Tag Archive for: family travel

Sightseeing with the Family, Prefontaine-style

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The Daditarod, on a recent trip.

The Daditarod, on a recent trip.

Many families like to explore new cities on guided tours. Others prefer to rent cars and see the sights on their own. Still others—usually those with kids old enough not to complain—like to walk.

In this family, however, we take a different approach. When I’m itching to experience a new place with my kids, I buckle them in a jogging stroller, lace up my sneaks and start running.

The result is a fast-paced, ground-level view of the very best a destination has to offer. We run through urban parks, alongside rivers and over bridges. We run along quiet roads, past farmlands and (at least in our hometown) vineyards. When we’re feeling really adventuresome (and when traffic doesn’t create a major safety issue), we even dash by major tourist attractions.

Because I’m the one mushing, because these runs usually are epic (read: 1 hour or more), I call this method of sightseeing the “Daditarod.”

The approach keeps everyone happy:

  • I like it because I get in a killer workout (trust me: pushing a 40-pound human and a 6-pound jogging stroller up a giant hill is tougher than anything I’ve done with the personal trainer).
  • My wife likes it because taking the kids out for a jog frees her up to take a tub, hit the spa or swing by a museum on her own.
  • Of course the kids like it because they can sit back and tune in or check out when they want to, without having to worry about following along.

L also appreciates having the privilege of using my Smartphone to play deejay, and regularly blasts old-school Taylor Swift songs as we plod along.

Depending on where you travel, you can either rent a jogging stroller or bring one from home. We’ve done both; while renting the devices can get expensive, I recommend that approach because these strollers take up a TON of room in the back of a truck or car. (Of course you also could ask Facebook friends at your destination if they have a stroller you could borrow.)

In case you’re wondering, most manufacturers sell special shields for you to throw over the stroller to keep the kiddos dry when it rains. Some manufacturers also sell full-body warmers to keep babies toasty in the cold.

So…if you run and you can get hands on a jogging stroller during your next trip, give this a try. It’s easy! It’s fun! And the word “Daditarod” becomes “Momitarod” in a flash.

A Primer to ‘Get Your Kids Hiking’

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Alt's new book.

Alt’s new book.

My favorite kinds of family trips are those for which we spend a ton of time in nature. Day hikes, camping—you name the outdoorsy activity and it’s on my list. In this case, you could call me a Louvite, which is to say that I ascribe to the beliefs and research of Richard Louv.

This also explains why I loved Jeff Alt’s forthcoming book, “Get Your Kids Hiking: How to Start Them Young and Keep it Fun!” In the book, the Cincinnati-based author offers tips and tricks on age-appropriate ways to include your child in all aspects of a hike, checklists of what to pack for any type of hike and advice for hiking with a special needs child. In short, he presents the Appalachian Trail of books about family travel outdoors.

I recently caught up with Alt to ask him about his work. Here are some highlights of our chat.

Q. Why is it so hard for parents to get their kids to embrace the outdoors?
A. There’s a fear factor that’s been instilled; within my own family ranks, we have families that literally are afraid of the outdoors. Also, as parents we’re all so busy now, and handing your kid a Smart phone or a gadget is easier and instantly quiets them down. So there are bad habits that have formed.

Q. What are the biggest challenges around building family vacation around being outside?
A. The biggest challenge is finding something age-appropriate. Some people might feel limited if their children are just starting to walk on their own or the kids are too heavy in a child carrier. My philosophy is that from birth to age 3, you can do whatever you want, so long as you can carry your child. Whatever you decide to do with your kids in terms of hiking, I wouldn’t recommend extreme weather hiking. And nothing too strenuous.

Q. Gear is so expensive these days. How can a family take up hiking without breaking the bank?
A. Gear can be expensive, but in general, hiking is probably the cheapest form of family time and entertainment available. If you think about it, you can acquire everything you need from second-hand clothing store. Child carriers, clothes, things like that. Finding long john underwear for your kids is harder; sometimes brand like Patagonia is the only choice in that department. Also, when they start to hike more, then you want to look at a good pair of running shoes with a decent sole on the bottom. If you have more than one child, buy things in neutral-colored clothing so that your young son can wear what your daughter wore.

Q. What’s the most important lesson to teach kids about life on the trail?
A. My first goal when I take my kids out is to make sure they know we’re not required to get anywhere or do anything. I follow their lead. If they want to walk for an hour, we do that. If they want to skip rocks across a creek a quarter-mile from the trailhead, we do that. I call this ‘child-directed hiking.’ My goal as a father is to make the whole experience so much fun that they want to go again and again. If they seem engaged on a hike, I know the hike has been a success. Another key lesson is to make sure they know that they should take nothing from the woods but memories and pictures.

Q. How old is old enough to overnight in the backcountry?
A. Personally, I don’t recommend hiking overnight until a child is old enough to carry some or most of their gear. Another potential problem with getting kids to do overnights too soon: You run the risk of putting your child into this forced road march, which could turn them off to the point where they won’t go again. I recommend base-camping and day hiking from there. Before you leave on your adventure, I recommend taking walks with the equipment you’re going to wear so that you—and your kids—can get used to it. Make sure the only surprises are what they’ll find on the trail. This will make everyone happier in the end.

Chameleon Couture: A Daddy-Daughter Trip to Beverly Hills

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Chameleon couture

Chameleon couture

I blogged extensively over at Parenting about the trip L and I took to Los Angeles this past February. Now, I also have written about the trip for “Have Family Will Travel,” a family travel blog from Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts.

My most recent post was published today. The headline is too long and SEO-optimized to share here. Really all you need to know is this: The piece chronicles (a brief encounter with the actor, Bruce Willis, and) the morning L and I spent sketching couture dresses on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills.

Check out the piece here. And, please, feel free to share it with friends.

Family Travel Dreams, in a Jar

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Our jar of travel dreams (not the Skippy).

Our jar of travel dreams (not the Skippy).

Some households have a bucket list. Others have a corkboard brimming with ideas. At our crib (pun intended), we keep all of our family travel wishes in something called a Dream Jar.

And it’s overflowing with vacation fantasies we’ve saved over the years.

There’s a magazine clipping in there about beluga whale-watching near Churchill, Manitoba (my pick), and handwritten notes about a family-friendly trek through the New Zealand bush (Powerwoman’s). Other destinations in the mix: Hermanus, South Africa (both of us); Dubai (totally me); Petra (my archaeologist wife).

Even L, who is no stranger to maps of North America, has stuffed the Jar with a Nebraska piece from one of her many puzzles of the U.S. (She is obsessed with the Cornhusker state because of Bruce Springsteen. I admit: I am very proud of this fact.)

With our upcoming stint in London (we’ll be there from August to December of this year), we recently have stuffed the Jar with all sorts of information about our new home. L’s contributions focus mostly on parks. Powerwoman’s are almost exclusively museums. As for mine? Well, they’re bars.

(By the way, I’m not ignoring R here. She’s just too young to have opinions about this stuff yet.)

The Jar has a commanding position on our kitchen counter. Whenever we decide it’s time for another family trip, it’s the first place we go.

Over the last two years, we’ve probably sorted through the snippets and scribbles dozens of times. Still, every time we pop the top, it’s like we’re seeing our dream destinations for the first time again. South Africa! Nebraska! The possibilities are intoxicating.

I’d be remiss without noting the jar’s provenance; we got it from an artist whom I met while reporting a story in Lima, Peru. Powerwoman and I lived there for a few months back in 2005, well before our girls were even on the agenda.  Looking back, that experience still ranks as one of our family’s greatest adventures; it’s fitting that the Jar now plays such an integral role in the adventures to come.

How do you keep track of your family travel dreams? Let me know in the comment field above.

To Bring or Not to Bring: Car Seats on a Plane

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carseats

For us, these work in the car; not so much on the plane.

A friend and fellow parent asked me this week advice about taking her 3-year-old son’s car seat on the plane. Her main question: Is it worth the hassle? My response: It depends on whom you ask. And on your kid.

The “whom you ask” part is pretty straightforward.

In a kick-ass Q&A with Parenting.com, Dr. Alicia Baer, a pediatrician in the NICU at Columbia University Children’s Hospital in New York and certified instructor for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s car seat course, said that when a child is riding in a moving vehicle, it’s always safest to have him or her strapped into a special seat.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) echoes these sentiments, stating pretty clearly on its website that car seats (or at least devices with child-restraint systems) are a good idea, and that parents should use them whenever possible.

Still, despite their obvious safety benefits, in certain cases, car seats on a flight actually might make your life more challenging.

Which brings me to my second point: It depends on your kid.

If your son or daughter is great at a) listening, b) sitting still and c) generally being calm upon request, having him or her strapped into a car seat for the duration of an airplane flight might be a very realistic goal.

But if your child is like my girls, if he or she needs to be free to do whatever it is these kids like to do over long periods of time, outside of take-off and landing (when the kids are required to be strapped in anyway) the car seat is the modern-day equivalent of a torture device—for them, for you and for all of the passengers around you.

(As we all know, other passengers don’t need more reasons to hate family travelers.)

On plane trips with the Villano family, it’s actually easier for us to bring car seats and check them than it is to bring them, schlep them on the plane, strap them in and fight the girls to stay put.

No, our strategy probably wouldn’t be Dr. Baer’s first choice. But we keep the girls safe. And it works. Whether the same approach will work for you depends on your children—and, of course, on whom else you ask.

What’s your take on this issue? When you fly with your young kids, do you bring their car seats on board or check them through to your destination? Why? Leave a comment and let me know.

Why Family Travel Begs You to Rattle Routines

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puakeaswing

The swing out front.

 

Here at home, my wife and I bend over backward to make sure L and R are tubbed, brushed and in bed by 7:30 p.m., at the latest every night. On the road, however, “bedtime” in this family becomes a much more relative term.

This is entirely by design; when we travel, the entire endeavor is about allowing our kids to experience the wonder of a new place, whatever that might mean.

Before you call me a slacker, I assure you—we are *not* letting our daughters stay up until 10 p.m., every night of vacation. But some nights, if there’s a particularly spectacular sunset, a too-amazing-to-be-real starry sky, an enthralling local cultural performance or just a really engaging new book, we are inclined to let things slide.

Our thinking behind this approach is simple. It amounts to: Why the heck not?

The kids have their entire lifetimes to follow routines and stick to sleep schedules, and on vacation, when the overarching objective is to embrace the unknown, allowing them to get caught up in certain moments is better for everybody—for us and for them.

Perhaps the best example of this was in June 2012, on one magical night during our two-week stay at Puakea Ranch on Hawaii Island.

The baby went down early (around 5:30 p.m.) in the midst of a torrential rain shower that sounded like marbles on the corrugated metal roof of our cottage. Then, suddenly, around 6:30 p.m., the skies cleared. And the most beautiful rainbow appeared. Right outside our front door.

L, Powerwoman and I rushed out front for a closer look, huddling up near a rope swing that hung from the gnarled guava tree. We looked skyward and stood motionless, necks craned, mouths agape.

None of us spoke for at least five minutes.

Of course L’s interest in the rainbow disappeared before the rainbow itself. Taking its place was interest in a new first: the swing. And so, for the last 30 minutes of sunlight on that warm Hawaii evening, Powerwoman pushed our Big Girl on the rope swing, singing songs, telling stories and marveling at the peacefulness of tropical dusk.

The three of us stayed out for a while after dark, pointing out constellations and listening to horses whinny in a pasture around the bend.

To be honest, I have no idea what time my older daughter went to bed that night. But I know she still talks about it all today. I’m willing to bet the kid remembers that night for a long, long while. I know I will.

The Best Family Travel Game Ever

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This week I stumbled upon the Holy Grail of family travel diversions: Flip to Win Hangman from Melissa & Doug.

Like most stuff from the illustrious M&D, the game is nothing short of genius. The base is a white wooden board the size of a gossip magazine, about an inch thick. On top of this platform are three basic sections:

  • One, on the left, which has every letter of the alphabet on wooden tiles, strung (with elastic) tightly together and then tied to the board so nothing falls off or gets lost.
  • Another, on the right, which boasts 11 tiles that make up a Hangman. The tiles are strung together tightly and tied to the board like the letters.
  • The final section, which runs across the bottom of the board, is a strip of dry-erase material that allows participants to spell out words each time you play.
Hangman 2.0

Hangman 2.0

Of course the game also comes with a small dry-erase marker, which has a tiny square of eraser felt on the top of the cap (another great way to make sure participants don’t lose it).

Overall, the game is perfect in its simplicity. Especially for road trips. (Though, I admit, I have incredibly weak fingertips, and for people like me, those letter tiles are a bit hard to flip over until the elastic strings get some slack.)

I discovered the game as part of a Travel Kit put together by Kidville and Portico (who, in the interest of full disclosure, sent me a sample to review). Dubbed “Portico Travel Pals,” the kits are retailing at Kidville’s Upper West Side boutique in New York City (466 Columbus Ave.) for $100 apiece. They’re also provided to Portico members traveling with children throughout the month of March—the travel company’s “Family Month.”

For the record, there are other cool items in these kits: the SkipHop travel pillow is pretty rad, and the decorate-your-own-travel-mug was a bit hit with the burgeoning artist who doubles as our Big Girl. Still, IMHO, this Flip to Win board takes the cake; I wish they made these things when I was a kid.

If you don’t want to buy the whole kit, look for the Flip to Win board on Amazon (where it’s listed for $17.95), or buy it direct from Melissa & Doug (where it’s about $5 cheaper). Sure, the license plate game is still cheaper. But this one is more fun.

Managing Passports for Family Travel

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Our family of passports.

Our family of passports.

One of the casualties of this week’s budget sequestration was National Passport Day, an annual event sponsored by the U.S. Department of State to get would-be travelers to apply for or renew passports. I still managed to chat with Brenda Sprague, deputy assistant secretary for passport services, about the importance of planning ahead when you travel abroad with kids.

Sprague is the real deal—essentially she oversees all passport offices and agencies in the U.S. Put differently, whoever stamped your last passport from the government almost certainly calls Sprague his or her boss.

The two of us spent nearly an hour on the phone. In that time, she covered a variety of subjects related to family travel. I’ve boiled them down into four basic tips.

Tip 1: Be proactive about getting your kids documented and/or renewed
In almost all cases, U.S. citizens—including newborns—need passports to travel internationally. Sprague noted that it takes about 4-6 weeks to get a regular passport and 2-3 weeks to get an expedited one (which costs an extra $60). She noted that at least 10 percent of all passport applications get kicked back because they’re got something missing—a signature here, a certified birth certificate there, etc. This means that for parents traveling abroad with children who don’t have a passport, it pays to get the ball rolling as early as possible. For those families with kids who already have passports, it’s important to note renewal rules; though adult passports are valid for 10 years, child passports are only valid for five. “Some foreign countries won’t let you enter unless you’ve got six months of validity left on your passport,” notes Sprague. “Simply checking the expiration date on a child’s passport can save families stress, time and money.”

Tip 2: Make sure you even need a passport in the first place
Our neighboring countries do not require U.S. travelers visiting by land to show passports at border crossings. This means families driving (or busing or walking) across our borders with Mexico and Canada don’t need to worry about bringing passports for the kids. Sprague notes that families traveling by air to these countries DO need passports. She adds that the U.S. Passport Card is a viable alternative for traditional passports at land crossings, and that it enables travelers visiting Bermuda and the Caribbean to leave their passports at home, as well. (It’s cheaper than a Passport Book, too; for minors, new cards are only $40.)

Tip 3: Don’t forget about visas
Depending on where you and the family are traveling, you might need a visa to enter your destination country. Latin American countries, for instance, are notorious sticklers for travel visas; Western European nations, by contrast, are not. Because foreign embassies need (you to send in) your passport to award visas, the process of obtaining these likely will add time to your pre-trip preparations. “It’s not like you can handle a lot of this stuff in a day or two,” says Sprague. “You’d be amazed at how many people think they can.”

Tip 4: Get that baby to sit still!
There’s one rule about passports for infants: We parents can’t be in the picture. Sprague says this means parents need to figure out a way to photograph babies a) against a white background and b) while the infants are sitting up straight. Not an easy task, to say the least. “There’s a lot of hit or miss on this,” she says, adding that her agency has rejected photos that do not meet the specifications. “It’s a challenge every parent needs to figure out on his or her own, but don’t be afraid to ask passport service employees for suggestions or help.” (As an aside here, we managed to get through two infant passport photos with a white sheet and a white floating pool noodle.)

Lastly, Sprague mentioned a relatively new program from the State Department that keeps travelers informed of State Department-related news while they’re abroad. The opt-in service, dubbed the Smart Traveler Enrollment Program, notifies subscribers in the event of a predicted weather disaster, or if a nation’s political situation is about to destabilize. The service is available as an app or via SMS. If you’re traveling as a family, check it out—when you go abroad you’re your kids, there’s no such thing as being too cautious.

Here We Go!

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Our wandering pod.

Our wandering pod.

You’ve found The Wandering Pod, this adventuresome dad’s take on family travel. If you’ve come from “Are We There Yet??” my family travel blog for Parenting magazine, thanks for making the leap. If you’re lucky enough to have happened on the site, welcome aboard (and go play Lotto).

In these pages, I vow to cover every aspect of family travel: rants, raves, reviews, features, news analysis, Q&As, and more.

Some of my pieces might make you cry. Some of them might make you think I’m an asshole. Hopefully most of my work falls somewhere in between. If I’m doing my job, you might even learn some stuff.

My philosophy
My philosophy on family travel is simple: I believe family travel is about creating new adventures at every turn. It’s about exploring uncharted territory. About trying different things.

Put simply, I think family travel is about transcending the familiar, as a group.

It’s important to note that my philosophy doesn’t require you to log thousands of frequent-flier miles. Heck, it doesn’t even mean you need to leave your home city. Any time you experience something new, any time you introduce your children to an environment that’s new to them, you’re committing an act of family travel. It’s something all of us parents do, often without even knowing it.

My pod
Why did I name the site, “The Wandering Pod?” After reading the few paragraphs before this one, the “wandering” part should be self-explanatory.

Understanding the “pod” part is a little trickier. It’s all about cetaceans (that’s a fancy word for whales and dolphins). Personally, I’ve been obsessed with these animals for as long as I can remember. Scientists call cetacean family groups “pods.” So that’s what I call mine, too.

In case you’re wondering, my family is not actually composed of cetaceans; (thankfully) they are all humans. In order to protect their privacy, when I write about them I will use fake names. I also won’t publish many pictures that show their faces; sure, you might catch a glimpse of my wife (a.k.a. Powerwoman) from time to time, but my two daughters, L (who turns 4 in May) and R (who turns 2 in September) will remain anonymous.

What’s next
At this point, parts of the site are a work in progress—in the next few weeks I’ll be holding a contest with a major design company to crowdsource a logo. I’ll also be doing more with partnerships and sponsorships; if you’re reading this and you represent a company or organization that might be interested, please give a shout.

Otherwise, the most important part of this blog—the content—begins today. From here on out, expect no fewer than two posts per week. Please read them. Please share them. If the spirit moves you, please engage with me in the comment fields (or on Twitter). See you ‘round.