Somebody said:  You don’t have to see the whole staircase to take the first step.”    Wish it had been me.

Did you ever taste Blue Bell Pistachio/Almond Ice Cream? Maybe that’s not your thing, but there is bound to be something out there that blows your tastebuds wide open!  Once you find your own fabulous flavor, you just can’t wait to share it with others.    

 Ron and I had found that flavor in world travel.  For awhile we were stuck in grief over the loss of one of our children; but once the beauty of living set back in, we longed to introduce our remaining three boys to the flavor of wanderlust.

Not ready for so big a bite?  Start small.  Baby steps!  One of the best benefits of discovering places with your family, is bonding. Bite off a small weekend get-away together in a city or state close by:  In Cherokee, Alabama find the Coon Dog Cemetery founded in 1937,  dedicated to the world’s greatest and luckiest coon dogs.  Over in Georgia,  you’ve got the Lunch Box Museum featuring 2000 lunch boxes, rare and otherwise.  Cumberland Island is 9,800 raw acres of wilderness, where the deer and the antelope play.  (Actually it’s armadillos, boars, alligators and feral horses.)   Or travel over to Louisiana to the Manchac Swamp cursed 100-years ago by a voodoo queen.  That’s the story anyway.

Any time away with your family is a baby step, and well worth the effort.

Might check out the book: Family on the Loose:  The Art of Traveling with Kids, 2012, Richards/Steel.  Rumble Books, Bellevue, WA.

Start small.  But start!

Somebody else once said:  “We travel not to escape life, but so that life won’t escape us.” And I’ve repeated those words one-thousand times.

Dawn