50 States for my 50th Birthday: The Trip(s) of a Lifetime, Introduced

What does one do when one is turning 50 in the midst of a pandemic?

I’d been struggling in coming up with the right idea for a while and kept putting off thinking about it. Suddenly we were about 2 months away from the big day. I was bummed. Taran says (now in retrospect) that she felt anxious; she couldn’t just let my birthday be a dud. Then it hit her.

“Didn’t you say at one point that you wanted to visit all 50 states?”
I answered that I had.
“Why don’t we do that for your birthday?”

So here we are, mere days away now from my 50th birthday with a giant plan to experience every state before my 51st birthday… or, if circumstances should prevent us from achieving that, at least all 50 during my 50s.

We’ve got 10 trips planned in total, some already booked. We’ll be doing a little bit of everything: visiting family and friends, seeing historical sites and exploring pop culture, plus a whole lot of driving, a bit of flying and one cruise.

As I’ve been letting folks know the plan, I’ve been asked a few times if I’ll be documenting the trips. I’ve decorated 50 small bullet journals, one for each. I’ll be jotting down memories and stowing away the bits that I always tend to collect on adventures.

But it turns out what they meant was will I be blogging. I don’t know how much I’ll be able to commit to that, but I’ll certainly try to check in here when I can.