Top 5 Domestic Trips

We recently went up to Bellingham to visit our friends Matt and Claire. It was a fun day filled with sunshine (nothing like this "Junuary" weather we've been having). We had a fabulous lunch at Skylark's where I drooled over their fabulous vintage mirror collages and patio furniture, Wyatt ate his first tuna sandwich ever, and the homemade soups and breads filled our bellies with happiness! Then we explored a small science-minded museum called Mindport fashioned after the Exploratorium in San Fran, and took a walk down to the riverbank where we saw fish jumping (really!) and a family of geese with 4 little goslings! We ended our trip with, (what else?), homemade icecream at Mallards! I had green tea and lavender and it was heavenly!
Matt and Claire are planning to do the Camino de Santiago de Compostela Pilgrimage (read all about it with the link - they are doing the route that starts in France) this September! I am insanely jealous, and told Claire she better take a gazillion pictures so I can live vicariously through her! Anyway, talking about the trip with Matt and Claire got me daydreaming about all of the traveling I would love to do.
In that vein, here is a list of my Top 5 Domestic Trips I would like to take, in the order I would like to take them, and my reasons why. (These are all domestic because there is so much of this country I still have not seen, but my Top 5 Abroad will follow closely!) Jed and I went to the Redwoods on our anniversary last year, I got to see some of our Capital with my friend Juliana when I was pregnant with Wyatt, and we are lucky enough to have a cabin in the family that's in the Medicine Bow Mountains of Wyoming so I have done a teensy bit of traveling, but there is so much more! It's okay to be greedy when you're dreaming right?
Some of my top 5 are kid-friendly, some not. All of them are extravagant - one of the reasons I made this list is to inspire me to save up for the trips that aren't feasible every year. There are plenty of places I still want to see in the Pacific Northwest, but those are trips that won't cost too many pretty pennies and don't need extensive planning. It was difficult to narrow it to this list, but these are the places (in the U.S.) I absolutely must experience in my lifetime!

1.) New York, New York for 3 days. For a broadway play. For Central Park. For the Statue of Liberty. For the Metropolitan Museum, and the Guggenheim Museum. The list goes on and on. (For the restaurants!) Definitely a trip for just Jed and I.
2.) Disneyworld and Universal Studios for 3 days with a stopover in New Orleans for 2 days when Wyatt is 10 and Penelope is 5. We want to wait till both of them are old enough to go on all the cool rides, and mature enough to handle waiting in line... Disney for the kiddos (can we say dream come true?!), New Orleans for us (culture, music, food)!
3.) Oahu, Hawaii for 2 days and Kauai, Hawaii for 3 days. Oahu for the history and culture (Pearl Harbor, Polynesian Cultural Center), and Kauai for the natural beauty (hiking Na Pali, relaxing in Hanalei Bay).
4.) Grand Canyon for a week when Wyatt is 15 and Penelope is 10. For years there has been something about the Grand Canyon that calls to me. Yes, it's an incredible natural phenomenon, and offers lots of hiking and photo opportunities, but there's something more. Maybe it's the native history. Whatever it is, my spirit yearns to go there. I want to take the donkeys down into the canyon, then spend the week rafting down the river and camping and hiking in the canyon, and then hike back out. Of course, the kiddos will have to be big enough to endure and enjoy a trip like this, so it's a few years off yet.
5.) Alaska by boat for a week on a small ship cruise. Again, one of those places that calls to me. The glaciers, the whales, the wildlife! The hiking, the fishing, the kayaking!

What are some of your top 5?