One of my favorite family traditions is the game we play every New Year’s Eve where we all make lists of our favorite travel memories of the year and then try to guess which list belongs to each person. The last couple of years have gotten a little tricky, though, as the older kids have done less travel with the whole family and more on their own. And this year things were further complicated by the fact that we actually had somewhere to go on New Year’s Eve. So it was a few days after New Year’s by the time we made the lists, and then some of us left soon after on a Disney trip (more on that eventually), and…to sum up, I’m just now getting around to writing this post.
After we have all the lists, I go through and find all the things that appeared on multiple lists, and that usually ends up being a good number of things for a top…however many travel memories list. This year it’s ten, but there was a little bit of creative combining required to get it so nice and round like that. List making is on the bittersweet side these days, as it always reminds me of how we’re not all together on summer trips anymore. But also it’s great how my kids are growing up and doing their own things! Yay!
But ALSO it makes the logistics of The Game very tricky, and we haven’t quite figured out a good way to adapt it to our family’s changing circumstances. So, so far we just plunge forward and have enough memories in common still that the master top travel memories list still works.
And so here it is! There are a lot of ties this year, so this is sort of in order, but I’m going to make some executive decisions about the precise order…particularly when it comes to awarding the top slot.
10. Tybee Island
We were all together (grandparents included, even) for a Thanksgiving trip to Tybee Island, and it made it on to two lists. We’ve been to Tybee before, and we always have a great time there. In this case, it was a lovely, laid back Thanksgiving, but the process of getting grown-up kids with jobs and college schedules there from all over the place proved a little tricky.
9. August playing at Carnegie Hall
We made a stop in New York on our way up to Newfoundland because August’s youth wind symphony got to perform at Carnegie Hall! He’s up there on that stage with his French horn somewhere or other. August’s favorite part of the trip was not actually playing at Carnegie Hall but seeing Sweeney Todd with Josh Groban…but the rest of us didn’t get to see that, so Carnegie Hall it is!
8. Ari’s Graduation
Hey, we have a college graduate now! Ari graduated from Macalester College in Saint Paul in May, which was a great excuse for a road trip! Which I’ll blog about at some point, but the thing about it that made the list is the actual graduating part, which was awesome. Before the ceremony started I was feeling slightly jaded and grumpy about how very long the whole thing was going to be, but then I started crying as soon as the bagpipe music started up. There are bagpipes at Mac graduations!
7. Skerwink Trail/Port Rexton Brewing
I took the liberty of combining these two since they’re right next to each other and we did them on the same day, which gave them a combined three votes and earned them a spot on the list. The Skerwink Trail on the Bonavista Peninsula in Newfoundland was ranked one of the best hikes in the world in some magazine or other awhile back, and it is indeed stunning. But then so are a lot of hikes in Newfoundland. The proximity to our favorite brewery in Newfoundland gives it something extra, though.
6. Day in Brooklyn
Here I’m putting our whole Brooklyn-centric day together, including our walk across the Brooklyn Bridge and our visit to the New York Transit Museum. A rare list entry that I’ve already blogged about!
5. Hatch Show Print Tour
We did an excellent tour of Hatch Show Print in Nashville during one of our visits to Milo at Vanderbilt. It’s in the same building as the Country Music Hall of Fame, which we also liked, but Hatch Show was the clear favorite.
4. St. John’s, Newfoundland
Here’s where things get a little tricky. Something from Newfoundland capital, St. John’s, appeared on the list of everyone who went to St. John’s (which is to say, everyone except Ari), but most people picked one or two particular things instead of the whole city. So I combined again! The Rooms museum got multiple votes, as did a couple of historic sites we saw. Basically, everyone really liked St. John’s.
3. Gros Morne National Park
Altogether we spent around a week in Gros Morne, and it was another one that made every list in some form or another. The picture above is from the Eastern Point Trail in Trout River, not even technically in the National Park, but so close that it seemed to require grouping.
2. Fogo Island
Another universal pick from Newfoundland; we nearly cut Fogo Island out of our itinerary, but we managed to fit in two nights there and were so very glad we did.
1. Puffins!
The puffins in Elliston, Newfoundland were really only tied for first, but…look at them! These are clearly first place puffins.
And there’s the very Newfoundland-heavy list! I would like to go back to Newfoundland immediately, but instead I’d better get back to blogging about it. And a bunch of other stuff. Like our 2024 travel plans, another post that usually gets put up much closer to January 1!
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