50 States!

I wanted to visit all 7 continents by age 30 (and I did it!)
My (newer) goal is all 50 states by age 40 (working on it!) 

I've now been to 44 of the 50 states and this is my attempt at trying to put the states in the order in which I visited them. This might not be entirely accurate, but it's gotta be close! 

Sadly some of my first 16 states never got a blog post. Was blogging even a thing 30 years ago?? I will try and remedy that soon... 

1. Ohio (born and raised!)
   See blog here feat. Cuyahoga
   See blog here feat. Cedar Point
   
   
2. Kentucky 
   See blog here feat. Red River Gorge
   
   
3. Indiana 
   No blog, but when I was little I went to the Indianapolis Children's Museum and the Motor Speedway. If anyone has any suggestions on THE BEST of Indiana, let me know and I'll do a re-do trip and blog! 
   
   
4. Michigan 
   No blog, but when I was little I went to Flint (Lake Fenton) for snow tubing and water tubing. If anyone has any suggestions on THE BEST of Michigan, let me know and I'll do a re-do trip and blog! 
   
   
5. Tennessee 
   No blog, but I've spent quite a lot of time in Nashville and then I've also been to Memphis, Gatlinburg, Chattanooga. I will do a blog at some point! 
   
   
6. Florida 
   No blog, but I think I've only ever been to Disney and Universal. (And visiting my grandparents in Ruskin) 
   
   
7. Virginia 
   No blog, but when I was little I went to colonial Williamsburg. If anyone has any suggestions on THE BEST of Virginia, let me know and I'll do a re-do trip and blog! 
   
   
8. Alabama 
   No blog, but I've only ever been to Huntsville where I took part in Space Camp. If anyone has any suggestions on THE BEST of Alabama, let me know and I'll do a re-do trip and blog! 
   
   
9. New York (2002, 2023, 2025)See blogs here and here and here from more recent trip in NYC
   
   
10. Wyoming (2002)
    No blog, but visited Grand Tetons and Yellowstone. 
    
    
11. California  (2003)
    No blog, but when I was younger. I went to Los Angeles and San Francisco.  I will do a blog at some point!
    
    
12. Illinois (2004, 2016)
    See more recent blog here feat. Chicago
    
    
13. Pennsylvania (circa 2004)
    No blog, but visited Philadelphia, Gettysburg, Shanksville
    
    
14. Alaska (2006)
    No blog, but visited Ketchikan, Sitka, Fairbanks, Anchorage,
    
    
15. Hawaii (2007)
    No blog, but visited Maui, Kauai, Big Island, Oahu 
    
    
16. Wisconsin (2010)
    No blog, but visited Wisconsin Dells.
    
    
17. Minnesota (2012)
    No blog, but went tubing on the lake and visited Mall of America. 
    
    
18. Nevada (2014)
    No blog, but visited Las Vegas
    
    
19. Arizona (2014)
    No blog, but visited the Grand Canyon and Hoover dam
    
    
20. Missouri (2016)See blog here feat. St. Louis
    
    
21. West Virginia (2020)See blog here feat. ACE adventure Park
    
    
22. Montana (2021)
    See blog here feat. Glacier National Park
    
    
23. Georgia (2021)
    See blog here feat. Atlanta, Senoia,  Lookout Mountain
    
    
24. New Mexico (2022)
    See blog here feat. Albuquerque, Santa Fe 
    
    
25. North Carolina (2022)
    See blog here feat. Asheville
    
    
26. South Carolina (2022)
    See blog here feat. Hilton Head
    
    
27. Oklahoma (2022)
    See blog here feat. Oklahoma City
    
    
28. Texas (2022)
    See blog here feat. Dallas, San Antonio 
    
    
29. North Dakota (2023)
    See blog here feat. Theodore Roosevelt National Park
    
    
30. South Dakota (2023)
    See blog here feat. Mt. Rushmore, Custer State Park, Badlands
    
    
31. Massachusetts (2023)
    See blog here feat. Salem, Plymouth, Boston
    
    
32. Connecticut (2023)
    See blog here
    
    
33. Rhode Island (2023)
    See blog here
    
    
34. Maryland (2024)
    See blog here and here
    
    
35. Delaware (2024)
    See blog here
    
    
36. Maine (2024)
    See blog here feat. Acadia National Park, Baxter State Park
    
    
37. New Hampshire (2024)
    See blog here
    
    
38. Vermont (2024)
    See blog here
    
    
39. New Jersey (2025)
    See blog here
    
    
40. Utah (2025)
    See blog here and here
    
    
41. Colorado (2025)
    See blog here
    
    
42. Kansas (2025)
    See blog here
    
    
43. Nebraska (2025)
    See blog here
    
    
44. Iowa (2025)
    
    BONUS: Washington D.C. See blog here and here 

State 43: Nebraska

After our stop at the Oz Museum we headed to Lincoln Nebraska! One of my favorite doggy clients moved out there a few years back and I always said I would stop and see them whenever I visited Nebraska! So good to see Norman and Luna and their parents! I miss them so much!! 

We also made a quick stop at the Sunken Gardens in Lincoln, but of course it was art in the park day so it was kind of crowded! It would be a lot nicer on a normal day without all the people. 

After that we continued our journey to Omaha! Mike wanted to go to another board game cafe and I really wanted to do Tree Rush Adventures. We parted ways and he hung out at the cafe while I did my ropes course! 

TreeRush Adventures has climbing and ziplining and is an aerial challenge course built on trees and poles in the Fontenelle Forest. There are varying levels of difficulty and I did only 3 of many courses. (2 novice and 1 intermediate) They have color coded courses based on difficulty/height of the course. I wish I would have been able to do more, but 1. I jammed my finger in one of the courses which was super painful and made it hard to grip things. 2. It was getting dark and bugs were getting bad- I started getting a bunch of bites! 3. I was hot and tired already and didn’t know if I had the strength to do more!! 

I had so much fun and I really enjoyed it!

Day: 3 Did you know the best zoo in the country is in Omaha, Nebraska?! I sure didn’t! We started out our day by going to the Henry Doorly Zoo. 

It is famous for largest-of-their-kind indoor exhibits, including the largest indoor desert, largest indoor swamp, and largest nocturnal exhibit. They also have an aquarium and huge exhibits! 

I LOVE animals, but I’m not a big fan of zoos. I would prefer to see animals in their natural habitat and not in captivity. All that aside, the Omaha Zoo was pretty well maintained and I enjoyed our visit overall. It was impressive and can see why it’s one of the top rated zoos in the world.

State 42: Kansas!

Traveling again! My heart is happy! 

Day1: Mike and I made it to Wichita, Kansas which is my 42nd state!  We started our morning by going to Botanica- we spent about an hour there. They have about 20 acres and over 4,000 unique plant species.

We then drove to Old Cowtown Museum which was really interesting! It’s 23 acres of living history! It recreates a typical frontier town in Wichita from 1865-1880. There are about 44 historic structures and period furnishings. Volunteers in costume also demonstrate things like black smithing and printing which brings it all to life. 

The outside of the schoolhouse 

Inside the schoolhouse 

Blurb about old time dentistry 

Dentist office 

I found this place called Merle’s and we had lunch there. Had an amazing BLT! It’s considered one of the cities oldest bars. (Est 1935!!) 

My BLT sandwich (half eaten) 

We drove past the Keeper of the Plains statue as we headed towards the Arcade. The statue symbolizes unity, resilience and the enduring spirit of Native American tribes. 

Spent a little over an hour at the arcade. I didn’t grow up with a lot of those games so it was a little challenging for me. 

Keeper of the Plains

At the arcade

Since Mike is journeying with me we had to make a stop at a board game place. It wasn’t that great so I won’t bother mentioning it on here and then we headed to Wamego, Kansas for the night. 

Fun story: I’ve been talking about how I wanted to see the Wizard of Oz again since we were going to the Oz museum while in Kansas. When we got to our hotel, Mike was flipping through tv channels and there it was! 

Day 2: Started out our day at the Oz Museum. You can’t go to Kansas without seeing something Wizard of Oz, right?! 

The Oz museum has over 2,000 artifacts including a tornado prop house, munchkin costumes, all 40 Oz books including first edition books by L. Frank Baum. 

The museum was better than Mike thought it was going to be. (And it was just as I had hoped!) We both enjoyed the documentary featuring an Oz historian. Learned a lot of new and fun facts such as in the book, Dorothy’s slippers were silver. MGM changed them to ruby slippers to showcase the new technicolor film process. 

The town of Wamego has 18 painted Toto dogs scattered throughout town which is kind of fun!

Pausing here as this was the end of our Kansas journey. More for day 2 coming up in a Nebraska blog!

Cuyahoga Valley National Park

Cuyahoga Valley National Park is Ohio’s ONLY national park and I had never been before this weekend! 

We made it a girls (and dogs) trip and had a great time! 

The park was established in 1974 and then designated a national park in 2000. It’s unique in that is has no entry fee. It is kind of funny because part of the reason I wanted to go was because I have an all parks pass for all the national parks in the country. We bought it in Utah and I wanted to make use of it before it expired by going to Cuyahoga. Jokes on me, I guess! 

We drove up Friday afternoon - about 3 1/2 hours. Since we had our doggos with us, I used the site Bring Fido to find places to eat with our dogs. I stumbled upon The Doodle Drive In which is honestly a whole vibe! It’s set up kind of like Sonic so you can eat in your car or place an order and take it to a table. They have a whole fenced in area  for doggies and their humans. Dogs must remain on a leash, but it was a great set up! When we arrived they also had live music. Highly recommend this place!

Saturday:  We started the day at Station Road Bridge and walked some of the trail there. 

We then went to Brandywine Falls which I think is one of the top things to see at the park.

After that we did some of the Ledges trail. This was cool because they had some unique rock formations and an “ice box.” I guess the technical icebox cave is closed due to conservation, but if you go in some of the cracks, you can feel how cool (temperature wise ) it is!!

We stopped at Green valley brewing company for lunch and then Handel’s homemade ice cream for a midday snack.

We then hit Bridal Veil Falls before taking a little rest at the hotel before dinner. 

The Richfield brewing company was great for dinner and allowed us to dine with our dogs on the patio. They even provided buckets of water for the dogs which was cute! Good food too! 

On Sunday we drove to Kendall Lake before heading home. There’s a nice trail (actually multiple trails) that you can choose from! Very pretty! 

Zermatt

Day 7:  We left Lucerne, had a lunch break/stretch in Interlaken and headed for Zermatt! (Mike, my dad, and I stopped in Interlaken for a couple days on our last trip and really enjoyed it-we even went paragliding!) Due to timing, we didn’t get to spend a lot of time there this trip, but it is a lovely city if you ever plan on visiting Switzerland! 

Interlaken

Did you know you can transport your car on a special train in Switzerland through the Alpine tunnels?! There is a service called the car shuttle train which allows you to drive your car onto a train and ride through a mountain. We were all shocked!!  This is a convenient and efficient way to bypass high mountain passes and get to your destination quicker. 

The train ferry!!

Zermatt: I’ve never been to the city before, so I was excited to add a new destination to my list! Zermatt is a car -free town which means we had to get out at Tasch and take an electric vehicle taxi into the city. 

Zermatt is beautiful and we spent the rest of the afternoon/evening walking around the town.

View of Zermatt from our room

Zermatt

View of the Matterhorn from the church 

On the ceiling in the church

The Parish Church of St Mauritius

Hotel: The Pollux

Day 8: We took the Gornergrat railway to get some cool views of the Matterhorn. It climbs over 1,400 meters from Zermatt to the mountain summit. The Matterhorn, for those of you who don’t know, is famed for its iconic peak and Toblerone chocolate logo! 

We had a nice visit and got some great pictures! They have a few stops along the way where you can get out and hike. They also had an interactive museum called ZOOOM which we stopped in briefly. 

Day 9: We had to make our way to Geneva for our flight the following day. On our way to Geneva we stopped at Chillon Castle which was pretty cool! This castle is ranked among the best-preserved of medieval European castles. It is situated on the banks of Lake Geneva and is said to be the inspiration for Prince Eric’s castle in the Little Mermaid. 

I really loved that you could wander around in the castle at your own pace. There was so much to explore and we didn’t even get to probably half of it due to time constraints. They do sell audio tours for an additional charge which we did not do because of time. There was a place to eat right outside the castle which was also nice. 
Hotel in Geneva: InterCity Hotel which was very close to the airport. They offered a complimentary shuttle the next morning for our departure. 

Shout out to Pub Goudale located just around the corner from our hotel. The food was excellent and probably my favorite from the whole trip!