Top 13 Travel Memories of 2022

Here in Georgia, most people spent New Year’s Eve watching Georgia and Ohio State battle it out in the Peach Bowl. As a proud UGA alum, I…forgot the game was happening and did what I usually do on NYE: spent the evening making lists of travel memories with my family. No regrets, though I hear the game was quite exciting. Go Dawgs, sic ’em, etc.

So every year we play an elaborate game where we all list our top ten travel highlights of the past year and then someone reads them aloud anonymously and we try to guess who made each list. This gets a little more complicated these days since the kids are getting older and full family travel is getting rarer. This year, for example, Ari spent the first half of the year doing a study abroad program in Budapest and traveling around Europe. Then he had a summer research job in Iowa that kept him from joining us for most of our summer trip. He made his own list with his own travel highlights, which obviously made his list pretty easy to guess. But it was still fun to hear what he’d enjoyed the most. Now Milo is off to college, too, and Ari is graduating this spring so isn’t likely to have a ton of time to travel with us going forward either (I mean, we certainly hope he’ll join us some, but his days of spending the entire summer with us are probably over, sadly)….so the NYE ritual will continue to evolve I imagine.

But this past year anyway five us still had mostly shared experiences, and we ended up with thirteen different things that made at least two lists. A note that our week in Glacier National Park was a bit tricky to handle. It made everyone’s list in some form or another (or in multiple forms), so that I thought about combining all the Glacier things into one, which would have put it at the top of the list. But, really, we did so much stuff in Glacier that it didn’t seem right to lump it all together….so we have three separate Glacier appearances on the list, with the caveat that Glacier would take the number one slot had I combined.

13. Field Museum

(2 lists)

I don’t know if I’ve even mentioned our Chicago trip (or, more precisely, our Chicago stop on our spring break trip last year, which was mostly about college visits), but there will be a blog post about it at some point. At any rate, everyone loved the super impressive Field Museum, and two people loved it enough to place it in their top ten, putting it in a five way tie. I wanted to put something from Chicago on my list, but I opted for seeing the Bean instead of the Field Museum, even though there is no T Rex at the Bean.

12. Museum of International Folk Art

(2 lists)

The Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe made both Milo and August’s lists, perhaps largely because they got to see the whole museum, while others of us spent a lot of time with Abe while he worked on a weaving project they had set up for kids. But we all thought it was a pretty great museum, with stuff to appeal to the whole family. They had some great scavenger hunts (not too easy for big kids and grownups!) in this ginormous and whimsical Alexander Girard wing, for example. And Milo and Gus especially liked the Ghosts and Demons of Japan exhibit that will be around until September, 2023.

11. Medora Musical

(2 lists)

You really just have to admire the pure, unadulterated spectacle that is the Medora Musical in Medora, ND. And two of us admired it enough to put it on our lists.

10. Finding the Hawaii License Plate

(2 lists)

Ari wasn’t with us on most of the trip this summer, but we were able to stop by Ames, IA, site of his summer research job, to visit him on our way back home. Abe has a license plate game he travels with, where he tries to find a license plate from every state over the course of our summer trip. For quite awhile this past summer, he was stuck with every state except Hawaii, which is a tough one to get for obvious reasons. We had more or less given up on finding it this summer, as we had only less populated midwestern states ahead of us and no more big tourist attractions that would attract a geographically diverse crowd. But then we picked Ari up to take him out to dinner. Within three minutes of getting in the car he said calmly, “oh. There’s Hawaii.” We were certain he was joking. But he wasn’t! He spotted the first Hawaii license plate of the entire summer in his first five minutes with us in Ames, Iowa of all places. It was extremely exciting. So exciting that it has earned a spot on the list.

9. Hot Springs National Park

(2 lists)

We only had one day to spend in this Arkansas national park, but it was a fun one. Lots of history, pretty buildings, a great restaurant and brewery (I think it was everyone’s favorite restaurant of the trip), and lots of hot water.

8. Santa Fe Skies RV Park

(3 lists)

Santa Fe Skies is one of the few (only??) campgrounds to ever make our top travel memories list, with three out of the five of us who stayed there including it. You can read all about why in the review I wrote right before this post (linked above). Basically, it has beautiful views, quirky art, and great amenities all in a location convenient to Santa Fe.

7. Trail of the Cedars/Avalanche Lake Trail in Glacier National Park

(3 lists)

Finally, Glacier National Park makes its first appearance! The Trail of the Cedars and Avalanche Lake hike (you take the short, boardwalk Trail of the Cedars hike to the Avalanche Lake trailhead if you want to do both) is an amazing family hike. It’s got some length, at a little over 4 miles round trip, and enough elevation change to give you some exercise without being overwhelming, and it has a ton to keep everyone interested along the way and a stunning payoff at the end. It has everything! Everything in Glacier looks like this:

6. Theodore Roosevelt National Park

(3 lists)

We were a little worried that Theodore Roosevelt National Park would be a let down after the majesty that is Glacier, but we were impressed! It’s no Glacier, but it has its own more modest but still beautiful charms (and the town of Medora offers up spectacles and kitsch that the towns around Glacier can’t match). We actually had better and more frequent wildlife encounters in TRNP than in Glacier.

5. Paddleboarding and Kayaking in Lake McDonald at Glacier

(3 lists)

Glacier again! This was actually the first time we ever broke out the paddleboard we got for Christmas last year, and it was a pretty spectacular spot for it to make its debut.

4. Storybook Land

(3 lists)

I came across Storybook Land (and the campground in the same park) in Aberdeen, South Dakota somehow or other a couple of months before our trip, and I was so excited about it that we rearranged our itinerary to include a stop there. Glad to say that it lived up to my expectations. It’s a totally charming little theme park (with a heavy Wizard of Oz emphasis), and we had a really fun evening there.

3. Going to the Sun Road in Glacier National Park

(3 lists)

Glacier’s third and last appearance! We planned our trip very carefully so that we’d be to Glacier well after the Going to the Sun Road opened for the season, and our careful planning was rewarded with the latest opening of the road in history, tied only with the years affected by WWII and Covid. Sigh. But! It finally opened just in time for us to see it at the tail end of our week long stay, and it was worth the wait! (and there was plenty of snow still hanging around for us to see…in JULY)

2. Meow Wolf, Santa Fe

(4 lists)

I will be blogging about Meow Wolf soon, so I’ll save most of my attempts to describe it for that. It’s an interactive art installation/museum type place that is bizarre and overwhelming in all the best ways, and I’d been looking forward to seeing it for YEARS! They don’t let you use your real camera inside, so I don’t have great pictures. But you should go.

1. Durango and Silverton Railroad

(5 lists)

Nearly every year there seems to be one thing that rises to the top and makes everyone’s list. As discussed, this year that would also include Glacier National Park were I to categorize more broadly, but, since I didn’t….the jaw droppingly scenic train ride in Durango, Colorado gets the top spot all to itself. Falls into that expensive but worth it category and something everyone should do at least once if they can!

And thus the list is completed! There were so many great runners-up this year: Missoula, Spiral Jetty, watching fireworks in Butte, MT….a whole national park didn’t even make the list (Mesa Verde). But all of those things will get some space on the blog eventually (soon! I need to get writing!) It was a pretty great year of travel, all in all.

Next up: 2023 plans!