A Detailed Overview Of The Best US States To Visit With Kids

This post may contain affiliate links. By clicking on any of the links below, I may get a commission if you make a purchase at absolutely no additional charge to you. This helps offset the costs of running this blog & I appreciate your support. Please see my privacy & disclosure policy for more.

A Detailed Overview Of The Best U.S. States To Visit With Kids

We love traveling as a family and exploring the world, within the United States of America and Internationally as well. However, It was never a goal for our family visit all 50 states.

“Mom, I want to travel around all of America. I want to visit allllllll the states in America. Can you please take me Mom”
Aiden Akpan, 5 Years Old

When Aiden first told me that he wanted to visit all the states in America, I giggled and thought, how awesome. but didn’t put much thought into it.

But then, I thought to myself, why not? What was stopping us from doing it? Nothing at all. If Aiden wanted to travel the United States of America, then I’ll do my best to make sure that he gets to do that.

The more we began to look at the map of the United States as a family, the more I realized how attainable this goal was. And so I decided that we should definitely make it a family goal.

That’s when we decided we were going to visit ALL 50 states in America.

The first state Aiden visited was Nevada at just 6 months old. He was excited to be someplace new, taking in all the sights and sounds. People always ask me “Why bother? He’ll never remember it anyways.”

And my response is always the same “It doesn’t matter if he doesn’t remember this trip or any trip we take because I do, and that matters too.” In fact, I remember him looking everywhere, I remember the memories I made with him on this trip. I remember him enjoying being in a different place other than home, and smiling, giggling and everything.

Those memories of our first trip matter to me! My memories count too. We are always so quick to think about kids forgetting things, but what about the parents memories too?

Caesar's Palace - Las Vegas — Caesar’s Palace – Las Vegas, Nevada

When we decided to take on this challenge as a family, Aiden had already visited about 15 states at just five years old, so I knew we were on the right track. I also decided that I will make sure to include my nieces and nephew on as many trips as we could.

Gatorland | Best US States To Visit With Kids — Gatorland – Orlando, Florida

How To Visit All 50 States?

The United States of America are made up of 50 states, 1 federal district ( Washington D. C. ), and 5 territories. Our goal is to travel all 50 states, however I decided to include the 5 territories. Might as well right?

So far, we have been able to visit over 20 states by traveling on a major budget. If you’ve been following my blog for some time now, then you know that budget travel is my thing.

I want to travel the world, but I don’t want to be broke or knee deep in debt. Plus, I’m not a millionaire, so budget travel is the only way to go for me.

We have no exact method, plan drawn out or exact order in which we will do this. We will just travel to as many states as we can and then continue to add it to the list below.

Flight Lesson - Orlando — Flight Lesson – Orlando, Florida

Below are a few tips on how we plan to visit all 50 states:

Following The Sale

My motto is “Follow the sale, Not the location” simply meaning we will travel to whatever state is affordable and whatever state has affordable airfare to get to. We will use that as our basis to visit all 50 states.

Visiting Nearby States On One Trip

When we visited Chicago, the cost of our round trip tickets were $40 on Frontier Airlines. After spending a few days in Chicago, we took a Greyhound bus to Wisconsin which was just 3.5 hours away. By doing this, we were able to knock out two states on one trip.

Taking A Road Trip

Our family loves going on road trips. And by doing this we are also able to visit several states on our bucket list in one trip. On our most recent RV trip, we visited all 5 National Parks in Utah, as well as Nevada and Arizona.

Living in an RV

We sold our home and moved into an RV so that we can spend more time together, become financially independent and travel the US as well. Living in an RV has made it so easy for us to see the US.

You can refer to these blog posts for all your budget travel needs

What is the Fastest Way To Visit All 50 States?

As I mentioned above, for us we decided to choose which states to visit based on cost first, location second. However if your goal is to visit all 50 states in a specific timeline, here are my tips:

Plan ahead. Coordination is going to be key: Any time spent in indecision will just slow you down.
Go by region: This cuts your travel time in half, so you can typically knock out a couple of states at a time. For example, plan your trip to New England, the South, West Coast, North, etc.
Use long layovers efficiently OR avoid them altogether. If you have an extremely long layover, use it as a chance to see that state or city as a part of your trip plan. Otherwise, avoid them altogether so you don’t waste precious time.
Utilize red eyes. Whether it’s flying or driving, traveling while you sleep is an efficient use of time. If you swing it and not be too exhausted and have enough energy for your day trip. You can travel, sleep, wake up, and be ready to explore!
Make exploring via car a part of your travel plans. This one works great for National Parks. But basically you can plan your route so that you get to see the National Park or parts of National Parks, on your way to your next location.

What States Have We Been To?

Each state is listed below in alphabetical order. Eventually, I plan to have at least one blog post for each state, so that if you are planning a trip, you’ll have a list of kid friendly things to do there with or without your kids.