Hi! I’m Tiffani Doyle…a 40(ish) wife and mother of five who works hard, plays hard, and tries to live every day to the fullest. When I’m not working full time for a Fortune 500 digital interactions company, working on our small family farm, or carting my kids around for their busy schedules, I am probably either on a road trip or planning a road trip! I love to travel!!
My love of road trips started when I was a kid. As a kid, my family was very poor, so vacations were a foreign concept. My mom spent every day worrying about our basic needs, but every now and then, she decided we needed a break – we needed an escape from the every day struggles. She would load all four kids in the car and head to the local market for a bag of chips, loaf of bread, small bottle of squeeze mustard, and a pack of hot dogs. (Isn’t it funny the things you remember??) From there, she would just start driving. We would roll the windows down, listen to the radio, and just explore old country roads.
Growing up, we lived in middle Tennessee just east of Nashville. My mom’s family lived in West Tennessee (in Troy and Dyersburg), which was about 4 hours away from us. Each summer us kids would go to West Tennessee to spend a week with my grandparents and aunts and uncles. Sometimes my mom would drive us there, while other times my aunt and uncle would come pick us up. Either way, you ended up with a small car full of kids for four hours. This was in the early ‘80s when you didn’t have to wear seatbelts or use car seats. There would be kids everywhere! Kids in the floorboard, some in the hatchback, and others fighting for the front seat…which I usually got because I was the oldest! As I looked out the window along the long ride, I remember being amazed at the difference in terrain, vegetation, and even what the roads were made of as we crossed into West Tennessee. Why were the roads red? And where did they lead? I knew then that I wanted to explore and see where they went.
Fast forward 15+ years and several kids later. I wanted to make sure my kids knew the world was bigger than just Tennessee. When my oldest three sons were in elementary school, they struggled to engage with history, geography, and social studies. To get them excited about these subjects I made a deal with them to take them on road trips to visit all of the Presidents’ boyhood homes and the states they learned about in school. This started our tradition of taking an educational road trip every year during their spring and fall breaks from school. When my boys graduated from high school (2012, 2013, and 2017), they had visited 35+ Presidents’ homes and more than half of the states in the US. How many kids can say that?
Travel has been a huge part of my life during my first 40 years. As I start the next 40, I don’t plan on slowing down! I still have two small kids at home that I need to introduce to the world. I hope you enjoy reading about my adventures and get inspired to have some of your own!