One of these days, I need to share more about our time in Italy...

But, I have to tell you about a quick trip to the northeast I made just last week!

When my son started his current job, he had only been to 12 of the 50 states. 

Most of our travel while our kids were growing up was just in California. Although we did take two trips back to the east coast, and a few road trips to Idaho, Colorado, and Arizona.

Matthew had a bit of extra time between events and told us about a road trip he was planning, driving through six of the northeastern states, three of which I had never been to either.

Before this trip, Matthew had been to 38 states and I had been to 36.

I am still not sure if he was completely on board with me tagging along with him on the trip, but I quickly booked a round trip ticket (thank you Southwest Rapid Reward points!) to meet up with Matthew in Providence, Rhode Island.

My flight left Oakland at 5:30am, which meant that I had to roll out of bed at 2:30am in order for us to make it to the airport.

Thankfully, it was an uneventful travel day and I finally landed in Providence about 5pm eastern time.

I quickly stopped by the Starbucks before meeting up with Matthew and picked up my first souvenir of the trip:

Our first destination was Plymouth, Massachusetts. It was only about an hour from Providence, and we really couldn't make a trip to this area and NOT see where the Pilgrims may have landed.

The drive through Rhode Island was a quick one. It is, after all, the smallest state!

Once we arrived in Plymouth, we saw a sign for the Forefather's Monument. After we checked into our hotel, we wanted to head out to see Plymouth Rock, but we saw another sign for the Forefather's Monument. So, we followed the sign and decided to see what this was:

While we were there taking in the shear size of this huge monument, a lady told us about Kirk Cameron's documentary called 'Monumental' which explains all of the details about this monument and others like it in the United States. I found a clip of it on YouTube. So powerful!

Then we took a short drive down to the coast to find Plymouth Rock:

None of us were there almost 400 years ago to say or not whether this is or is not the actual place where the Pilgrims landed, but still. For people who enjoy the history of this country and the reasons why this country was founded, it was pretty amazing to just walk around this area.

We also saw statues of William Bradford and Massasoit:

We could see evidence that the town is getting ready for the 400th anniversary of the Pilgrim's landing. Can't even imagine how many people may come through here in two years!

Then after watching the sunset, we had a late dinner and headed back to the hotel to get ready for a long day of driving ahead.