About NORAM Road Trips:
We're a family of four based in Southeastern Louisiana, who have had the opportunity to travel across the USA and Canada as a family going back to 2002. On occasion, some individual travels that predate 2002 will be referenced as those adventures inform and influence more recent travels. The intended purpose of this blog is to highlight the destinations – not the family.
Though we’re building a presence on Instagram and other social media (links found elsewhere on this page) to share our travels, we have no intention of planning trip itineraries around capturing those perfect ‘instagrammable’ photographs. We (or at least the kids) have photographed our travels going back to at least 2007. However, it is only the most recent travels starting in 2016 that the quality exceeds the family scrapbook mostly due to the youngest’s interest in outdoor photography. Our photographs are a visual travelogue of our experiences – not a series of staged shoots projecting unrealistic perfection.
Clearly, the family’s interests and opinions will come through since we travel for leisure and thus drives our destinations and activities. Our goal is that we’re sharing those experiences with those who read our blog or follow our social media to inform them on what those destinations have to offer. If our content starts to come across as bragging or more about us and some ‘reality life’, please let us know. In our effort to focus on the travels here on the blog, the family will often be referenced using the following pseudonyms:
Elders: Mater and Pater had their formative years in the 80’s and 90’s - hair bands, Ronald Reagan, alternative rock and Bill Clinton.
Pater: The Patriarch of the family works in the computer/IT field. He enjoys sports and science fiction. He also enjoys history so historical sites and museums are of strong interest to him. He is also much less interested by far in music than everyone else in the family. When he was growing up, his Elders took him on road trips to Atlantic Canada, New England, Niagara Falls, the Southwest and the Upper Midwest. It was his memories of travel that brought about the family travels.
Mater: The Matriarch of the family enjoys working with special needs children. Her love of historical fiction such as Anne of Green Gables and Little House on the Prairie draws her to historic homes of the 19th and early 20th century as well as living history sites that demonstrate home life from those period. Her travels were to the Gulf Coast and a ski trip to Colorado.
The Millennials: The older Frater and younger Soror. They both love animals, although Soror draws the line with snakes and other creepy-crawlies.
Frater: He’s not afraid of working hard and has a burgeoning interest in craftsmanship such as blacksmithing. He’s gone country with his preference for traditional country music and has dabbled with playing the guitar. One of his goals is to convince the family to get out of the SUV and into an RV for the road trips.
Soror: She’s the youngest of the family and grown up taking road trips since she was a toddler. She likes both the beach and the mountains. She enjoys taking outdoor photos – especially rainbows, sunsets and snow-capped mountains. She’s the musician in the family as she plays piano and trumpet. 2019 will be a milestone year for her as she’ll reach adulthood and start college.
Mascots: The family is also joined by their trip mascots, Mike the Tiger and Papa Smurf, who sometimes make appearances in trip photos.
We look forward to the family road trips continuing to evolve (because we have no choice since this isn’t Neverland and the Millennials aren’t going to stop growing up like Peter Pan) once Soror reaches adulthood in early 2019.
Though we have occasionally flown commercial, our preferred method of travel is in a Honda, first an Odyssey, then an Accord and most recently a Pilot. Since many of our road trips involved visiting relatives, fast travel has been our usual style. This made it possible for the family to sample many different destinations. In 2017 alone, we drove through all 48 contiguous states as well as Atlantic Canada. Now we’ve reached a stage where travel is a mix of new destinations and return visits to further explore favored spots.
After spending roughly nine months planning the 2017 East and West road trips and then executing them, we found we had accumulated quite a bit of knowledge and experience that we wanted to share (and/or maybe brag just a little?). As we did our trip research, we found that there were plenty of travel blogs and podcasts from various flavors of travelers - from digital nomads to camper & RV travelers to frequent fliers to budget car camping, but not much for our particular niche of fast travel family road tripping. So, yes, yet another travel blog. We’ll probably repeat some information can be found almost everywhere else, but hopefully our experiences also presents something unique.
Selected destinations we’ve visited:
27 (out of 60) U.S. National Parks as well as numerous other U.S. National Park Service (NPS) sites
4 (out of 39) Canadian National Parks as well as additional Parks Canada sites
Black Hills, SD
Carson City, NV/Lake Tahoe, CA region
MS/AL Gulf Coast & Emerald Coast, FL
Houston, TX
Northwestern WY (Cody, Grand Teton NP, Jackson Hole, Yellowstone NP)
Smoky Mountains regions (Asheville, NC; Cherokee, NC; Gatlinburg, TN; Pigeon Forge, TN)
About the Masthead photo:
The photo is of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. It was taken south of Carson City, Nevada in Carson Valley looking towards Lake Tahoe during a visit in Spring 2018.
