Getting Started
It began with Grandmas and maps. Always having a love of maps, even before the days of GPS in your car, I’d have a map to my nose before any road trip. Being in the backseat of the car winding along the plateaus of Appalachia across the Great Valley to see my Mimaw, my Grandmother, in Alabama, and all the nooks and crannies in between driving to see my other Grandparents in the piedmont of North Carolina. These road trips of my youth always held little adventures any time we ventured “back in time” going between the Eastern of Georgia and Central time in Alabama and with parents making the big choice between taking the major interstates through Atlanta and its infamous “Spaghetti Junction” or taking the longer route through the hills of the greater Blue Ridge Mountains to head East. Back then, you had to have a map with you in case you ever got off the beaten path; a habit I have yet to give up even these days!
As you know, Grandmas love to see their grandkids. Add great-grandparents and grandparents out of state to the mix, and you know what I mean when I say we had to figure something out at some point travel-wise once I had a family of my own. Before the youngest joined us, our eldest had already visited Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, and many fun sites around our San Francisco Bay Area .
While chasing around the littles and between snuggles, late night feedings, nap schedules, I’d check out info on travel from local blogs from Bay Curious and Broke Ass Stuart to internet staples like Atlas Obscura and Buzzfeed . Niche newsletters of National Park Obsessed and binging showing like Sonoma County resident Guy Fieri’s Diners Drive-Ins and Dives kept my wanderlust quenched with endless interest for tips on traveling with tiny kids to tasty and curious places for us all to check out together.
Luckily, it wasn’t super-difficult to imagine adding a second in tow to our adventures. Our youngest was six months, our eldest was barely two when we blasted off from our San Francisco Bay Area abode into the wild blue yonder toward Grandmas and Great-Grandmas who were ecstatic as we debuted our entourage on the road and onward to see 50 states!