I could write about road trips forever.

Some more road trip thoughts:

1. It's fun to have a theme. The theme of this summer's trip was America A-Z. We didn't get all crazy and go through the alphabet in order, but we made sure we visited a site beginning with each letter. We had to make up an "X" ourselves, but the other 25 letters worked out great!

2. Take along a mascot. The gnome is way to0 over done. Sock puppets are fun and you can make them yourself! Baked goods work too! The soda bread is durable and easy to travel with. Your pastor's first born child is also fun for photo ops, but he needs to be returned to the parents eventually! For this recent trip, we took my co-worker's Geico gecko bobblehead because the little guy really wanted to see the states. Unfortunately, we only let him out of the car once!

3. Get the National Park Passport. No, I'm not talking about the Park pass (which is necessary in its own way). I'm talking about the passport which you can fill with stamps for each national park or national historic site that you visit. These are so much fun and years down the road you'll have a record of the exact date you visited the park. I highly recommend these for kids (I know my future chillins will have them). I've seen many a kid running for the stamp pad at the visitor's center, and the passports are also very educational with info. on each of the parks specifically and info. on what each region of the U.S has to offer.

4. Go on a road trip as soon as you can! Go with your friends, go with your family, go with anyone who seems normal and will help you pay for gas! The U.S. has so much to offer and is very accessible. And if you haven't seen much of it, you'd be amazed at how different it is from coast to coast. So get out there and have a look for yourself :)