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Our family’s happy place: the beach

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Building teepees at Eagle Cove.

Building teepees at Eagle Cove.

We’ve been on San Juan Island about a week now, and while every day has been different, all of them have had at least one thing in common: A trip to a beach.

Beaches are our girls’ happy place, a surefire spot to make them happy and keep them that way.

On some beaches, they’ve walked the shoreline looking for cool shells and beach glass. On other beaches, they’ve used driftwood, seaweed, and bull kelp to build elaborate forts (or, if I’m helping, teepees). When we hit one beach at low tide, the kids beeline for the tidepools and peer down into worlds of sea anemones, sculpins, and hermit crabs. Another day, when we hit the beach at high tide, they grabbed their shrimp nets, waded out up to their knees and tried to catch us “dinner.”

These kids adore the sand and surf so much you’d think they grew up in a coastal zone (they didn’t; we live about 30 miles inland). As a fellow ocean-lover, I can understand the appeal and appreciate the sense of wonder and joy.

Our best beach day so far has been at Eagle Cove, a locals’ beach I remember from my days on the island as a twentysomething. We’ve been there three times already; we’ll probably visit another three or four times before we head home. At low tide, the beach stretches out a half-mile. Gentle waves lap at the sand. The sides of the cove frame the Olympic Mountains across the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

This is the beach where L discovered chiton shells—since that moment of discovery she has collected approximately 3,486 of them. It’s also the beach where R found her first cache of beach glass.

We’ve played ball on this beach. We’ve built fairy houses there. One day, while the kids were lounging with Powerwoman on a blanket, I took matters into my own hands and dragged driftwood from the back of the beach to build a shelter in which the girls could play cards.

Weeks from now, when L and R look back on this trip, despite the Orcas and the red foxes and the bald eagles and the ice cream every day, I bet they remember the beach best of all.

And I won’t blame them one bit.

You know you’re on family vacation with young kids when…

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Sisters playing with perlers. 6 a.m.

Sisters playing with perlers. 6 a.m.

1. You wouldn’t be caught dead in a restaurant without paper and crayons.
2. You order that second Manhattan at dinner to go so you can drink it up in the room during books and songs.
3. You implore loved ones to use “inside voices” way more than you’d like.
4. You hear—and share—more poop and pee jokes than you’ll admit, even to your best friend.
5. You and your partner snuggle up in bed at 8 p.m. to watch separate movies on separate mobile devices with headphones (so as not to disturb anyone in the next bed).
6. You use Suave watermelon shampoo/conditioner on your own hair AND YOU DON’T GIVE A SHIT.
7. You listen to the same playlist in the car over and over and over and over again.
8. You consume French fries (and ice cream) at least once every other day.
9. You are awakened before 6 a.m. every day, usually to officiate an argument.
10. You have an adventure on each trip to a public restroom.
11. You (reluctantly) accept that the process of applying sunscreen takes more than 15 minutes.
12. You tip servers more than normal to assuage your guilt for leaving such a mess.
13. You relinquish all semblance of privacy in the bathroom (or otherwise).
14. You explain new stuff you encounter. In great detail. Frequently.
15. You step on small toys (or Perler Beads) daily, and cannot bring yourself to curse about it when you do.
16. You find yourself justifying how pasta really is its own food group.
17. You have to call housekeeping for help to replace marker-stained pillowcases.
18. You visit every toy store in a five-mile radius of your destination.
19. You realize museums and playgrounds are unbeatable diversionary tools.
20. You expand your family limits to include a litany of stuffed animal friends.

Puke on the family trip

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A calm scene before Retch No. 5

A calm scene before Retch No. 5

When we booked this family vacation to Los Angeles, it was supposed to be about togetherness, birthday celebrations, and outfitter-driven activities for all ages (available through my client, Expedia). So far, however, the trip largely has been about something entirely different: puke.

As in, vomit, throm, throw-up, retch.

All of the puke has come from poor little R; she caught a flu bug from her sister the day before we left, and somehow has managed to throw up at least—I stress, at least—once a day every day of the visit. (Lucky for us, she didn’t actually throw up on our transit day, but she did poop her pants on the plane, due in part to bad diarrhea.)

Today’s episode was by far the most dramatic. After a wonderful day celebrating L’s birthday at the Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens, we got back to the hotel and handed the car to the valet guys just in time for poor R to throm all over the porte cochere.

Both Powerwoman and I can handle the smell and cleanup of vom on the road—we both like to drink, and L puked a bunch when she was younger so we’ve had plenty of practice.

That said, what remains difficult about vom management are basic logistics. Who stays back at the hotel with sick child? How long can the free parent be free before trapped spouse starts to feel antsy? What in the hell do you feed a sick kid on the road when everything requires effort to obtain?

Another challenge: Persevering in the face of awkwardness with restaurant staffers after your kid throws up in a booth during breakfast and it takes the crew 15 minutes to respond with a mop. (Fellow traveling parents, I would have cleaned it up with individual wipes but the host wouldn’t let me! Also, um, ewwwww.)

Perhaps the biggest challenge is dealing with the sick child directly. She’s whiney. She’s pathetic. She doesn’t want to move anywhere. And if your kid is anything like mine, she probably doesn’t want to be touched, either.

I’m not complaining here, I’m just saying the whole vacation-with-a-sick-kid is a different ball of wax.

My advice? Be ready to be flexible. Discuss a backup strategy with your traveling partners in advance, just in case. Be willing to eat a lot of room-service toast. Finally, remind yourself that sick kids on family trips are the exception, not the norm; as religious folks likes to say, this too shall pass.

The moaner next door

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The calm before the moans.

The calm before the moans.

Sometimes you bring the kids to family-oriented hotels and it’s all about penne with butter and crayons and stuffed animals. Other times you bring the kids to grownup-oriented hotels and the kids hear a woman moaning loudly in the next room and ask if you should call the police to help her.

Such was the case earlier this evening here at The Chamberlain, a boutique hotel in West Hollywood.

The four of us are here on assignment for Expedia—an assignment that revolves as much around activities as it does around hotel. We were excited to land such posh accommodations in such a great neighborhood. But, going in, my wife and I knew it would not be a place designed for kids.

So when we started exploring our room, we had to explain to the girls not to stick their hands through the metal mesh screens in front of the fireplace to touch the always-on gas pilot light. And when I took L to the rooftop pool, I had to remind her that meowing like a cat on the giant cabana beds probably wasn’t the kind of behavior other guests would tolerate.

Then came the moaner.

She started softly, peppering guttural grumbles with an occasional, “Oh yeah,” and “Yes!” The screams became more consistent as she and her partner humped their way toward a culmination. When Little R asked me if we should call the cops, our neighbor was screaming words my children still don’t know, and was screaming them in reference to parts of her body that my children still don’t understand.

After I managed to stop myself from laughing out loud at the ridiculousness of the situation, I reassured my kid the woman was just fine. And I *didn’t* call the cops.

Why would I? I mean, good for this woman for having such a memorable evening. And, really, good for the hotel for facilitating that kind of escape. Could I have been outraged that the hotel would allow another guest to have sex loudly in earshot of my kids? Sure. But, IMHO, the hotel did nothing wrong.

At the end of the day, shit happens when you operate outside the typical comfort zone and bring your kids to stay in a place that deviates from the norm. It can be awkward. It can be uncomfortable. But it also can provide a great learning experience for your kids. Beside, it makes for a great story to tell friends.

Patience is a virtue on family trips

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Before the eel, I saw this.

Before the eel, I saw this.

Squiggling and wriggling like a pudgy underwater ribbon, the pale-green moray eel moved along the coral reef quickly—almost too fast to spot.

As a relative novice snorkeler, I probably would have missed it, had I not glimpsed a small school of tropical fish dart out of the way of the creature, fleeing for their lives. I kicked my flippers and dove deeper into the warm water, inching closer to the beast with every stroke.

Finally, the eel came into full view. I could see its undulating tail, its dark-green splotches, and the ugly (horrifying, really) teeth protruding from its mouth.

In reality, the ocean was eerily quiet. In my head, I could hear the Hallelujah chorus to Handel’s Messiah.

Understandably so. Over the course of the last 11 years I’ve made 16 visits to Maui and hired local outfitters to take me snorkeling nine different times.  Before every trip, I convinced myself *this* would be the trip on which I’d see a Moray in the wild. Every time I came up empty. Finally, on a two-hour jaunt with Hawaiian Paddle Sports, my string of bad luck came to an end. And the sighting was well worth the wait.

This life-changing spectacle actually occurred last month, smack in the middle of a trip to Maui with the Expedia Viewfinder team (full disclosure: Expedia is a client). The trip was an off-site of sorts; I was surrounded by some of my favorite work friends. Noticeably absent: my kids, who have become mainstays of my Hawaii visits.

Still, the experience got me thinking about an important—and often underappreciated—philosophy we parents can espouse on family trips: To practice patience.

I mean, think about it. I had visited the islands 16 times. I had gone snorkeling nine times. And over that stretch, I had *never* seen a Moray. After a schneid like that, I had every reason in the world to give up hope or try a new activity (or, even more dramatic, start vacationing somewhere else). But I persevered. I hung in. Because I knew that sooner or later, I’d spot one.

This patience, this quiet confidence in letting the world come to you (as opposed to going out there and getting caught up in grabbing it), comprises a huge part of my outlook on travel. It also is one of the most important concepts I can pass along to L and R as they continue to explore the world.

The lessons are subtle. When we go whale-watching, for instance, I’m careful to remind the girls that the whales aren’t on a payroll and largely do their own things. When we go beachcombing, I explain how the waves always churn up different stuff, and that you really never can “count” on anything in particular hiding in the sand underfoot. Even when we’re hiking, I remind the kids to look beyond the trail map.

Don’t get me wrong here; I’m *not* saying we parents shouldn’t teach our kids to be proactive about experiencing the world. Instead, I’m emphasizing the importance of not overdramatizing the choice part of a choose-your-own adventure. I’m suggesting that the best (family) travelers put themselves in a position to get the most out of a new experience, but then sit back and let that very experience run its course.

Someday, I’m sure L and R will have their own personal Moray stories. They’ll have stuff they desperately want to see in particular destinations and will find themselves faced with the same choice that faced me: Persevere or go in a different direction?

When they reach these junctures, I only can hope they decide to practice patience. In the short term, it’s a great exercise in appreciating a process. And in the long term, the results can be magical.

Expressing excitement on family trips

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Both girls got pretty excited about this Play-Doh booth.

Both girls got pretty excited about this Play-Doh booth.

We humans express excitement in different ways. Some of us get smiley. Others get giddy. My wife likes to eeek. I, a verbal person, like to scream, “POWER” repeatedly. Then there’s the Big Girl, who conveys *her* excitement by jumping over and over again and stuttering uncontrollably.

I noticed this tendency of my daughter’s on a recent daytrip to San Francisco. She already was excited to be there—my kids have grown up in the country and they love any opportunity to see tall buildings and public transit and trappings of an urban center. Then we came upon a brand new playground off the Embarcadero. The kid nearly flipped her lid.

She was so cranked up, so stoked at the notion of sliding down a new slide and swinging from new monkey bars that she bounced around like a kangaroo.

When we asked her what was up, she couldn’t respond without fumbling over her own words.

As she played, it dawned on me that I’d seen these behaviors before, almost religiously, on every single family trip we’ve ever taken. That’s when it dawned on me that the get-up wasn’t a temporary bout of insanity, but instead just my kid’s way of expressing and dealing with travel excitement.

The incident got me thinking—where do we learn behaviors for expressing travel excitement? It’s not like Powerwoman or I jump up and down and stutter when we’re on family trips. Why doesn’t my older child eeek like her mother? Why doesn’t she scream, “POWER?” From whom did she get the whole hopping thing?

This, of course, got me thinking some more. How fun it would be to swap excitement expressions a trip! How odd it would be to see a grown man jumping around and stuttering at the sight of the Hollywood sign in Los Angeles. How silly it would be if my kid actually did scream, “POWER.” Or eeek.

We’re headed out in the next few weeks on a number of different journeys and I plan to mention the subject to the kids then. If you see me jumping around and stuttering at an airport, you’ll know why.

How do your kids express their excitement on your family trips?

Back in action

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Site for sore eyes.

Site for sore eyes.

Just about the last thing a family travel writer wants to hear from his kid is a request for a year off from flying.

Yet this was our reality in August of 2014, after we followed up five months of living abroad (for the last half of 2013) with family trips to Hawaii and Walt Disney World, and the Big Girl informed us that she needed a break.

Powerwoman and I wanted to be sensitive to L’s wishes; as major travel advocates, the last thing we wanted was to push our daughter to the point of resentment.

Still, we were bummed. Handcuffed, really. And concerned.

We responded by emphasizing road trips to local national parks and elsewhere around the state, as well as a greater frequency of daytrips to destinations less than three hours from our Northern California home. For a while, this strategy worked. But (being the inveterate travelers that we are) we yearned for more.

Then a funny thing happened. I went to Maui on behalf of the Expedia Viewfinder blog. I called home with reports every day. When I returned in person, I regaled the kids with stories of smooth flights, and the neat new personal entertainment devices passengers can rent aboard Alaska Airlines planes.

And, unprovoked, L declared that if she could have her own device, she was willing to shorten her moratorium and agree to fly again.

We were stunned. We clarified her statement four times to make sure we heard it correctly. We had.

Then, of course, we did what any travel-obsessed parents would do: We got out the laptop, pulled down the calendar, and started booking trips. When the hour ended, we had purchased plane tickets for the whole family to spend a long weekend (reporting some stuff) in Los Angeles. We also bought plane tickets to convert our full-on road trip from home to the San Juan Islands and back into a halfsie road-trip from Portland, Oregon, to the San Juan Islands and back to Seattle.

In all, we’re taking three separate plane trips as a family this summer, making the absolute most of the extra three months L gave us by rescinding her ban.

In short, thanks mostly to L, we’re planning to fly again this summer. And it feels good to be back.

Ashton Kutcher feels our pain

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Our new spokesperson. Credit: Jason LaVeris, FilmMagic.

Our new spokesperson. Credit: Jason LaVeris, FilmMagic.

In America, for better or for worse, nothing really is news until a celebrity deems it so. With this in mind, thank goodness we traveling dads have actor Ashton Kutcher on our side.

Kutcher was gallivanting in Los Angeles with his daughter this weekend. The kid needed a diaper change. But when Kutcher looked for a public restroom with a changing table, he came up empty. So he Facebooked about it. And his 18.7 million followers listened in a big way.

Within 24 hours, the episode was grabbing headlines on E! and other news sites. Two days after the post, his initial rant (if you want to call it that) had garnered 220,000 likes. Three days out—in other words, this morning—the subject had crept into the national discussion, popping up on morning news broadcasts and talk shows from sea to shining sea.

As the father of two girls who is out and about with them all the time, I can’t help but be amused.

I mean, Kutcher is right: More men’s rooms need more changing tables, absolutely yes. But thousands of traveling dads (including yours truly; this post was published back in 2012) have been saying the same thing for years, and nobody has so much as moved a muscle about it, ever.

Now that we’ve got this mouthpiece, here are a number of other fatherhood/travel issues I propose Kutcher espouse:

  • How condescending it is when strangers see us dads out and about with our kids on a weekday and think it must be “mom’s day off.”
  • The assumption that because we’re dads, our jobs are to schlep the family luggage through airports.
  • The proliferation of “Mommy Groups” that don’t include dads.

While he’s at it, I’d love for Kutcher to become the face of the anti-family travel hater movement. Even if he and Mila and Wyatt flew coach JUST ONE TIME and suffered the fools who assume the worst when they see parents and a young baby, raising awareness about their “hardships” could help the rest of us tremendously.

Kutcher, dude, we’re counting on you. Don’t let this opportunity disappear.

Understanding the science of car naps

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Snoozing. On the Hana Highway.

Snoozing. On the Hana Highway.

The world is abuzz about billionaires today, as Forbes magazine has released its annual list of the richest humans on Earth.

If I were a billionaire, I’d spend my cash on running shoes, buy-ins for poker tournaments, and lots and lots of international family travel. I’d also set aside a fat wad of it to fund research into the study of car naps.

Seriously. I mean, what parent wouldn’t?

How is it that these kids of ours manage to stay awake for 85-90 percent of every road trip, only to fall asleep for the home stretch? Why is it that kids who never in a million, billion, trillion years would nap at home, actually fall asleep in a moving car? Finally, why do most kids sleep through any number of noises in the moving vehicle, then awaken immediately when you try to transfer them to their beds at home?

I’ve got questions, people. And as someone who spends a ton of time road-tripping with girls who generally don’t nap, I demand answers.

My kids would be great case studies. This past weekend, for instance, after a fun-filled day in the city, the two of them resisted sleep for 65 of the 75 miles home, then—inexplicably, really—dozed off less than 10 minutes from our house.

Last month we endured a similar scene—I was so happy to see them sleeping in the middle of the day that I sat in the parked car in my own driveway for nearly 30 minutes, just to score them decent rest.

How long must the erratic realities of car napping plague us moms and dads? Is there any hope for us at all, short of blasting music and constantly turning around to tickle our kids in the knees and keep them awake? If a billionaire can’t fund research into this area, perhaps we can get some cash on Indiegogo or Kickstarter. Surely I’m not the only parent determined to find out.

A different kind of family travel

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The Three Musketeers.

The Three Musketeers.

Family travel comes in many shapes and sizes. Most of the time in Villanoville, the equation is the same: Me + Powerwoman + L + R. This past weekend, however, the formula took on a new look—my kids were hanging out with their Momma at home, and I was traveling with *my* parents (who are known in these parts as Grammy C and Grampy V).

We were in San Diego for a wedding. We had separate rooms (thank goodness), but it was the first time JUST the three of us (I’m an only child) have traveled together as a family since I was in high school.

Which means it was quite a hoot.

Exhibit A: I arrived at our hotel for the weekend, the Sheraton San Diego Hotel & Marina, to find my parents drinking beer by a fire pit—something they NEVER did when we vacationed together during our younger days. (Later, my dad also ordered beer at the hotel bar. Who has he become?)

Exhibit B: My mother, who from time to time still harbors a Long Island accent, wore a knitted sweater thing over her shoulders to keep her warm. She called it a SH-AWWWWWWWWWL. And every time I heard her say the word I laughed.

Exhibit C: The three of us vowed to meet in the lobby so we all could drive to the rehearsal dinner together, but my father was 30 minutes late. When I asked my mother what he was doing upstairs, she said he ran up to get something just before I had arrived. She noted the errand should have taken no more than five minutes. It took WAY longer than that.

Exhibit D: After the aforementioned rehearsal dinner, the three of us hit the game room. The two of them stood there and watched me gun for the record at the lone Pop-A-Shot game (I came within 20 points). Then Dad took a turn. (He was less efficient. Think Herb Williams, circa 1994 New York Knicks.)

Those were just the highlights from the first day. The rest of the weekend was filled with foibles over umbrellas in the rain, botched directions despite the help of a GPS, deep conversations about child-rearing, and discussions about life after Social Security. Throw in a hearty dose of nagging from Mom and a bunch of incessant whistling from my Dad (trust me; that shit is PIERCING), and it was just like old times.

In my teens, this degree of intensity drove me nuts and soured me on the mere mention of going away with the two of them later in life. Now that later has arrived, however, now that I’m a grown-up myself, I was able to laugh off the more stressful parts of the family dynamic when I had to and appreciate it at all other times.

In other words, I had a blast.

So often we new-ish parents think family travel must be confined to the people in our immediate families. This weekend with Mom and Dad reminded me that they’re my family, too. Traveling with them was just as fulfilling as traveling with my wife and girls, only in entirely different ways. I’m not sure I could do it again for a few months, but I’m certainly more willing to consider it than ever before.

To what extent do you vacation with your extended family, and where do you go?