how many states

One of the latest chain notes that is winding its way through the pages of Facebook is titled "How many states have you been to?" If you follow the instructions, you are supposed to place an "X" beside the states that you have visited and an "O" beside those where you have lived. You are then supposed to tag the same number of friends as the number of states you've been to so that they can join in the fun.

I'll admit that I was a party-pooper the first time I got tagged in one of these notes. Instead of following the instructions, I commented on the note and simply said, "I've been to all 50 states." (Sorry, Bill.) At least I spared 50 of my friends from being tagged.

My parents believed that travel was an integral part of their children's education. The Brown family took our first cross-country vacation in the summer of 1973, when the six of us loaded up our station wagon and drove from Jackson, Tennessee, to San Francisco. In the years that followed, almost every summer we took a 2-week driving vacation, usually built around the location of State Higher Education Executive Officers annual meeting. By the time I left home for college, I had been to 46 states, missing only Oregon, Washington, Hawaii, and Alaska. The University of Tennessee at Knoxville picked up the tab for me to travel to Oregon and Washington when I served as a student representative on the National Orientation Directors Association's Board of Directors. In 1988, my father took my entire family - including my husband and my grandmother - to Hawaii, so then I only lacked Alaska.

With Chaney's birth in 1990, I began the state count again. The three of us took our first cross-country vacation in 1996, a dinosaur-themed vacation that included stops at 19 dinosaur-related sites in 13 states in 16 days. Five summers later, all three of us were able to mark state #50 off our individual lists when we made a July visit to Alaska.

On Sunday we leave on yet another family vacation. California is our destination, but this year there will be no cross-country drive (although I would have loved it). We will visit San Francisco, among other places, and I will relive fond vacation memories. My education continues.