2023 Travel Recap

It’s the end of the year, so it’s only appropriate that we share our 2023 travel recap. We traveled more in 2023 than we have in a long time – including our first time out of North America since 2018. So without further ado, let’s walk through our 2023 travels.

January

January was the start of the year and one of our longest trips of 2023. In 2022, we decided that we wanted to go to Hawaii as neither of us had ever been. Because we’re trying to visit every one of the 63 U.S. National Parks, we also knew this trip would require some island-hopping because the two national parks in Hawaii are on different islands.

Because of favorable redemptions, we flew from Chicago O’Hare (ORD) to Denver (DEN) for a layover before making our way to Honolulu (HNL), our first Hawaiian stop. After three nights in Honolulu, we made our way to the Big Island and stayed in Hilo for two nights. While on the Big Island, we visited Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, where we were fortunate enough to see a live volcano.

As the final stop on our Hawaiian trip, we went to Maui and stayed in Wailea for three nights. While on Maui, we visited Haleakala National Park.

February

February was a lighter travel month for us as we only went out of town for three nights. We stayed in Las Vegas (off the strip) and used Las Vegas as our base to visit the Hoover Dam, Valley of Fire State Park, and Death Valley National Park.

March

March was a somewhat light month for us – we went to Ann Arbor, Michigan for two nights and Washington D.C. for three nights. While in DC, we hit Shenandoah National Park as our quest for all national parks continued.

April

We flew to Phoenix in late April and stayed in Scottsdale for four nights. We took a day trip to Saguaro National Park, which is just outside of Tucson.

May

After wrapping up our Scottsdale trip in early May, we had one of our longer trips in mid-April. We had been sitting on a lot of points and a desire to go to Europe again, so we went to Dublin and Edinburgh in mid-May. We spent three nights in Dublin, doing a day trip to the Cliffs of Moher, and three nights in Edinburgh, with a day trip to the Scottish Highlands and Loch Ness.

June

We didn’t have any overnight trips in June. We did a day trip to Indiana Dunes National Park as we hadn’t been together and neither of us had been since it was declared a National Park after previously having been categorized as a National Lakeshore.

July

Over the Fourth of July, we went to Portland, Oregon because we’d never been to Oregon together and we’re trying to hit all 50 states. While in Portland, we took a trip to Haystack Rock in Cannon Beach on the coast.

Later in July, we drove to New River Gorge National Park in West Virginia, America’s newest national park after receiving that designation in late December 2020. This trip also helped us cross West Virginia off our fifty states list as neither of us had ever been before.

August

No trips together in August – we used the time at home to relax and re-stock on some of our points categories.

September

Like many Americans, we used the long weekend of Labor Day to enjoy a beach vacation. We flew into LAX and then drove up to Santa Barbara, where we used points to spend three nights at a beachfront hotel. We did a day trip to Channel Islands National Park, one of the least-visited national parks in California.

In mid-September, we took a weekend trip to Minneapolis with our dogs, enjoying the beautiful weather and all the city has to offer.

October

While we technically left for Vienna in late September, we came home in early October and it was our only October trip. We spent five nights in Vienna with day trips to Bratislava, Slovakia and Salzburg, Austria.

November

November was our final international trip of the year and our longest trip of 2023. We started with three nights in Lisbon, then flew to Barcelona for three nights before taking a train to Madrid where we stayed for three nights before finally flying home.

December

As this post is being written, we are currently in our last destination of 2023, Hilton Head Island. We are spending five nights on the beach with our dogs to wrap up a great year of 2023 travel.

Summary

In total, that’s 7 countries (including the U.S.), 15 states (including our home state of Illinois), 28 cities, and 9 national parks. To get to these destinations, we took 22 flights and flew over 47,500 miles. While it was a busy year, our 2023 travel helped us cross off a number of our bucket list trips.