Five Years of Blogging & Ten Years of Road Trips!

This week marks 5 years since we started this family travel blog. We started road tripping in summer 2012, so it’s a double celebration of 10 years of road tripping and 5 years of sharing our adventures on our little corner of the ‘web.

We’re proud to share that we’ve gained a LOT of followers and readers over the past two years (since we last did a Google analytics deep drive) and we thought this week would be a perfect time to share a blog recap. Note: At the start of 2022 we transferred our blog to a WordPress host and some of the photo displays are off- we’ve been working diligently to fix the layouts, but it takes time.

Our most popular National Parks posts:

See our full list of National Park Service sites posts here.

Our most popular City Guide posts:

See our full list of 35+ City Guides here.

Our most popular attraction posts:

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Our most popular resort posts:

See our full list of 15+ resort features here.

Some of the most popular searches on the blog:

Search our posts by state:

We hope you’ll keep following along on our adventures- we’d love to share our tips and recommendations. Please follow us on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, and Twitter for the full scoop!

New England based, part high school English teacher, part non profit founder, part road tripper who LOVES hopping in the family SUV to explore America. Our bucket list includes National Parks, MLB stadiums, presidential libraries, and eating wherever the locals eat!

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10 Places to Explore at Historic Jamestowne in Virginia
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10 Places to Explore at Historic Jamestowne in Virginia

Part of the Colonial National Historic Park (one of the first parks, created in 1930) Historic Jamestowne honors the British Colonist experience in North America. The park includes a 23 mile scenic parkway that connects Yorktown Battlefield and Historic Jamestown. Both Yorktown and Jamestown have Visitor Centers with museums, outdoor activities, and many ranger led programs. Historic Jamestowne also includes archaeological sites, churches, and monuments honoring important historical figures.

Crown Center in Kansas City, MO
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Crown Center in Kansas City, MO

My favorite, major family trip (to date) was the first one we took in the summer of 2012. We logged 5700 miles in our trusty Chevy Equinox, driving from Connecticut to Phoenix, Arizona and back to Connecticut. On the back end of the trip, we spent a few days in Kansas City, Missouri. And we.loved.it. Love the people. Loved the food. Loved the family friendly places to explore. I blogged about our stay for Kidventurous here, but I thought I would revisit some of these suggestions and elaborate on them. Note: I did fact check as of June 2017.

Today I want to focus on the Crown Center & Union Station area of the city. My suggestion for parking is to go to Crown Center.  There are two parking garages; I would park in the one labeled “Seal Life and Lego Land” which is on the East side of Grand Avenue. You can park on all day and walk to some of our favorite spots:

Touring the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland
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Touring the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland

Founded in 1845 by George Bancroft, Secretary of the Navy, the US Naval Academy, located in the heart of Annapolis, Maryland, is the college that trains officers for both the Navy and Marine Corps. What started as a 10 acre campus with 50 students and 7 faculty members has expanded to a 338 acre campus with over 600 faculty (half civilian and half military) and 4,500 students called Midshipmen (women are called Female Midshipmen), copied from the British naval ranking. Women were first admitted in 1976 and today, represent approximately 30 percent of Midshipmen. Each year, the Academy accepts approximately 1200 students, approximately 10% of applicants. All Midshipmen are on scholarship and are required to serve a minimum of five years in the Navy or Marine Corps following their four year college experience, culminating with a Bachelors of Science degree. 

Over 80,000 people take guided tours each year, and over two million people visit the Academy each year. Our guided walking tour is one of the BEST tours we have ever taken and we think it is a must see and do when you’re exploring Annapolis, or driving through to Washington DC or Baltimore, Maryland, both a half hour away.

Highlights of 2017
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Highlights of 2017

My 2017 was filled with lots of fun travels. My family and I stayed mainly in New England, but we still managed to cover over 5,000 miles from northern Maine to New York City, and many places in between. For all of my new readers and followers, I thought I would highlight some of my favorite places and my most liked (and shared) posts from 2017:

Playing “I Spy” at the Connecticut State Capitol
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Playing “I Spy” at the Connecticut State Capitol

Visiting state capitol buildings is one of the first things we do when visiting the capital city. It’s a little ironic that it took our family, who has lived in Connecticut for almost 20 years, this long, but we recently, finally made it to the CT Capitol for a tour.

Connecticut was founded in 1662 and is known as the Constitution State, as it was the first state to adopt a constitution.  Built in 1878, the Connecticut Capitol building, located in downtown Hartford, was designed by Richard M. Upjohn to replicate a Victorian Gothic style. The building overlooks Bushnell Memorial Park’s 41 acres in the heart of Hartford and was restored in the 1980s to the original colors and design. The addition of the Legislative Office Building (LOB), which opened in 1988, allowed for office space for Connecticut’s 151 Representatives (each representing approximately 25,000 constituents)  and 36 State Senators (each representing approximately 90,000-100,000 constituents). The “LOB” also allows for more public meeting spaces and opportunities for state officials to meet as committees and with public interest groups. The first and second floors of the LOB and the first floor of the Capitol are both open to the public; upper level floors house private offices and chambers and guests must be accompanied by officials. 

5 Reasons I Love State Parks
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5 Reasons I Love State Parks

This past weekend Connecticut celebrated Connecticut Trails Day with almost 200 events in and around many of the 142 state parks, forests, and beaches. Overseen by the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, state parks, forests, and beaches cover 255,000 acres of public space and thousands of trails for hiking and biking. One perk of 2020 and 2021 has been our family’s focus on spending more time outdoors, exploring many of these public spaces. To date, we’ve visited about 30 state parks and you can read about our adventures (and trail recommendations and travel tips) in this post focused in Fairfield County, this post focused in western Connecticut, this post focused on central Connecticut, and this post focused on the Mystic area. We’ve also started to amass proper hiking equipment (headline: you’ll want more than just sneakers) and you can read about our hiking supply post here.

11 Comments

  1. Two great milestones, congrats! You’ve definitely visited some amazing places, excited to check out more of your guides!

    Reply

  2. Looks like you’ve had lots of great travels as a family! This is a great way to round up all of those adventures and it seems you all have been quite busy the last few years. Congratulations on your 5 year Blogiversary.

    Reply

  3. Congratulations on 5 years of blogging! It’s been so fun following your adventures, and I can’t wait to see where you’re headed next!

    Reply

  4. It really looks like you had a lot of fun with you family.
    I wish you another 100 years of traveling discovering the world with them.

    Reply

  6. Congratulations! I’m sure the last 10 years of road trips have been so rewarding to your family and especially your kids. There is no better educator than travel. Looking forward to following you for another 10 years of road trips and 5 more years of blogging.

    Reply

  8. Congratulations on these impressive milestones! I love this fun post to celebrate the occasion! I can’t wait to see what the next 5 years has in store!

    Reply

  9. What an amazing milestone! I loved seeing how your children grew over the years 🙂 Wishing you 10 more years of road trips, fun, and new memories.

    Reply

  11. Professional, inspiring, comprehensive, and most enjoyable. Congrats on a job well done! You have been a huge help to SO many others and I trust your contributions over the next five years will grow exponentially….

    Reply

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