This past weekend I was back home in the Twin Cities visiting family. It was a busy few days, but there's always time made to play some board games with my sister's two sons. They love playing me in strategy games like chess and Risk, both of which are favorites of mine as well.

As we played Risk into the wee hours of Saturday morning one of the topics of conversation that came up was traveling. The boys like to ask where I'm going to next and I like to ask them where they'd go if they could travel anywhere in the world. It's a fun little game in itself that we seem to play each time I'm home.

Well, during our conversation, I realized what a great tool games like Risk are when learning and thinking about the geographic world and traveling. It instantly clicked with me, thinking back to a conversation earlier in the day, why the eldest nephew knew where Peru was located and the shape of it. It was all because of Risk!

And during the game we had fun talking about my friend Stephen Mills and where he's from - England. Of course, in the game, it's listed as Great Britain, but as soon as the first game piece was played there, the boys were asking if that's where he lived and speculating how cool it'd be to go visit him there since he was in Minnesota this past March after our trip to Hawaii.

I couldn't have agreed more and told them that England is one of the four countries, along with Peru, I'm most interested in seeing at the present time. Russia and India seem to be two elusive mainstays on my list, but one day I'll get to both of them as well. For now though, it's just dreams and idle chatter with the nephews over a well played game of Risk.

If you have any good travel related board game suggestions, please post a quick comment about them here. I'd love to get some good ideas for upcoming birthday and Christmas gifts. Thanks!