Every New Year’s Eve our whole family makes lists of favorite travel memories from the past year. It’s one of my very favorite family traditions. Then someone reads the lists out loud anonymously, and we all try to guess whose list is whose. And then I tally up which things got multiple votes, and I put them all in an end of the year blog post that nicely sums up the previous year.
But in 2020 travel memories were a little hard to come by. We did take a few nice trips close to home (I still need to blog about our last one, to Tybee Island and Savannah), but everyone was feeling a little bummed about not having a big summer trip to look back on during list making. Then Gus suggested that we do our favorite travel memories of the last decade instead. Abe wasn’t actually born yet 10 years ago, though, and 10 years is a little overwhelming (not to mention that most of our trips when the kids were younger were Disney World and Cape Cod over and over again). So we settled at last on lists of our favorite memories from our first five years of RVing–an anniversary we just passed a few months ago.
And that was our New Year’s Eve. We were supposed to be in St. Augustine, but ended up deciding that home was the best place to be at the moment. Which was really lovely, but here’s hoping that 2021 is a different kind of year, both for travel and for a lot of other things.
And here are the 20 things that each made it on to at least 2 lists this year. What a nice, round number! I was surprised there was so much overlap, given how many things there were to pick from this year. There are mostly ties, although there’s a clear first place winner, so the order is a little arbitrary.
20. Parrsboro, Nova Scotia (2 lists)
Parrsboro was our first stop in Nova Scotia, and it was a good one–a totally charming little town with a great city-run campground right on the ocean. It was an especially popular pick amongst those of us who went for a long walk on the rocky Bay of Fundy beach and found our beloved “tunnel rock” pictured above. If the dogs could vote, Rory and Fergus would have put Parrsboro way up there, too, I bet.
19. Kayaking on Cape Cod (2 lists)
I was a little surprised to find myself putting our guided kayaking tour on Cape Cod, in the marshy waters around the National Seashore, on my list, since boats are not always my favorite thing. But it was a really fun day and no one was swept out to sea! As then three year old Abe kept saying, “this is the best trip I ever saw!”
18. Georgia State Railroad Museum, Savannah (2 lists)
Train museums are the best. Ari also put the transportation museum in St. Louis on his list, but the Georgia State Railroad Museum in Savannah is the only one that got that crucial second vote needed for inclusion on the big list. It’s a big open air museum with tons to see and plenty of room for kids to wander. And you get to drive a handcar!
17. Westminster Abbey (2 lists)
While I will always remember Westminster Abbey as the place where my camera stopped working, it’s pretty memorable in other ways as well. Probably you’ve seen pictures if you haven’t been there yourself. Which is good because they don’t let you take pictures inside. We were impressed with the really well done family audio tour that kept Abe (mostly) entertained as well.
16. The Victoria & Albert (2 lists)
Surprise hit! The big kids had a great time wandering all over the place here, and we were again impressed with the programming for younger kids: we checked out an activity backpack for Abe, did a scavenger hunt, and wished that we’d had time to do more.
15. Dan O’ Hara Homestead (2 lists)
Everyone loved the Dan O’Hara Homestead at Connemara Heritage Center in Ireland. I’ve said that our Ireland trip sometimes seemed to be all about traveling around the country meeting animals, and we met a lot of them here. Ponies, donkeys, cows….and the kids got to feed a baby lamb. There was also moonshine involved.
14. Bath (2 lists)
We had less than two days in Bath, England, but it made a big impression. The Roman Baths themselves were probably the biggest hit (with another great kid-friendly audio tour!) but the whole city was charming. It’s also where I bought a new camera to replace my broken one. I feel very fancy now that I have a British camera (it’s really still a Japanese camera, same as my old one, but it did come with a UK friendly charger).
13. Innisfallen in Killarney (3 lists)
We all loved the day that we climbed into a not quite seaworthy boat with a sort of strange old man and visited a magical little island in Killarney National Park and had it pretty much all to ourselves for a couple of hours.
12. Bakewell, England and Chatsworth (3 lists)
We spent three nights in a tiny Airbnb in Bakewell, in the Peak District in England, and loved our two rainy days in the area. We spent the first day wandering all over the little town and the second day walking to and exploring nearby Chatsworth (which is so fancy that it stood in for Darcy’s Pemberley in the Pride and Prejudice movie).
11. Ingalls Homestead (3 lists)
I’m not the least bit surprised that the Ingalls Homestead in DeSmet, South Dakota made this list; I’m only surprised it’s not higher up. We spent a couple of magical nights here, camped right on the homestead itself, petting a wide assortment of baby animals, taking wagon rides, and riding bikes across the prairie.
10. Disney World (3 lists)
You know we’ve seen some pretty good stuff when Disney World is only halfway up the list. Sad fact about 2020 is that we had hoped to surprise the kids with a Disney trip for Christmas this year. But then…you know. That’s okay, we’ll make it back someday!
9. Biking on Jekyll Island (3 lists)
And just Jekyll Island in general. We’ve made two trips there over the past few years (read about them here and here) and have another planned in 2021 (knock wood). Beaches, history, bike paths….it has pretty much everything you need.
8. Grand Teton National Park (3 lists)
It’s telling that Yellowstone only made one list and the Tetons made three. Not that Yellowstone wasn’t spectacular, but there’s something special about its too often overlooked sister to the south.
7. Hawk Walk at Ashford Castle in Ireland (3 lists)
Our last day in Ireland was one of our best. We took a boat across Lough Corrib, which stopped off first at the little island of Inchagoill for some ruins and 4 leaf clovers, and then took us to Ashford Castle to fly some hawks.
6. Crater Lake (3 lists)
We sure did see a lot of cool stuff on our cross country trip in 2017. Like an extremely blue lake.
5. Killarney National Park (3 lists)
The rules here are a little loose…I’m not sure why I didn’t put this together with Innisfallen, which is in the national park. But I guess a lot of people distinguished between the day we did that and the day we rode bikes all over and visited Muckross Abbey and Muckross Farms.
4. Solar Eclipse (4 lists)
I spend a lot of time thinking about how excited I am for the next solar eclipse in the US. We were all completely blown away by how amazing it was and very lucky that we only needed to drive a couple of hours to get to totality.
3. Cabot Trail (4 lists)
We loved pretty much all of Nova Scotia, but driving the Cabot Trail was definitely one of the most spectacular parts. And it wasn’t even terrifying most of the time!
2. Miners Museum/Men of the Deeps Concert (4 lists)
The Miners Museum in Glace Bay, Nova Scotia was pretty cool, but it was the Men of the Deeps concert–a singing group made up entirely of retired coal miners–that launched this stop into tied for second place. Awesome experience!
1. Badlands National Park (5 lists)
And our first place winner! The oft overlooked and underrated Badlands National Park! The Badlands are home to an eerie and beautiful landscape that’s also totally accessible. Unlike in most National Parks, you’re welcome to climb all over the buttes in the Badlands, which makes it the perfect playground for kids. I think the only list it failed to make was Abe’s, but that’s probably largely because Abe’s list had lots of not-actually-travel-at-all memories on it, like making a snowman and the foster kitten we had a few years ago. He got a little distracted during list making time (and this was the first year he was on his own with making his list, since his spelling skills have improved so much over the past year).
Anyway, there’s our list! I think it’s a pretty great list. It leans heavily toward more recent trips, which I suspect is largely about how memory works, particularly kid memory. And there’s an awful lot of England and Ireland, which doesn’t have anything to do with RVing, of course….but that was the most recent big trip, and also it was pretty great. RVing trips took all of the top spots, though! Go North America!
We also did lists of top campgrounds and top restaurants, but I’m saving those for another post! Happy New Year, everyone!
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