Planning a Presidential Roadtrip Isn’t That Easy!
By Thad
President’s Day has come and gone. But every year around President’s Day I start planning a roadtrip for President’s Day. And February 22 is actually Washington’s birthday, so…
Let me tell you, planning a Presidential roadtrip isn’t that easy.
This year I was thinking about taking a trip to visit the home towns of all the different Presidents of the United States. The first thing I found out was although a President may have been born in a particular state, he may have called a second state his home. There are 21 U.S. states that can claim to be the birthplace of a U.S. President.
Virginia has been the birthplace of 8 of our Presidents. Of the eight, there are three who chose another state as their home state. The state to boast the second most Presidential births is Ohio, but two of these gentlemen claim a second state as their home state. My head is starting to swim with just how hard it may be to plan this trip.
Okay let us start with the fact that 43 men have been President of the United States. That in itself is going to make for a lot of stops on my trip. I wonder if all of the states honor their native son by restoring their childhood home. Maybe I could make a list of childhood homes and visit those.
Do all the Presidents have Presidential Libraries? Perhaps I can plan my trip around visits to the Presidential Libraries. How about burial places? I have seen Grant’s tomb. Maybe I can just limit myself to visiting the states they were born in. Then I have to decide if I will find more information about Abraham Lincoln in his birth state of Kentucky or the state he claimed as home, Illinois.
I have two Presidents with the last name Bush. George H.W. Bush was born in Massachusetts, but claims Texas as home. George W. Bush was born in Connecticut but also chooses to call Texas home. Well that makes that one easier, I’ll just visit Texas.
Mount Vernon via Martin Falbisoner via wikimedia commons
Virginia is a pretty easy one since I can visit George Washington’s Mount Vernon home, Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello home, James Madison’s Montpelier home and James Monroe’s Ash Lawn-Highland home which is adjacent to Jefferson’s Monticello. That however is not the birthplace of James Monroe, so now my head is really spinning.
Okay I think I will make it easy on myself and take a short drive to Plains, Georgia and visit the birthplace of the only President who was born in Georgia. Or maybe, I should take an even shorter drive and visit the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library in Atlanta. Perhaps this Presidential trip just has too many options for me.
Okay, maybe I should just keep it simple and close by. I will visit Tennessee and find Andrew Jackson’s home. Oh, oh it looks like Andrew Jackson was actually born in South Carolina. Wait a minute, now I see where North Carolina has a claim to be the birthplace of Andrew Jackson.
That does it. I think I will postpone this trip until I can get a few things settled. First I will need to figure out where to go and what I actually want to see. Second I will need to figure out exactly how to make this trip, should it be one long trip or shall I break it up into several trips. I guess the main thing I need to find out is how much this is going to cost me.
Sometimes it just isn’t easy planning a roadtrip.
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