Most of our travels have been to the west of Illinois.  We’ve spent many a vacation traveling southwest to Texas for visits with family.  A lot of time has been spent in Missouri and last year we traveled to Colorado.  We spent 10 years living on the west coast in Washington state and made the drive between Washington and Illinois several times.  My sister lives in California and I lived in California for a short time as well.  We’ve been to Las Vegas in Nevada a few times and at one time or another have at least driven through every state west of Illinois, except for Louisiana.  Hubby, however, went on a fishing trip to Louisiana earlier this year, so between the two of us, we have hit every state.

East of Illinois has been a different story though.

We’ve been to Florida a couple of times and states in between.  We spent a weekend in South Carolina for an adoptive families event when Lili was 1 1/2 and attended another adoptive families event in New Jersey when she was 2.    On our trip to New Jersey, we followed some friends up to Boston, MA for a short visit and last November we spent a weekend in Sandusky at a water park resort.  I was able to visit New York with a girlfriend several years ago and a trip to Maryland and Washington D.C. was so long ago, I remember virtually nothing about the trip.  So while we’ve been able to see a few places to the east of Illinois, there are many we haven’t seen and would really like to visit.  Places that have more history than the parts of the U.S. we’ve spent the most time visiting.  Places, that I’m quite sure, will be beautiful.

So last night we made reservations at a campground and will be visiting North Carolina for a week next month.

We’ll be starting out in the Charlotte area and then traveling north toward Greensboro to visit with friends before heading home.

I’m quite sure our week will not be nearly long enough, but it’s a start and we look forward to seeing a part of the U.S. that we’ve never visited before.