In the past year we have embraced long weekend getaways and mini-vacations. It is exhausting to fly in and out of Alaska for these quick trips, but I have yet to regret a single excursion. I guess we are still playing catchup from all the travel we missed during Covid?

I especially love when our long weekends overlap with family visits. This year I got to see my mom and sister twice as often thanks to a few trips.

Way back in January we took our first girls’ getaway when my mom, sister, Maggie and I met up in New York City over the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend. We enjoyed two Broadway shows: Harry Potter and the Cursed Child and The Lion King. We ate in Chinatown and Little Italy, we Ubered and subwayed, and we wandered through Times Square. My mom and Maggie found dresses for my sister’s wedding, even though Macy’s was so huge we found it harder to navigate than the subways!

This plan was hatched by my friend Nancy, and initially there was a group of eight traveling to the Big Apple. Covid was waning when we booked the tickets, but as January neared it started to surge again… with the epicenter in New York. For a while it seemed as though we’d have to cancel, and some did. Nancy and Lia ended up rebooking at the last minute, but they attended different musicals so our paths didn’t cross as often as we would have liked.

In late October Maggie and I took advantage of a three day weekend to meet my mom and sister in Tempe, Arizona. The weather was already gray and blustery in Anchorage, with winter blowing in faster than we’d like. This trip was a great reminder that blue skies and sunshine still exist in the world, and we soaked it up! We stayed in a stylish loft right next to the Arizona State University campus thanks to family of friends, for which we were uber grateful. It turns out we know a lot of people in the Phoenix area, so we crammed a lot of meetups into two days! My mom’s brother and sister live 45 minutes away, and we all took a day trip to Sedona together. Another highlight was the Desert Botanical Garden, filled with plants unlike anything we have in Nebraska or Alaska.

I can’t wait to see where we go next! My mom recently retired, and she’s ready to tap into her travel fund. Maggie and my sister are always up for an adventure, so I see many more girly getaways in our future!