Grow A Career: August 2013

Hellooooo road trip!

Cody, Wyoming

My family and I recently made a big ole sight seeing trip around the Mountain States of Colorado, Wyoming and Montana a few weeks ago.

And what a switch from Italy! We went from "ciao!" to "howdy!"

But, even in comparison to the beauty of The Amalfi Coast, the terrain out here was absolutely magnificent in its own right.

I can certainly see how the centuries-old romance of The American West lives on today.

View from the car

But here's the crazy part. We could've flown straight into Billings, Montana for a cousin's wedding; however, we opted instead to fly into Denver and drive to Billings- an eight hour trip.

And then drive to Cody, Wyoming, through Yellowstone National Park, and on to Jackson, Wyoming.

Oh, and then back to Denver. Which totaled about 1700 miles in all.

Are we are nuts?

Yoooouuuuuu betcha! (Just ask the kiddies, they'll tell you.)

But they'll also tell you we had a blast.

A colorful outdoor wedding reception

From the Grand Tetons of Jackson Hole to Cody Night Rodeos to Native American Festivals, we covered some major Wild West territory. We learned about Buffalo Bill (showman/entrepreneur/marketing genius), Annie Oakley (sharpshooter/fierce competitor) and fascinating Native Americans like Sitting Bull.

Talk about some intriguing career paths!

Our Own Rough Riders

I must say that at the start of the trip I was pretty nervous about so much road time with the kids. How can we prevent endless hours of whining, I worried. (Of course, it didn't help that members of our extended family were quite dubious about our travel choices.)

But all that worrying about whining made me go into "Whatever It Takes" mode. My husband and I strategized how many miles at a time we could reasonably ask the kids to go. We must have searched Distance Between Cities a thousand times. I also researched fun towns like Cheyenne, Wyoming to see along the way, found some cool festivals to attend, made up games to play (some were admittedly lamer than others) and made sure we made lots of stops for stretching. We even made scrapbooks out of brochures, postcards and other memorabilia.

And you know what? All that creative planning actually worked! Yes, whining happened, but hardly at all. Fortunately, I was still channeling my new travel mindset courtesy of Peter Jon Lindberg, who says we must make a great traveling experience happen for ourselves. So when things got rough, we switched gears, re-routed, and adjusted. (Not unlike managing your career, right?)

And when things got desperate, we stopped at Dairy Queen and had

The Great American Blizzard.

Most importantly, the kids were really psyched about seeing and experiencing so many new things. And it was so freeing to know that we've reached a new stage in the life of our little family: one that involves more travel.

(For a wanderlust gal, that's very exciting news.)

Here are some more pictures from our adventures.
-Enjoy!