Our Top 15 Travel Highlights of 2018

For the second year in a row, our New Year’s travel plans were thwarted by weather. Last year it was extreme cold and icy roads in the forecast all over the southeast; this year it was rain and thunderstorms and tornado warnings.

(Incidentally, I posted about canceling our trip on an RVing facebook group and got many responses from brave souls who would always go camping anyway–no matter the weather! I admire the hardiness of such people, but we are not those people. I love being in our trailer, and I definitely don’t mind the occasional rainy day spent in it….but when the forecast calls for thunderstorms and possible tornadoes for every single of day of our trip, I’d rather be in my house than in a tiny space with grumpy kids and stinky wet dogs).

So we spent New Year’s Eve in our house, playing board games and making lists of favorite memories from the year in travel instead of in a state park outside of New Orleans (which, I just realized, means we’ve now canceled New Orleans travel plans twice; we had to cut it out of our summer itinerary a couple of years ago, too, to get home early for school commitments for Ari. Sorry, New Orleans, we’ll make it to you eventually!) And it was a really lovely evening. The kids get very into making the lists and take it very seriously. And Abe really understood the concept for the first time this year!

Our process is that everyone makes their own list privately of ten favorite travel memories from the past year (except for Abe, who needs some help), then one person reads each list aloud and we all try to guess whose is whose. And for ranking purposes, I’m including the fifteen things that were included on at least two lists, which I think ended up being a pretty good representation of the best things of the year (although I think we all could have easily made lists of fifteen or twenty things, too). Here they are, in reverse order from fewest lists to most lists:

15: Hanging out with cousins at Jekyll Island

(2 lists) We had a year relatively full of cousins, as we traveled with the California side of the family both to Jekyll Island and Cape Cod, and that’s always a great thing. Jekyll was the perfect place for traveling with family, too, I think, because there was plenty to do there, but it was also low key enough to allow for plenty of downtime for just hanging out. I wish these guys lived closer to each other, but the distance also makes it even more exciting when they get to see each other. Blog post here.

14. National Museum of African American History and Culture

(2 lists) We were really looking forward to our first visit here, and it didn’t disappoint. It’s a magnificent, moving museum, and it will take us many return trips to see everything it has to offer. Blog post here.

13. Ross Farm

(2 lists) Kind of a sleeper hit; I wasn’t anticipating the living history site, Ross Farm Museum in Nova Scotia to be one of the highlights of the trip, but we had a really great time here, despite a cold and rainy day. There’s a ton to do there, and it’s the kind of place that keeps all ages entertained. And plenty of animals, which is always a hit with our kids:

12. Canoeing in Kejimkujik National Park

(2 lists) This is probably the only controversial addition to the list, because Gus really didn’t enjoy this at all. We did a guided canoe trip in Keji National Park in Nova Scotia, and Gus ended up in the middle of one of our two canoes, without a seat and without paddles….so he was pretty uncomfortable and bored. Abe was in the same position, but he’s little enough that he didn’t mind so much. But this was a fun experience and a great way to see the park for those of us with paddles at least. Keji is one place we’d love to spend more time when we make it back to Nova Scotia:

11. Peggy’s Cove

(2 lists) We drove to Peggy’s Cove our first evening in the Halifax area and had a lovely time seeing Peggy’s Cove with relatively low crowds. We enjoyed the super touristy Sou’Wester restaurant and then spent a lot of time scrambling all over the rocks by the lighthouse. Beautiful view + rock scrambling! What else could you possibly need?

10. Canada Day

(2 lists) Our first Canada Day! We saw fireworks the night before at park near Halifax:

And then on July 1, we spent the day in Halifax checking out the Citadel and the immigration museum and marveling over how much free stuff they give away on Canada Day.

9. Biking on Jekyll Island

(3 lists) In 2017, we had a great spring break trip to Charleston, but not one thing from that trip made it onto our highlights list. I think spring tends to get lost when summer follows after so quickly with its much longer trips. So it’s a testament to just how much everyone loved Jekyll that it claimed two spots on this year’s list. The bike paths that take you all over the island were one of our favorite things about the trip. Blog post here.

8. Statue of Liberty

(3 lists) I think the Statue of Liberty was a more popular choice for those of us who got to go up to the Crown (although, actually, I think maybe Abe had it on his list, too). It was a return visit for most of us, but adding in the crown definitely made it worth it. And it was Abe’s first visit and made quite an impression on him. Blog post here.

7. Cousins at Cape Cod

(3 lists) More cousins! A couple of people mentioned playing baseball with the cousins specifically, which is something they did an awful lot of on the Cape. Blog post here.

6. Parrsboro, Nova Scotia

(3 lists) Parrsboro was our first stop in Canada, and we all fell in love with the charming little town and with the amazing view of the Bay of Fundy from our campsite:

Three of us (Ari, Dave, and I) plus the dogs went on a long walk along the beach by the campground one night while the other three kids opted to stay behind, and the three beachgoers are the ones who put Parrsboro on the highlights list. It was a great walk that ended at a cool rock formation that formed a tunnel.

5. Sugar Moon Farm

(3 lists) Sugar Moon Farm might have made four lists, except I kind of forgot about it when I was making mine. I’d had this place on my list for Nova Scotia for years before we actually went there, and it was worth the wait (and the long drive; it’s kind of in the middle of nowhere). There’s nothing elaborate about a visit to Sugar Moon: just a short tour to learn how the syrup gets made (complete with samples), a walk up to see the sap lines in the woods, and then a meal at the fabulous on site restaurant.

4. Miners Museum

(4 lists) The Miners Museum in Glace Bay, Nova Scotia is another surprise. We did a tour of an old coal mine here, but the Men of the Deeps concert that we saw (it’s a choral group made up entirely of retired coal miners) really gave it the push it needed to land so high on the list.

3. New York City day

(5 votes) I had to smoosh some things together to get this one its high ranking, because some people included a single element instead of the whole day. Ari had visiting the Met on his list. A couple of kids had eating at Ellen’s Stardust Diner (“home of the singing waitstaff”!) on theirs. But there was general agreement that the whole day was pretty great. We walked forever and saw tons of stuff. Blog post here.

2. Cabot Trail

(5 lists) Driving the Cabot Trail and hiking along the way was an awesome experience, and I wish we’d had more time for it. Some people put the whole Cabot Trail on their lists and others singled out the particularly breathtaking Skyline Trail hike.

1. Disney World

(6 lists) Honestly, Disney cheated a little to snag the top spot here. I’m pretty sure if I asked everyone if they preferred Disney World or Nova Scotia overall, Nova Scotia would win out. But we let Disney be its own category and divided Nova Scotia up, so that’s the way the votes fell. For those who singled out one Disney experience, eating at Cinderella’s Royal Table was the top vote getter. So despite car troubles and bed bugs, Disney emerged triumphant! Good work, Disney! I think we spent as much on that one week as on our entire summer seeing the east coast and Canada, so it ought to have been good. Blog posts here and here.

So there you have it! We’ve been plagued with trailer repair woes and busy with kid activities, so we haven’t managed a family trip since Disney (and haven’t managed one with the trailer since summer), but we certainly packed a lot in to our summer to make up for that. There are some honorable mentions that seem like they should be on this list, but that just fell a little short. Prince Edward Island doesn’t make an appearance, but Milo put our bike ride there on his list and I had the campfire programs at Cavendish Campground on mine. And I’m surprised that Fundy National Park isn’t here, because we all really loved our stopover there as well. Alas, these lists are all about tough choices!

Next up I’ll talk about our plans for 2019; it’s going to be a pretty major departure from years past!