Summer 2014 vacation trips

Lots of driving - probably no more planes until we strike it rich!

June 6-14 Chicago - long drive, girls did fantastic, stopped in Kentucky on way up, St. Louis on way back, stayed with friends both places, good family time, went to museums, took train which was fun (also instead of driving & paying outrageous parking fees!)

June 16-28 briefly home for Julia to attend ENCORE camp - awesome sauce! didn't like driving to Robertson Academy 2x/day, but plan to network & carpool next year!

June 30-July 6 North Carolina - long drive, but girls did great. Stopped in Asheville both ways, stayed in hotel both times (different ones). Susie was wonderful to drive most of it since I had calf injury. Also to help with child care so Jai could stay home for first solo vacation in 5.5 years ( I had mine Oct. 2013 during Fall Break!)

July 11-13 Memphis - ahh, family reunion, fun times, thank goodness for short drive - it was fun, lots of yummy BBQ, good tour (too long!) ... what will happen in 2016? Where will we go?

July 18-20 camping @ Rock Island State Park (about 2 hours away from Nashville, in White county) - rained, but fun, must get better sleeping pads & fly tarp!

Jai & I talked about doing a 'driving across TN' trip in 2015 & 2016 instead of going to other places. It was exhausting to be gone so much of summer. Routine was shot, lots of eating out, not enough sleep - not really that different from other summer breaks! : )  However, there are 96 counties in TN, lots of state parks, other Wildlife Refugee areas. Looking at map as we had to troubleshoot wrong turn (good map reading skills without GPS), we realized that we have been to less than 20 of 96 counties, probably most in middle TN. Kind of get off beaten path, take some smaller highways, see more of our home state.

Re-read this post in 11 months. : )