I spent months planning our three-week road trip.
I researched national parks.
I mapped out routes.
I made lists of places we wanted to see.
If you had asked me before we left what I thought I’d remember most, I probably would have said Yosemite, Zion, or the Grand Canyon.
I would have been wrong.
Looking back, the moments I find myself revisiting aren’t the ones I spent months planning. They’re the little moments that happened in between.
A Cup of Coffee and My Grandma
One of my favorite memories wasn’t in a national park at all.
It was walking into downtown Moab each morning with my mom to get coffee.
One morning I ordered an olla coffee. I don’t remember much else about that morning, but I remember the first sip.
It instantly reminded me of my grandma’s homemade anise mints.
Ever since I was little, our family has laughed about the time I confidently called them “anus” mints because I had no idea what anise was. Grandma laughed every time she corrected me, and somehow the joke stuck. To this day, that’s still what our family jokingly calls them.
Standing in a coffee shop hundreds of miles from home, one sip brought all of those memories rushing back.
That wasn’t on my itinerary.
But it’s one of the memories I carried home with me.
The Sand Dollars We Weren’t Looking For
When we stopped at the beach, I expected to enjoy the scenery.
I didn’t expect to spend part of the afternoon spotting sand dollars scattered along the shoreline.
Every time we found another one, we’d stop and admire it before continuing our walk.
It was simple.
There wasn’t a schedule.
There wasn’t a goal.
It was just one of those moments that reminds you how much joy there is in slowing down enough to notice what’s around you.
An Evening in Downtown Moab
Arches National Park and Canyonlands deserved every bit of their reputation.
But one of my favorite memories from Moab happened after we left the parks.
We wandered through the local shops, enjoyed a great meal, and spent the evening exploring downtown without worrying about what came next.
There wasn’t a checklist to finish.
There wasn’t another attraction we were trying to squeeze into the day.
We simply enjoyed being there.
Sometimes a place becomes memorable because of what you do there.
Sometimes it becomes memorable because of how it makes you feel.
Leaving Room for the Unexpected
That trip changed the way I think about planning.
I still research destinations.
I still map routes.
I still like having a plan.
But I don’t try to fill every hour anymore.
Because the moments I treasure most weren’t the ones I planned months in advance.
They were the conversations over coffee.
The unexpected memories of my grandma.
The handful of sand dollars we never went looking for.
The evening spent wandering through downtown Moab with nowhere in particular to be.
Those moments will never make a “Top 10 Things to Do” list.
They probably won’t show up in a travel brochure either.
But they’re the stories I find myself telling.
And I think that’s the best reminder any trip can give us.
Plan enough to get where you want to go.
Then leave a little room for the memories you could never have scheduled.
Continue Reading
If you enjoyed this story, here are a few other posts you might like:
- Road Trip Routine: How We Stayed Comfortable for Three Weeks – The simple routine that helped make three weeks on the road feel surprisingly easy.
- How to Plan a Road Trip Without Trying to See Everything – Why we stopped trying to check every destination off the list and enjoyed our trip more because of it.
- My Hotel Room Routine After a Travel Day – The small habits that helped every hotel room feel a little more like home.
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