State-ly Travel Bug

Several weeks ago I read a newspaper article about the fulfillment of the author's dream to visit all 50 states. It got me thinking about where Dick and I have been and where we'd like to go. We often talk about traveling throughout the U.S. but we didn't have a concrete idea how to accomplish it. Now, we have a plan.

Marie went to a local store for teachers and came home with this puzzle map. I glued down every state that Dick and I have visited and put the remaining puzzle pieces in a bag. Whenever we get the travel bug for a weekend trip or just want to GO somewhere, we're going to pull a state from the bag and that's where we're heading.

The 'glue down rules' I used are:

• we have to have visited the state together - my trip cross-country when my family moved from Georgia to California doesn't count; neither does his early childhood sojourn in Michigan.
• we must have spent significant time there and seen more than just 'drive through' sites for the state to make the 'been there, done that' list.

We've done pretty well on states in the southwest U.S., the northeast - from our fall leaves tour last year, a few in the south, and Alaska (twice) and Hawaii (3 times.)

We'll knock at least two more states off this year. We have trips planned to Kansas - a two-week road trip in May so I can take a weaving workshop in Lawrence - and Oregon - another road trip in June to visit the Black Sheep Gathering in Eugene.

And if we get more travel bugs? I'm getting out the state bag and we're going someplace we've never been before.