Kentucky racehorses! Now available in grape flavor.

Every year since 1999 Anne and I have taken one road trip to a different part of the United States and seen attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home. From 1999 to 2003 we did so as best friends; from 2004 to the present, as husband and wife. We grew up in families that couldn’t afford annual out-of-state vacations. We were geeks more accustomed to vicarious life through the windows of pop culture than through in-person adventures. After years of contenting ourselves with everyday life in Indianapolis and any nearby places that also had comics and toy shops, we overcame some of our self-imposed limitations and resolved as a team to leave the comforts of home for annual chances to see creative, exciting, breathtaking, outlandish, historical, and/or bewildering new sights in states beyond our own, from the horizons of nature to the limits of imagination, from history’s greatest hits to humanity’s deepest regrets and the sometimes quotidian, sometimes quirky stopovers in between.

We’re the Goldens. This is who we are and what we do.

After 2022’s sojourn northeast to the peaceful scenery of Vermont, for 2023 we switched directions and headed south for some American history tourism (one of Anne’s favorite things), some Southern culinary comfort, and some light searching for any Civil War statues they hadn’t already toppled. It was time at last to venture to the Carolinas, the only southern states we hadn’t yet visited, with a focus on the city of Charleston, South Carolina. Considering how many battlefields we’d toured over the preceding years, the home of Fort Sumter was an inevitable addition to our experiential collection.

First we actually had to get there. Our journey began, as they nearly always do, with episodic pit stops in the other states between us and our eventual destination. For most of our southbound vacations, Kentucky is first in line.

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