One of the best family trips we ever made started in Los Angeles. We went to the Los Angeles museum. They had paintings on loan by Rembrandt and Rubens. Then we went to the La Brea Tar Pits. After that we drove to Anaheim and the next day we went to Disneyland. The next day we drove to San Diego. We visited the San Diego Zoo and the San Diego Wildlife Preserve. Next we crossed the desert to Yuma, Arizona. The stark mountains on the way were incredible. Then we headed north on a practically deserted road through enormous cactus. Later we turned to the northeast and drove to Prescott. The road climbs out of an arid desert into cool mountain pines. Prescott is one of the old cities in Arizona and you have a feeling of being in the old west. From there we continued on to the Grand Canyon and stayed in a Lodge only a few hundred yards from the Canyon. We drove east along the Canyon until the road turned south toward Flagstaff. At Flagstaff we turned to the east and stopped off at Meteor Crater. Since we are from Hawaii we know what a volcano looks like. I remember my wife and I staring at that hole in the ground and thinking, "This is no volcano." We left there and drove east and then south. We wanted to cross the high plains between Arizona and New Mexico and look at the miles of radio telescopes all lined up on the high desert. I took my kids' picture as they stood beneath one of the telescopes. We continued on to Lincoln, New Mexico, where Billy the Kid made his famous escape and where much of the Lincoln County Land War took place. Our family is in Roswell, New Mexico, so that was our destination. We did drive up to Fort Sumner to see where Billy the Kid was shot and killed by Pat Garret. On our way back to California, we took the southern road to Phoenix. On our way, just before the New Mexico, Arizona border we took a side trip to Shakespeare, New Mexico, were we saw an old adobe ghost town where Ringo and the Clanton boys hung out until they moved to Tombstone and had their famous confrontation with the Earps. I regret not taking the boys to Clifton, Arizona where the town was built into the side of a mountain, or to Tombstone.

St. Augustine, Florida has a bunch of museums (including a Ripley's museum of bizarre stuff) and of course beaches, as well as different national monuments and stuff. I've been there and around this time of year the weather is particularly nice, the breeze is cool and the usual muggy Florida summer hasn't started up yet.

It seems like you would like to take a trip to the East Coast. Start out in New York City, and visit some of the best museums here. I'd start out with the Ripley's Museum and Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum, take your boys out to dinner afterwards at Dave and Buster's, then head our the next day to tour some of the fabulous museums the city has to offer such as the Guggenheim, American Museum of Natural History, and then finally the Museum of Modern Art. There are plenty more you can explore, yet these should be a good selection to start with. You may even enjoy visiting such highly trafficked areas of the city such as Grand Central Terminal or Rockefeller Center. Walk around the city, check out some of the shops, and after you get tired of the easy traveling, you're out for an adventure and would like to put on your hiking boots. Take a six hour road trip, and head up further north to climb Mount Washington in New Hampshire. Check out the scenic camping areas. Definitely would be an adventuresome trip! Enjoy!

Check out the museum list below, as well as Mt. Washington.