Five years ago, our daughter flew to Europe with my globetrotting sister to have an adventure. She turned thirteen on the airplane. She visited London, Istanbul, Rome, and Florence. She lived in an apartment with a bunch of single women in Sophia, Bulgaria, tagged along to my sister’s  teaching job, and made friends with all kinds of third-culture kids and native Bulgarians.

When it was time to fetch her home, I reluctantly agreed to go. I’d never had much interest in traveling. Vacations were mostly trips to visit our parents, who lived in other states. Even in college, the idea of leaving school for a whole quarter to study abroad horrified me. Imagine what I would miss while I was away! I am a teacher, however, and the idea of actually seeing some of the places we study in school intrigued me enough to buy a Rick Steves guidebook and a plane ticket. I fell in love.

Fueled by the glory of Rome, I planned a closer, but no less ambitious week in Santa Fe, NM with our family of eight. The next summer, we spent a month visiting the big cities on the East Coast. From there, we plotted future trips across the U.S., imagining how much fun it would be to see the country together before the kids grew up. But we were running out of time. They were aging by the minute! My husband and I decided we should dedicate a year to traveling before our eldest child graduated from high school. We purchased a small RV, rented our home in Lubbock, TX, took a leave-of-absence from our regular activities, and doled-out all kinds of work responsibilities to others. This afternoon, Lubbock’s in our rear view mirror.