Spring Break 2010: St Augustine, Florida

As a dry run for this Summer's roadtrip, we drove down to Florida where we spent a week at Mike's sister's house outside of Jacksonville. We took it easy driving, spending two nights along the road each way, which still gave us five nights in Florida.

Saint Augustine is a fabulous vacation spot. It really emphasizes its Spanish colonial roots, with a lot of tourist attractions with that theme. We visited the Castillo de San Marcos, a large fort (and national monument) in town, went to a living history museum, toured some historic sites (everything is a first here: first schoolhouse, first church, etc). We went to some roadside attractions for Irene ( Alligator Farm, Ponce De Leon Fountain of Youth), went to the original Ripley's Believe It or Not for Grace & Lucy (and took the Ghost Tour later) and, for Mike, hit some beautiful beaches and state parks.

Overall, it was a very satisfying family vacation.

Above is a picture of Grace & Lucy at the Fountain of Youth, Grace at the Castillo, and Lucy wrestling an alligator (stuffed).

Christmas Vacation

Our first trip of the year was to Lake Placid, New York. The Adirondacks is a family favorite of ours; we weren't able to get there last Summer because of our big road trip, so we came up for Christmas week to get our Adirondack "fix". We rented a cabin at another old favorite, the Wilderness Inn II, which is a cabin cluster and fun restaurant/bar in Wilmington, NY. This family-owned resort is headed by a former NYC Rockette who, though now in her 90s, still greets guests in the restaurant.

We had perfect weather, lots of snow, though not too cold, and the kids were able to go tubing, sledding (and dogsledding), make snowmen, and go cross country skiing.

Some Early Planning For Next Summer

Last Summer, we were lucky enough to go on a summer-long cross country road trip. The trip was so wonderful, we decided to try to get in one more summer-long trip before returning to "normal life" (you know, the land of two week vacations).

Our first road trip had been unscripted: we knew we wanted to go to certain parts of the country: California Redwoods, Glacier Park, Grand Canyon and so on, but, other than sketching out a rough route, we made no other plans, no advance reservations or anything. While this spontaneity had some limitations ( we had a hard time finding a place to stay in some of the more big ticket destinations), it also let us get a nice snapshot of a great many wonderful places all around America.

This year will be a bit different: we will be revisiting a couple of places we really enjoyed from the last trip, and we will also visit a few new ones. With fewer places on the itinerary, we will be spending more time at the places we do visit. We will also be doing some more advance planning for some of the more popular destinations. (For example, we know we want to stay a full week inside Yellowstone National Park and Yellowstone starts booking more than a year in advance).

So here's the rough agenda for next Summer:

We will visit for a second time:

• Grand Teton National Park
• Yellowstone National Park
• The northwoods of Wisconsin

And, we hope to see for the first time:

• Rocky Mountain National Park
• Dinsaur Monument & the Flaming Gorge area of Utah
• Little Bighorn Battlefield
• Theodore Roosevelt National Park (North Dakota)
• Northern Minnesota
  

We 've already started ordering brochures and catalogues and, inthe case of Yellowstone, just made our reservations.