Road trips became a yearly occurrence when my grandparents moved eight hours away from my childhood home. Even though I was only 9 years old when we took our first one I can clearly visualize the sixteen passenger van my extended family crammed into.
That trip was my first introduction to traveling out of state, experiencing snow for the first time, learning about cultures other than my own and much more. Most importantly, that trip and those that followed are some of the happiest memories I share with my family. Going out and experiencing something new together ties you together with the people you choose to explore the world with. They become inextricably tied to that experience.
For example, whenever I think of St. Augustine, Fla., I can’t help but think about the time I spent roaming tourist traps and admiring chocolate from the windows with my sister. When I think of North Carolina, I think of the great aunt that showed us her many treasures including the spear heads she’d found on her property and shark teeth from other adventures along the east coast.
Even though I don’t have family in Idaho Falls, some of the memories that stick out most to me are things I did in my downtime with visiting family members and friends. There is something to be said about becoming a tourist -- even in your own town. It brings a new flavor to the food you decide to adventurously taste, a new vibrance to the roads you’ve already gone down and a general excitement to ordinary life.
This is why we decided to include what some might see as local haunts in this year’s road trip special section. Traveling an extra 30 minutes or an hour or two might not seem like a road trip by true definition, but it’s still an adventure worth making time for and perhaps more feasible with the fast-paced life our busy schedules create.
Although it might seem like a hassle (or even a risk, given the current times) to load up the entire family into the van and trek all the way out to somewhere like Pocatello or even Arco, I think many would agree that it’s the perfect way to tighten bonds and create new memories that will last long past the time the youngest has moved out. We hope you’ll use this issue as a guide to plan future vacations and memories that will long outlast the money you were planning on dropping on the latest iPhone.
Click here to read more of Idaho Falls Magazine's May issue.