Itasca State Park and the Mighty (Little) Mississippi

As an addendum to my last post entitled “My Bucket List is Overflowing,” I thought I’d share with you that yet another item has been added to our Bucket List.  Last week I received an email from our friend, Kevin, which included a comment that he and his wife, Maddison, had added the Rocky Mountaineer to their list.  Of course, Kevin included a link to the website so that Alan and I would start drooling over the company’s train excursions through the Canadian Rockies.  The domed rail cars of the Rocky Mountaineer offer superb views of the dramatic and magnificent mountain scenery, and several different route options are available.  So, our Bucket List runneth over even more, but this time it’s Kevin’s fault, not mine.

When it comes time to write a post, I am easily distracted by anything even remotely related to RVing – or regular travel, for that matter – so I wasn’t surprised to see that my last post documenting our 2015 trip to Minnesota and Michigan was published more than three months ago.  Today’s post will get me back in the saddle, so to speak, and it details our visit to the headwaters of the Mississippi River – the actual destination around which the entire trip was built.  Yes, it was a Bucket List item and, yes, we decided that it was absolutely, positively worthwhile.  Come along, my friends, and join us on the adventure!

The M&M Trip - Minnesota and Michigan

This is the first post in a series documenting a two week trip to the states of Minnesota and Michigan back in the summer of 2015.  Alan had already escaped the workforce, but I was still working full time, so we had to be content with an expedition that would fit within my two weeks of vacation.  Our son Ryan was working full time and had aged out of traveling with us on a regular basis.  Our daughter, Kyra, was 16 and out of school on summer vacation, so she joined us on a whirlwind tour of these two states.

How do you pick a vacation destination?  Do you follow a tradition that has been in your family for generations and go to a beloved cabin in the mountains or cottage by the sea?  Do you have a prioritized list of future vacation spots and just go down the list in order?  Do you base vacations on the location of family members or friends you wish to visit across the country or around the globe?  Do you tape a map to the wall and throw a dart at it?