50 States Before They Graduate

Our family has an exciting goal of experiencing all 50 states together before the boys graduate from high school. We started this adventure (and welcomed other families to join us back in 2011 by using the tag #50statesbeforetheygraduate), and now… in 2019, we’re only one state away from achieving our goal! You can virtually visit the states we’ve visited to see what we’ve experienced and/or to offer your own recommendations on those pages! Or… you can check out our roadtrip itineraries for how we achieved visiting 49 states.

While working towards this goal, many times we tried to plan activities that involved the image that came to mind as we thought about the state. For example, our token Texas trip included a visit to the Alamo.

Our token Louisiana trip had to involve Cajun food, Zydeco, and, of course, a swamp tour.

But we also enjoyed uncovering the hidden treasures of a place through more spontaneous trip-planning.  Since our oldest son loves reading through every pamphlet we come across when we travel, it wasn’t so tough to find random things to do wherever we traveled.  (In fact, we worked in our English grammar practice by diagramming the sentences within the pamphlets. #mightbeahomeschoolerif) In Louisiana, we spontaneously decided to tour the Tabasco factory at Avery Island.

 

This led to an obsession with all things Tabasco. I put it on everything now.  I even decided to decorate with a Tabasco Cajun Country theme in the kitchen. (At least I didn’t decide to go with a swamp theme, though my husband would probably love alligator-skin handles on his grilling utensils.)

As we started to think about our goals on this journey, Gary and I started talking about what we considered to be the token thing to do in each state.  Like….

Go to a potato farm in Idaho.
Or a corn farm in Iowa.
Or go to Mississippi and ride a riverboat.

But those are mainly stereotypical ideals.  When people find out my childhood roots are in Oklahoma, I’ve experienced the sterotype: “So, do the Indians there live in teepees?” or “You poor thing.  There’s nothing in Oklahoma. It’s No Man’s Land.”  And yet, if they just stick to those ideals of Oklahoma, they’d miss out on things like The Holy City of the Wichitas, or the Arbuckle Mountains, or Robber’s Cave (a former hideout of Belle Starr and Jesse James).

And I don’t want to miss the unusual, wonderful, off-the-beaten path adventures as we continue our trips through the 50 states. (Although our oldest son has experienced 49 states, our youngest has missed a few!)

So, my question to you is, where should we go if we head to your state?  What is special around your current hometown?  (If you’re overseas, I’d love to hear about that, too, because we don’t intend to keep ourselves limited to our home country.)  Let us know what’s special about where you live!  We may even come and visit you!