Do you have a bucket list?

That list of things you want to do or see before you leave this world? My mother had one. She lived when Alaska and Hawai’i became the 49th and 50th states. Mom wanted to visit them both and she did before she passed.

Traveling makes you a storyteller, and Mom talked about the black sand in Hawaii. I wanted to see it too and did with my family. This past February (2026), seven of us met in Honolulu for our first multi-gen family trip. Three days in Honolulu and seven on the Big Island—Hawai’i.

The possibility of doing a family trip floated in and out of our conversations a few years ago. When we decided to make the idea a reality and settled on a future date to go, our next question to answer was where we wanted to go. A unanimous vote for some place warm. After discussing the pros and cons of some tropical places, Hawai’i became our destination. 

Once we knew where we were going, the next step was to find places to stay and what to do. Everyone had a hand in the planning. My hubby secured hotel reservations in Honolulu. My daughter-via-love and I looked at Airbnb spots with the necessary requirements: three bedrooms, three baths and a pool on the Big Island near Hilo. The younger family members used AI to present everyone with an itinerary listing numerous activities suitable for a broad age range (4-70+ years) on the Big Island. From that we decided what we could do. 

Some of us did the whale-watching boat tour. Everyone visited the botanical gardens, the black sand beaches, the volcano park and the farmers’ market. My son and his wife did the nighttime manta ray swim while Nana, Poppop and Auntie babysat the littles ones. 

As my son drove my hubby, daughter and I to the airport, he said, “So where are we going for our next trip?” That’s when you know you’ve had a successful vacation with family, but I think several factors helped the trip to be one.

• Good, continuous communications – we had several phone and FaceTime conversations to express thoughts or doubts about where and when to go before we could come to an agreement.
• Teamwork made the dream work – everyone had an assignment to bring information to the next meeting. Once we were in the rented home on the Big Island, everyone pitched in to entertain a four-year old, feed a nine-month-old, fix a meal or load the dishwasher.
• Flexibility – my daughter had been to the Hawaiian Islands twice but she was more comfortable with us being together in Hawai’i rather than the other suggested places. 
• Respect for physical limitations – since my hubby gets seasick, any activity on the water was off limits for him. When some of us walked down to the bottom of a volcanic crater, my kids told me to set the pace walking up to the rim. People passed us by, but Nana made it to the top…slowly.

Hawai’i was not on my official bucket list, but I’m glad I visited the 5-0. Going there with my whole family made the trip more memorable because it will be a memory shared by the next two generations. 

So, dust off your bucket list, update it or start one. Think of where you’d like to visit. It doesn’t have to be overseas or across the United States. There are places in my home state that I’ve yet to see. Decide and plan where to go. Save to invest in that plan. Prepare to travel and go. Someone is waiting back home to hear your story.