Fiona imparts some of the wisdom she’s gained on travels with Mama and Daddy.

Underlined portions of text are verbatim quotes from Fiona. We were a little behind—okay, a lot behind, like over a year—
on our magazine when this article was written, and Fiona didn’t necessarily speak this well in April 2014. These lines were recorded 12 May 2015.

My Mama and Daddy say that only two things are worth spending money on. And, they say, since there’s such a thing as libraries, that really leaves just one thing: traveling.

Mama and Daddy take me and Baby Brother places as often as they can. Sometimes it’s just a daytrip, which means it’s a trip that we take in just one day. They wake me and Baby Brother up early in the morning and we go to the train station and take a train somewhere like the beach or the farm or a small town.

Sometimes we go places that are even farther away and we have to go hoteling. Hoteling is the best. That’s when you eat pizza and drink soda and eat ice cream and watch TV. When you can go to Connecticut, you can get a movie like Finding Nemo, and that’s my favorite one! Then we go to sleep in a big room with big, comfy beds. It’s so much fun!

This summer we’re going to go camping in Pennsylvania with Grammy and Papa. When we go camping you have to have special stuff like flashlights. We’re going to get a car to go there. I’m so excited! I’ve never been camping before. We’re going to stay in our own cabin. Mama and Daddy tell me it’s a little like hoteling but that we’ll have our very own little house.

Sometimes we go even farther away. When we go to Salt Lake it’s very far, so we have to take two airplanes and it’s nighttime when we actually just get there. I like being on a plane, but there’s seatbelts and I don’t know how to lift suitcases up onto airplanes. But I like sitting down and taking a rest and seeing the city above us. I don’t feel bored at all on airplanes. I have so much fun!

I really like riding in airplanes, but riding the bus can be just as much fun, even if the view on the New Jersey Turnpike isn’t as nice. When we’re visiting Nana we have to go to Maryland, so we have to take the Megabus. It’s fun bumping up and down. When you go to D.C., it’s pretty far from New York. I play games like knock-knock jokes. This is my favorite:

Knock knock!
[Who’s there?]
Jamaican!
[Jamaican who?]
Jamaican me crazy!

There’s also this one, which I just made up:

Knock knock!
[Who’s there?]
Orange peel!
[Orange peel who?]
Orange peel glad you could collect all my fruits!

And I also get to have picnics on the Megabus and on the plane.

When I visit my cousins, they’re in Bethesda, so we take a Megabus to get there, too. They also live in Maryland! So Maryland is a state we get to go to a lot.

Mama and Daddy tell me that there are 50 states, plus a place called the District of Columbia which isn’t a state but it’s still in the United States but the people there don’t get representation in Congress. I don’t know what any of that really means, but I’ll take their word for it. Anyway, they say that their goal is for me to visit all 50 of them (plus D.C., which is where I was born, so that’s done). And I’m excited to come along for the ride.

To keep up with Fiona’s travels, visit her TravelTracker.

This article appeared on pages 10–11 of Issue 14 | April 2014.