This is first in a series of entries from blogger Sally Doran on her summer road trip.

     This summer, I am putting that trite old phrase “combining business with pleasure“ to the test. I’ve just begun a 10-day journey , leaving my home base in southwest Ohio to travel to several destinations in the eastern U.S. with my 15-year-old son and a friend of his in tow. I spent weeks creating the circular, unusual itinerary so that I can both meet with clients (I work with AAA clubs around the country to help grow membership) and find interesting things for the guys to do while I’m working. There might also be a few hours on a couple of days for me to relax a bit, too.

While my son may not be as game as he used to be to follow Mom around the country for several days, I know these times to travel together are becoming as rare as a pay phone on the corner. So I decided to get creative this year to carve out several days that allow me to spend some precious time with my only child and also spend some needed time with my very valued clients. Who knows when we will get this much time together again- in 2-3 years when we are shopping colleges and planning for his departure from home? While I have a GPS unit in the rental car, my Blackberry and this great Netbook I’m typing on, I’m also fairly old school and armed with TourBooks and maps. I still like a big, messy newspaper on Sunday morning and I still like a big, unwieldy map when I travel! I’m also going to max out my AAA discounts at every possible opportunity to show my card and ask for the AAA deal.

We’ve just flown from Ohio to Baltimore, so that we could then drive to New York City to spend a long weekend. Sound like a strange way to get to the Big Apple? Well, here’s the method to my madness: I will have meetings during the following week in Newark, NJ, Allentown, PA and Virginia Beach, VA, so Baltimore seemed like the middle of the arc of my journey (we‘ll fly home from there, too, when our long adventure is over). Since I need to be in Newark on Monday, I thought we would start things out with a bang by flying east a few days early to get our big city fix in Manhattan.

We spent our first night at a hotel at the Newark airport on a “park and fly” special rate so I don’t have to drive into NYC. Then the car will be available again for the portions of the trip I need it. I had never used the Amtrak/NJ Transit trains from the Newark airport to Penn Station in New York; I anticipated some level of confusion and perhaps two hours in transit from the hotel to NYC but it was exactly an hour…hotel to Penn Station. I would recommend this if you find an inexpensive flight to Newark or perhaps want to drive TO NYC but not actually drive IN NY C! The hotel in Newark gave us a free shuttle ride to the airport, then the train ticket to Penn Station is just $15 for adults, $3.25 for children (each way). I’ll send updates as we wind around our circular journey. Perhaps others are trying to combine a family trip with a business trip in these days where time and budgets seem tight? Remember, not all vacations begin with a dream but if you think creatively, they can become a treasured experience.