There are certain experiences in life that have a deeper impact than others, that maybe even change the course a bit. Maybe you don’t even realize it at the time, but when you look back, you realize the important spot it has in your life’s timeline. Our family’s first trip out west was one of those experiences. Not only was it when we fell in love with the west; we learned a lot about ourselves … as a family and as individuals.
I (Emily) am a Kentucky girl, and Josh is a Michigan boy; our childhood family travels stayed mostly in the region somewhat close to where we lived. And not to take anything away from those family trips; I have so many wonderful memories! But I had never been out west, had never seen snowcapped mountains before.
Now as the parents, our own family trips started out the same way, staying within the same region of our country, but then we were ready for some new adventures. Spring 2019 is when we went on the adventure that to this day we call our “special trip” ~ our first trip out west.
We always like to hit several spots within one trip (check out our post about Multi City Travel), and there are a ton of places on the western side of our country to explore. We chose our spots for this trip based on what would work well for us being a general aviation family (Josh is a pilot), but this adventure could definitely be a good road trip too! Our original plan was to fly to South Dakota (see the Badlands), then to Montana (Glacier National Park area) for the majority of the time, then back to South Dakota (see Mount Rushmore) on the way home.
In aviation we have to be flexible and willing to change plans according to what the weather is doing, which works out okay for us because we’re typically pretty spontaneous, fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants types. Well, for this trip the weather changed our plans so that we ended up going to North Dakota for our first stop, and I’m so glad we did! It was one of our favorite parts of the trip!