If I Had Money...

I have many friends who are off to exciting and exotic places in the coming year. Everywhere I go, people seem to be talking about the amazing experiences they have had on their vacations in the past or the ones they plan to have in the near future. I wouldn't say that I am envious but I definitely wish I was in a position to travel the world and see just what all of the fuss is about.

That isn't to say that I haven't traveled at all in my life. I've been to a few places. I'll put them in categories for you so that you can decide whether they count or not.

• Places I have lived: California, Utah
• States I've supposedly been to but can't remember at all because I was too young at the time: Washington, Virginia, Washington D.C. (not an actual state but you catch my drift)
• States I've driven through for a substantial amount of time but never really stopped in: Arizona (but only that little northwestern corner of Arizona on the way to Las Vegas), Oregon (I was 1 when we drove through Oregon, though, so I don't remember it at all)
• States where I've had lay-overs at the airport: Colorado, Texas, Florida
  
• States I've stopped in/actually visited: Nevada (my roommate Julie was married in the Las Vegas LDS Temple so I stayed in a hotel just off the strip for a couple days), Idaho (we dropped off my sister Brittany at BYU-Idaho), Montana (we stayed in a hotel in West Yellowstone), Wyoming (as part of our Yellowstone trip), Tennessee (we had a family reunion at my grandparents' house when I was 11; I also went there again a couple of years ago with my sister to visit my grandparents for Thanksgiving), Kentucky (during the family reunion in Tennessee, we took a day trip up to Kentucky to go through Mammoth Caves), Alabama (during the same family reunion, we went down to Alabama to the NASA Space Museum)
• Places I've been to outside the continental U.S: Aruba (We had a family reunion on this desert island (off the coast of Venezuela) when I was 4. My aunt and uncle and their two children lived there at the time. I don't remember very much but you'd probably be surprised about how much I do remember: Baby Beach (Aruba has great beaches), my brother accidentally cutting up his legs on the rocks at the beach and him screaming afterward when my dad tried to clean him up in salt water, my brother getting stabbed by a cactus needle while reaching for cactus fruit, a gecko falling into the pool at the hotel we were staying at, singing "In the jungle, the mighty jungle, the lion sleeps..." with my cousins as we drove down the dusty streets in a very unstable van, playing poker with my cousins (we Christensens start early), seeing a very big wasp nest (I don't remember where we were when I saw that). So that's Aruba the way I remember it.), Puerto Rico (We stopped in Puerto Rico for a night on our way to Aruba. All I remember was that I had to share a bed with my brother, which was not at all a fun experience, and that there were bananas in the trees outside our window.)

That's my travel experience and, now that I see it all out in front of me, it looks pretty pathetic,

So my travel goals are:

• to stop and see some kind of landmark in each of the 50 states at some point in my life (especially the ones along the east coast)
• to go to Europe (I basically want to go to all of the countries there)
• to see Machu Picchu
  
• to see and walk along the Great Wall of China
• to see the Australian outback
• to see the native animals of Africa in their natural habitat (from a safe distance, though. I will not be getting out of the car if there is a lion hanging around)

We'll see how many of these actually come to fruition.