Earning Our Stickers

It took us a while, but we finally got the map of the US with all the little stickers of each state to put on as you visit them. We didn't get it until we were in South Carolina, and didn't put it on until Florida, but it is up. Proudly displaying all of the states that we have visited.
I don't know how other RVers do it, but we do not take this sticker placement lightly. We do not put a stick up until we feel we have "experienced" a state. We don't just slap them up any time we cross a state line.
Sometimes this has brought us a little challenge. We will occasionally review the activities we did while in a particular state to make sure that we got the true feel for the state. In Florida it was easy, Everglades, Keyes and gators. The same could be said for our current state Louisiana. I've eaten gumbo, jambalaya, and drank beer in the French Quarter. So it will be easy to hang those stickers with pride.
However, there are some states that we feel like maybe, by our standards we have not quite "experienced". Delaware was a challenge, we tried for a couple days to find an event to go to, or a certain place to visit. If it had not been for the Horseshoe crabs on Slaughter Beach, we may not have been able to post that sticker. The weather and schedule did not allow us to ride a river boat in Mississippi, but we did walk along the river, drive the Natchez Trace and take in a Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade in Natchez.
I guess the important thing behind each of those stickers is the memories that we have from those states, and the RV that took us there.

My New View of U-Haul

In a town near where we live there is a U-Haul dealership. All of the trucks are plastered with huge decals that look like postcards. Each postcard is from a different state and has an illustration of something that represents that state. It used to be a habit of mine to look at the pictures and see if they were states that I had been too. Most of them I had not visited.
Yesterday, I was passed by one of those trucks. This particular truck had gigantic horse-shoe crab painted to look like it was flying right at you. It struck me that I knew exactly which state that "postcard" was from, Delaware. Abby had held a crab just like that one and we had walked along Slaughter Beach and seen hundreds of dried up shells of those same crabs littering the sand.
The thought that I will be able to spot U-Hauls all over and have those states checked off made me smile. The fact that my kids will have experienced 48 states before they are able to drive is awesome to me.
In Ozark, MO we ate dinner at Lamberts Cafe, Home of the Throwed Rolls. It may become Abby and Carter's favorite stop on the trip, and all because they throw dinner rolls at you if you raise your hand. As we sat at the table, we talked about their memories of the trip so far. They have astounding memories, both in number and detail. I told them that I hope that if they have children, that they will bring them to some of the same places we visited. Maybe this experience will affect not just Becky and Me, but Abby and Carter and their children as well. Maybe someday I will throw a dinner roll at my grandkids, and my daughter will know why.