Have you taken a vacation this year or are you planning a trip?

If you’re over 50, chances are good that you’ve already enjoyed a vacation trip or are in the process of planning one.

It’s not a secret. Your travel agent and tourism marketing folks know this. Baby boomers love to travel.

Most boomers travel to spend time with family and friends. We go to visit kids and grandkids living away or take trips with friends and family to popular destinations like Las Vegas or Japan.

But here’s something you may not know: Baby boomers are also big bucket-list travelers, especially when it comes to international trips.

Our AARP travel surveys have found that about half of boomers have bucket lists and travel is high on the list of things they want to do before they die.

Our research suggests that having a travel bucket list is good for you. People with travel lists report that the list gives them something to look forward to and gives them hope and motivation. In other words, it’s fun just to have the list and dream of traveling, even if you never take all the trips.

However, boomers do end up traveling more and are generally big spenders when they go. The average boomer in our survey plans to take four to five leisure trips this year and expects to spend about $6,300 on each trip.

So it’s no surprise that many boomers have already crossed destinations off their bucket lists. On average, boomers with travel lists have completed about 25 percent of their bucket list trips.

The good news for Hawaii, is that of the domestic destinations, we’re the number one destination boomers want to see before they die.

The survey results resonate with me.

My travel bucket list includes going to China, Korea and Japan to show my grown kids their Chinese and Korean heritage. Japan is on the list because when my husband was a graduate student in Kyoto, we spent some of the best times of our lives exploring Kyoto, Nara and Hakone by riding the rail, bicycling and hiking. It would be fun to show the kids our old haunts, if they’re still around.

Domestically, I’d love to go to Alaska and see a bear catching salmon in the wild. Alaska strikes me as America’s last unspoiled frontier and I just want to see it.

That’s my immediate dream list. The kids are too busy and I’m too busy, so we’re not close to making it come true… yet.

But if it’s on the list… it might happen some day. As our surveys suggest, if you dream it, it just might come true.

Barbara Kim Stanton is the state director for AARP Hawaii, an organization dedicated to empowering people to choose how they live as they age.