hotels and reached gold status for a few free nights during our European trip next summer. The final day of our road trip was from Nashville to Orlando, Florida. I was counting down the days until I could drink coffee from Wawa three times a day! My son’s however, boasted about this rest stop called Bucee’s they couldn’t wait for us to stop at on the way to Florida. Bucee’s is more of a destination rather than a quick rest stop for gas and coffee, be prepared.
After a quick stop in Orlando to see family and try to recreate wonderful Disney World memories we all came to one conclusion. The Myers family will never do Disney World in the summer again! It was so hot, we couldn’t make it past 5:00 pm without heading to the pool for the late afternoon. In the morning, we fueled up the car and grabbed coffee at Wawa on the way South, down the I95 memories of where we have lived and traveled in the past. Seeing exits for Port Saint Lucie, Deerfield Beach and finally Sunrise Boulevard in Plantation, FL (just west of Ft. Lauderdale) to my husband’s childhood home.
This particular trip had some respite for Ken and I, since our business partner who lives in downtown Ft. Lauderdale just bought a house, he graciously offered us his downtown apartment. What a fantastic offer for a couple as busy as we are and struggle to carve out ‘couple’s time’ for ourselves. After six days of highway hotels and a vacation rental (conveniently located next to a Wawa) with four kids, we were ready for a sanctuary to retreat to at the end of the night. Even better, in the mornings Ken had meetings in the quiet apartment (sans barking dogs and noisy kids) and I could write in the tropical cafe downstairs or on a lounger at the rooftop pool. All before waking up the teenagers and forcing them to become active in the daylight hours.
After just over a week in South Florida, Ken & I squeezed in one more yummy seafood restaurant a few minutes before the kitchen closed on our last night in town. The next morning, we were scheduled to hit the road, back to Colorado and the gloriously dry climate we have grown to appreciate so much over these last weeks. We traveled across the Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi, Arkansas and Missouri Rivers on our route. On the return journey, Ken’s mom drove home with us to Colorado. She packed a bag of winter clothes and threw her three small dogs in the back of the car and drove 6-7 hours a day, before one of us took over night driving for her.. She was a rock star and now a Coloradan!
If all those travels weren’t enough for the summer, only 1-week after returning from our 18-day road trip to Florida, Cassidy and I jumped on an early morning flight black to the east coast for the third time that summer. This was the connecting flight that I just couldn’t pass up, to arrive in PHL a few minutes before scheduled time! I tried not to worry about it, we had plenty of time for a nice lunch in the Cleveland airport, and if we were delayed, there were more flights that day to Philly. In the end, my mother worried about the flights enough for both of us, and it went off without a hitch. However, I am committed to taking nonstop flights whenever possible, even if they are more expensive. I’m learning that my time and zen are worth at least $250 a ticket.
We did not even plan to go to the Philadelphia suburb that I grew up in, our focus was on the seashore. Ocean City, New Jersey to be exact. For fun on the beach, a family friendly boardwalk and all the pizza & ice cream we can eat during the week. Ocean City is where my childhood memories are happiest. My later teen years were full of spontaneous trips with my friends & figure skating coach and mostly innocent dates when we got our licenses and tasted freedom, and interstate, for the first time. Today, Ocean City summer trips with my daughter allow me to remember the best of my youth, while continuing the next generations of cousin’s memories in the salty shore air. Check out more in the blog Not that Jersey Shore trip https://lauramariemyers.com/not-that-jersey-shore/
Despite the Northeast having record rainfall this summer and most of my relatives posting Noah’s Ark memes for weeks on end, we had beautiful weather for the first 4 days. On Friday, the day we planned to do the waterpark, the weather had turned, and it was cold, rainy & windy. I kept my word to my daughter and took her to the freezing, filthy waterpark. Thankfully she was done two hours into the day, and we abandoned the waterpark before we contracted a disease (I wish I was exaggerating more than I am) and went shopping on the boardwalk instead. The weather continued to get worse, which made it easier to leave and drive back to the Philadelphia airport. We caught a late-night flight back to Denver, which is always my family’s choice of flights. I try to convince them early in the morning is better to avoid the delays and cancellations of the day… but it falls on deaf ears when I’m dragging half asleep children into the car at 4:30 am headed to DIA. Our flight was a breeze, and we were home and rested before “Meet the Teacher” and the 1st day of school.
I’m three months into this new career change and I feel like a completely new person! This is the path I should’ve taken at 25, I’d be a lot healthier and much better rested! Now all my kids are at some phase of going back to school 3rd grade, 10th grade & college freshman and this is the first fall I am not counting down to the first day of school. I’m not returning as either a student, teacher or administrator, but I have a feeling I will learn more in this next year than ever before. Travel, both near and far, has that impact on people.
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