It might seem obvious that I didn’t enter this world as a traveling mother, although sometimes even I forget that fact. No, first I was a kid who traveled not too much (except that year in Italy), then an adolescent and young adult who got around a bit, finally someone who was gainfully employed and actually did things like fly to India or spend too much money on expensive cocktails in swank hotel bars. But everything changed eight years ago today when Tommy entered the picture.

It didn’t take Matt and me long to decide to hit the road with Tommy – less than three months in fact. It all started with a simple plan that we cooked up in our sleep-deprived bliss: We would drive from Delaware to Kansas City to visit my best friend, see her new baby, and show Tommy off, and then drive home. But we couldn’t drive all the way out there without stopping to see Matt’s family in Wisconsin on the way back and if we stopped to see them, we had to make sure we passed through Vermont where my parents live. And before you could say family travel we were on a 3-week, 4000-mile trek through 15 states and Canada.

Now, some people might have waited until their child was a little older, until he was sleeping through the night or nursing less often. Another couple might have taken into consideration personal quirks, like the fact that Matt has an abhorrence of long car trips and that I like to spend nights in bed and breakfasts situated far off the interstate. But we were so captivated by Tommy, so thrilled with our new status as parents, so eager for Tommy to be held by many loving arms, that we chose to spend approximately 60 hours driving and to stay in a string of chain hotels in places ranging from Bettendorf to Buffalo so we could visit our large extended family.

And of course, as this all played out, I realized how different it was to travel with an infant. No, I couldn’t pump breast milk en route even if it was Matt in the driver’s seat. Yes, I could amuse Tommy with finger puppets for an hour at a stretch. My education was immediate and visceral. I nursed him in gas station bathrooms and in mossy hotel armchairs that smelled of cigarette smoke. I discovered he shared my aversion to the loud music that so many family-friendly restaurants feel it necessary to play (oh, I want to tell them, if you turned down the music you might not have the sounds of so many shrieking babies to cover up). And I watched as, in the nastiest of all the hotels we stayed in, Tommy rolled from his back to his belly for the first time.

I was officially a traveling mom. (And in case you’re wondering, I have about ten photos from that trip, mostly of grandparents and cousins and aunts and uncles holding an infant Tommy. Somehow taking pictures just wasn’t a priority.)

This was of course a mere warm-up exercise for our trip the following year when we would sell our house, store our possessions, and hit the road with Tommy for 13 months. And I have to say from our first nightmarish apartment in Boston to our lovely hotel stay in Rome to our three blissful months in Southern California, Tommy proved always to be an excellent traveler– cheerful, resilient, interested, eager to explore, and happy just to throw rocks in water or drives his trucks on whatever surface presented itself. I loved exploring our many different destinations with him and will always treasure memories of watching him crawl with all his might into the Atlantic Ocean, throw his coin in the Trevi Fountain, and ride the Zilker Zephyr in Austin.

Now  of course all that’s behind us and seemingly as a matter of course we’ve become A Family That Travels. Recently Tommy observed to me that we go away a lot more often than any of his friends or even acquaintances from school. He said this wonderingly and then asked where we would be going next. He wanted to be sure that I knew he thought we need to go to San Francisco. And Hawaii. Oh, and Australia – and maybe Japan too? And don’t forget that we need to return to Paris….

I’m grateful to Tommy for so many things, but most of all for slowing me down and making me realize what travel is really all about: Anticipation. Exploration. Living in the moment, even if that moment isn’t quite what you had planned. And most of all, unexpected joy.

Happy Birthday my big 8-year-old traveling companion. I look forward to so many more adventures with you.

I had already been planning to write a post recommending the Sheraton Four Points Philadelphia as a great place to stay if you’re flying in or out of the Philadelphia Airport. For one thing, it’s incredibly convenient and very close to the airport – one exit north on I-95 and right across the street from the airport’s long-term parking lot.

The rooms are stylish in a we-went-shopping-at-IKEA kind of way, with nice linens and toiletries. There’s free Internet and comfy pillows. The shuttle to the airport takes five minutes and runs 24 hours a day. And the price for parking can’t be beat: $7 a day in their gated lot (even if you don’t stay there, you can park there, which I now intend to do every time we fly out of Philly). It was also affordable: I was able to find a room for just over $100 on Expedia.

In addition to all of these practical considerations, this hotel now has my undying gratitude because they took such good care of an important member of our family: Lovey Bear. I wrote earlier about how in the early-morning daze of getting the boys ready to go to Los Angeles, I left Teddy’s special lovey in our room. As a parent traveling with small children this had to be my number one travel nightmare come to life. As soon as I realized what I had done, which was the minute we boarded our plane, I called and pleaded with the warm and reassuring voice on the other end to make sure that the LB was retrieved.

Over the course of the next ten days I spoke with three different people on the housekeeping staff and all of them were beyond kind and concerned. They were careful to call me back with updates and made me feel like they understood the gravity of the situation. Because we were gone for so long and because several people were involved, there did end up being some confusion about just where the LB was and he wasn’t waiting for us when we returned, late at night, from Arizona. But the next day they located him and Teddy and I headed up there immediately after preschool to pick him up.

When we arrived, he was waiting at the front desk: “He’s been talking about you all morning,” the lovely young woman working there said to Teddy with a wink. Accompanying him was this note:

It was a little confusing to my boy – since LB is embroidered with the name Teddy, the staff naturally assumed that this was what we called him. But Teddy was thrilled as you can tell. Do I really need to say that all of us slept much better that night?

If you have an early morning or a late night flight out of Philadelphia I unreservedly recommend the Sheraton Four Points. I may start staying there just for the heck of it – I’m sure Lovey Bear would like a visit with his old friends. (Just a friendly reminder that I’ll always disclose if I’ve been offered a free room. I stayed at the Sheraton on my own dime.)

I share these pictures as part of Photo Friday at Delicious Baby. Have a great weekend!

A site I love to visit to virtually satisfy my wanderlust is The Carey Adventures. Peter West Carey is a terrific photographer. He’s also a dad and world traveler with a love of animals and climbing mountains.

I recently got a chance to ask Peter some questions about a travel photography project he’s undertaking this year. Titled the People, Places & Patterns Project (or just P⁴ for those hip and in the know) it will be a photographic expedition through Spain, Morocco, Kenya, Tanzania and Nepal from February through May resulting in a photo road show that Peter plans to share in schools, libraries, and community centers. I found his answers revealing not only about the practicalities of family travel (he’s got some great insights about how to make it happen) but also about just what motivates those of us who like to travel with our kids.

Why do you want to take these trips, why now, and why these countries?

These trips sprang from a couple bits of inspiration. Morocco has always been on my mind with my dream being to fly into Spain and boat across. Maybe the idea is a bit romantic, but it also saves about 20,000 frequent flyer miles to land in Europe rather than Africa. There is so much about Morocco I don’t know (and am quickly learning) and that for me has always been a wonderful reason to visit a country.

Nepal is a return trip for me alone. I’m traveling with Matt Fioretti of Four Winds Expeditions. The chance to climb a 20,000′+ peak was very enticing to me. While technical, it is not on par with Everest or K2. Every climber plans on returning home alive! I still hunger for adventure, but because of my daughter Sabrina, I temper it by attempting to stack the odds in my favor. Also, on my last trip I wasn’t as photographically focused as I could have been. I lack photos of the wonderful people who color the country so vibrantly. I want to go back and see what there is to learn for the people as well as the place.

Finally, I’ve wanted to take Sabrina to Africa for a long while, but have been waiting until she’s at an age where, to me, it seems she’d appreciate it more. So I’ve waited and waited and then, about this time last year, my cousin mentioned he’d be spending a year in Tanzania. His family from the USA would travel with him so we’d have a place to stay. The kicker is he’s a pediatrician in Seattle and someone I’d definitely trust my with my daughter’s health. While I don’t anticipate any reason to use his skills while in that area of Africa, it became a good excuse to visit. I also added Africa because my daughter was only a few thousand frequent flyer miles shy of a free trip. A special on purchasing miles at the end of 2009 sealed the deal. Kenya got added to this trip for frequent flyer reasons as well, because flying into Nairobi was much, much easier to fly into, miles wise, than Dar el Salaam in Tanzania.

Where did the idea for this project come from?

After nailing down where I wanted to go, I came to a moral question. Was I really just going on these trips to see and do stuff, again? Sure my daughter would be with me for Africa and this experience will be a huge eye opener for her, I hope. And when I return I plan on presenting some of the pictures to her school so they too can learn a bit about these different places she will surely talk about at recess.

Then, why not spread that idea a bit further? The more I thought about it and batted the idea around with friends, the more I loved the idea of making something of a traveling road show out of the experiences. I know I have the photographic talent and I love seeing that spark in kids’ eyes when they are shown pictures from distant lands. Why not make this all a bit bigger? After all, the motto I have on my business cards reads: EXPLORE-INSPIRE-EDUCATE. Here’s a chance to live up to that ideal.

My latest goal is to make sure I present the images to at least 50 school rooms, 10 libraries and 20 community groups before the end of 2010. I plan to keep this project going for as long as there are interested students, teachers and adults and will be adding to the work with future trips near and far.

Can you talk about how being a parent influences you and what role (if any) it played in making the decision to embark on this project? Is there anything you hope that your daughter is going to learn from what you do?

My role as a parent has made a huge impact on planning these trips (I consider them two different trips as there is a month at home between Africa and Nepal). I mentioned some of my thoughts on climbing in Nepal already. For Africa, I am putting a lot of effort into making sure the trip is kid friendly. I have a close friend who volunteered to go with us to Africa and if were just we two, chaos might abound as I enjoy that type of travel. But I know my daughter likes to know what’s coming up as much as possible. I believe she likes to see an area before we go and she, like most of us, wants some input.

To that end, I’ve been borrowing books like crazy from the library to help introduce the cultures of where we are going. I realize there isn’t a lot to draw a kid to Morocco, as compared to all the classic safari animals in Kenya and Tanzania, so I’m doing what I can to make that part of the trip fun for her. And, honestly, it might include a night or two at a hotel with a pool because she’s like a fish that way. What does she remember about a week spent in Mexico three years ago? The hot tub on the balcony.

I don’t have any specific plans for what I want her to learn. My plan, instead, is to simply open the world before her and let her explore it while remaining close to answer questions. No, this doesn’t mean I’ll push her out the door in Marrakesh and tell her to be back by sundown. But I do firmly believe that children who are exposed to different cultures tend to see the world differently than those who never leave home. They tend to ask more questions and have a different context for which to understand communication and culture.

I also hope it will broaden her horizons about what is possible. When I grew up my dad traveled a lot and we were at the airport every other week it seemed. Then my parents took a few trips abroad for business and brought back toys from Ireland and trinkets from Germany. I believe now somewhere along the way the seed was planted within me that you can, indeed, travel to far off lands if you want to. Although it took me a while to get out of the country, I’ve always had dreams and plans that included learning more about the world outside the borders of my day-to-day life. And now it’s painfully clear I’m trying to transfer some of that wanderlust onto my child. May the brainwashing take.

What is it that you find particularly compelling about the prospect of sharing your photos with children?

I loved looking at the photos in social studies books when I was a kid and I know a lot of children still love that. Now imagine there was someone there, between you and the big screen at the front of the school currently showing a mud-covered baby hippo trailing behind its mother. And that person can tell you exactly what it was like to watch the pair play in the water for 30 minutes before taking the photo. On top of that, imagine being able to ask that speaker any number of questions about hippos or anything else on the screen.

Schools have enough budgeting woes and teachers are often bogged down with resource planning and following district regulations. This means that not many teachers have the time or resources to bring in a professional photographer to speak with kids. I have a number of friends who are teachers but not one of them has asked me to show anything from my trips to their students. But the moment I asked them if I could come in with photos from these trips, all of them said yes and started proposing ways in which I could make it more fun and interesting for their kids. The demand is there and the kids are willing. It just takes someone to say, “This is one thing I know I can do, that doesn’t much for anyone involved, that can make a positive impact on some of the children.”

The presentations will be free to any school, library or community group that requests it, assuming that I can find a cost-effective means of getting to the location. I’ll be starting with the Puget Sound region of Washington because that is where I live. But I’ve already received requests from Utah, Oregon, and California and have started planning trips.

If you’re as impressed by Peter’s attitude and excitement as I am and would like to help him out, he’s accepting donations until February 16, 2010 at his People, Places & Patterns Project website. Contribute at least $30 and he’ll give you a 5×7″ signed, custom-printed photo from his trip. The money raised will be used to fund both the trips and the ensuing road show.

All photos courtesy of Peter West Carey.

Today I’m happy to share a dream from one of my online friends Rachel. Many of you may remember her wonderful post about Melbourne, Australia, where she currently lives and writes and mothers and travels. Sometimes I feel like she’s my mirror reflection on the other side of the globe; I’m convinced that if I started digging a hole behind my house, I’d end up in her backyard.

I love this post because to me it reflects the essence of what traveling with children teaches you about patience, expectations, and yes, even your own dreams for what a trip will be. Certainly it is one of my dreams to see the Great Barrier Reef before it vanishes – perhaps if I’m lucky I’ll get to do it in Rachel’s (and her daughters’) very good company.

It’s been almost exactly a year since we went to far North Queensland, on the northeastern coast of Australia, for a holiday. We went for many reasons – a trip to balmy tropical climes, and a celebration of a momentous piece of news for us – I was pregnant with our second child, our daughter Lily, who is now nearly five months old.

I’ll say from the outset that Cairns and its environs – our home-away-from-home for the week we were there – are a touring family’s paradise. Australians are good travelers, and they also make very professional hosts in return. Infrastructure is geared for making people of all ages happy. No town is too small for a park with picnic benches and coin-operated gas-barbeques, and most places you book are more than willing and able to welcome even the most energetic children.

On this special trip, we decided to splurge on our accommodation and ended up in Palm Cove, an upscale resort town about 20 minutes outside of Cairns’ airport. We went for a serviced apartment at the Angsana Hotel; the photo above was taken from our room there. Suffice it to say that it was luxe (three pools! Free family cocktail hour!) without getting into a full laundry list of how and why it differed from the seven or so years of backpacking travel experience my husband and I had before having children.

North Queensland is probably most famous for the Great Barrier Reef, that archipelago of coral reefs so beautiful as to make you think you were dreaming. I’d never seen it before, and, if climate change experts are correct, there may not be much time left to see it. Due to warming oceans and increasingly acid waters, the reefs are dying and may be bleached out boneyards by the middle of the century. Selah.

In planning this trip to Nirvana-with-an-Aussie-accent, we had naturally assumed that we would take a cruise to the Great Barrier Reef and indulge in some snorkeling. It was a reasonable presumption – we all love swimming; we also tried snorkeling in our local pool just to familiarize the then-three-year-old Jessica with how the tube works, and she took to it, well, yes, like a fish to water. And she’s healthily obsessed with Finding Nemo. It should have been a recipe for success.

There’s just one detail I must mention: my family lives in Melbourne, the least-beach-y capital city in Australia. Melbourne is many things – fashion and food, culture and the Melbourne Cup (the country’s equivalent of the Kentucky Derby) but it is not – repeat not – an iconic beach-going city. We live in the northern suburbs as well. As a result, we don’t spend much time in the ocean. This small fact has critical implications to this adventure.

There are a plethora of possibilities if you want to snorkel or dive the Great Barrier Reef – full-day, half-day, various destinations, various packages. My gut instinct was that a half-day expedition was going to be enough, a supposition confirmed by the very helpful concierge at our hotel, who told us that visitors with young children usually found a half-day package sufficient. We opted for the Big Cat Green Island Cruise, which is a 45-minute voyage from Cairns’ reef terminal.

I’d like to tell you about the beauty of Zee Deep, replete with Jacques Cousteau accent and prose. I’d love to tell you that our daughter became an adept snorkeler and swam around the reefs with skill, joy and acumen. But I can’t. Because once we stepped off the boat and onto the beach, masks, snorkels, flippers in hand, my daughter waded up to her knees, braced herself as the warm and gentle waves lapped up over her stomach, looked at the horizon, turned back to me and said, levelly:

“Mummy, I’m not gonna do it. This pool is far too big.”

So Jess and I sat on the shore and let the waves lap our feet. She used her flippers to dig a hole and build a castle, decorated with shells and twigs. My husband started out, hoping that if he went out, Jess would be inspired to follow. Ten minutes later, he came back, reporting that he’d seen a nurse shark right under his feet.

Jess looked up from building her castle and said “There’s definitely no way I’m swimming in that pool.”

Who’s going to argue with that? So in the end, we went on the semi-submersible boat and saw Nemo and his friends from behind a thick screen of glass. And it was beautiful. Magical. I had tears in my eyes in mingled awe and misery, thinking that this precious ecosystem may not exist when Jess is old enough to bring her children here. Jessica squealed with delight, and proceeded to sleep through the second half of the tour. It was enough, and it was perfect.

Travel Tips for Cairns:

Cairns is a city that has put a lot of thought into how to best attract and please all sorts of travelers. For the outdoors-loving family, the parks are a.) free and b.) not to be missed. Two in particular were a real hit: Muddy’s Playground and the Esplanade Lagoon, an artificial beach with salt water about 2 feet deep, overlooking the ocean. Being mindful of the dangers of too much sun exposure, both of these parks feature generous shading, park benches and tables. I think we visited the playgrounds on three separate days.

Rachel Alembakis is an expat American living in Melbourne with her husband and two daughters. She’s not sure whether she’s a cautionary or celebratory tale about what happens when you go to a bar and meet an Australian man.

Monday Dreaming note: I’ve decided this week not to use Mr. Linky, because I haven’t been very happy with how it looks or works. If you’d like to share your Monday Dream, please leave a comment about it below; if it’s the most recent post on your blog and you enter the url, a link to it will automatically appear with your comment. Or you can manually include a link in the comment itself. I’m going to explore other options for a linking widget for future weeks. Questions? See About Monday Dreaming.

We’re deep into the first week of our annual trip to Vermont. This weekend some of our friends from home who have a one-year-old and a four-year-old were planning to drive over to our neck of the woods from New Hampshire, where they had been vacationing. Friday was spent trying to coordinate our plans. The first time I called, I could barely hear my friend over the screams of her younger child who had just fallen in the bathroom and banged his head. Sounding exhausted and harried, she told me that the children were really ready to go home – unspoken was the possible fact that she was ready to send them there without her – she promised to call back later. But when I checked my e-mail before bed she had written to say that she and her husband were hanging out in the bathroom waiting for the kids to fall asleep. She had forgotten to grab her cell phone from the room and would have to call me in the morning.

Matt and I laughed in recognition, thinking of all the different ways we have tried to get our children to sleep in shared hotel rooms while we got in a little bit of unwinding in before bed. Once we actually set up the mattress from the second bed in our room as a kind of a wall between Tommy’s crib and us. Surprisingly, this ploy worked. Other times we weren’t so lucky and ended up like our friends spending a romantic hour perched on the toilet and the bathroom floor clutching plastic cups full of wine our eyes glazed with booze, fatigue, and the knowledge that those blissfully sleeping babies would be awake at 4:30.

In the morning she called and all was bright and new – the bump had subsided, everyone had slept, and they were eager to arrive. Although they were here for only a day and a half, we managed to share our first maple creemee of the summer with them and also to take them walking along the Mad River, one of our favorite activities. While we played on the beach I watched how carefully they had to hover over their younger child to make sure he didn’t eat rocks or sand (they were more successful at the former than the latter) and then I glanced at Tommy who had moved up the beach from all of us, intent on heading for deeper, faster water than he could safely swim in but contenting himself with digging on the shore when we told him “no” five times. I looked at the double stroller parked near the trailhead and realized that this summer I have no stroller, no diapers, no crib. Our only concession to babyhood is one small binkie that Teddy still uses at night (much to Matt’s chagrin). Heck, we even stayed in a bed and breakfast with no pool on the first night of our trip. And so far, no one has been out of bed before 5 a.m. (knock wood).

What I guess I’m trying to say is that I’m realizing that my stories about our adventures and the tips I offer to other traveling parents are going to be a little different from here on out. I’m crossing a boundary and moving away from a country that I’ll never return to: travel with babies and toddlers. Since I did more of this kind of travel than most people (we took a 3-week driving trip with Tommy when he was three months old and spent 13 months on the road when he was one and two) I know that I still have stories to share and insights to offer about traveling with little ones. But the theme of this year’s vacation for me is going to be the way that my children are growing up and how travel is revealing that to me in ways that I wouldn’t see quite so clearly at home.

Look for upcoming posts to see exactly how.

So I tallied it up and during our recent road trip we spent close to 49 hours in the car over an 18-day period. Since most of this was done in shifts of six hours or more, I think we can safely say that we earned a gold medal for family togetherness and on-the-road savvy.

I’m sure some of you are thinking so what’s she not telling us? Which is a fair point. I’ve had a tendency to report the happy and educational side of our travels, like sauerkraut balls and lessons about the Underground Railroad. I haven’t dwelt on the truly shameful number of French fries were consumed, both with and without cheese. And although I may have mentioned that the kids had no screens of any kind in the car, it’s not like they were reading Kafka or learning macrame. In fact, I did my best to fill landfills and support the Chinese economy with my purchase of invisible ink activity books.

And of course, the children did run out of the ability to amuse themselves. When that happened, we resorted not to reading fine literature aloud or even audio books but the telling of Scooby stories.

But I’m telling the honest truth that in all those many hours, we had about twenty fussy minutes and virtually no fighting. And we managed to keep our speed between 60 and 63 miles per hour for the majority of the trip. We even took a very successful last-minute scenic detour on the very last leg when it looked like traffic on the Interstate was going to be unbearable. As a result, we tooled most of the way across Pennsylvania on Route 30, stopping at a local brew pub in Gettysburg and basically enjoying the countryside at a slow but pleasant pace (as opposed to sitting in a cloud of heat and fumes on the beltway around Baltimore).

But lest you think that I’m giving myself too many pats on the back or have gotten too high-minded there’s one thing I haven’t shared. One thing that has been a fact of every long road trip my family has ever taken. And it’s not something I’m proud of.

OK, deep breath here. Here’s my deep, dark secret, in two simple words:

Cracker Barrel.

Allow me to explain. I’m pretty sure that the values and politics of this corporation do not match my own and in fact might be in direct opposition to them. To be perfectly honest, I can’t even bring myself to do any research because I’m afraid that if I did I’d learn something that would render me incapable of ever eating in one of these restaurants again. And do you see a link here? I think not. If you feel like calling me a hypocrite, you may do so – I won’t blame you a bit. In fact, I ask no absolution.

But the fact of the matter is that for breakfast (which, I may add, they serve all day), the food is pretty good – some of it is quite good. It is cooked fresh. The service is almost always friendly and the coffee isn’t bad (it isn’t good either – just not bad). And the kids love to stretch their legs while looking around the little store in the front, which is always well-stocked with any number of cheap and tempting toys like a parrot that will magically repeat anything you say to it (for example, “Mommy is a silly head” followed by maniacal laughter). The bathrooms are clean. And I can buy them a coloring book or two and maybe a stick of root beer candy to pull out later when things get a little dicey and one of my children has resorted to covering himself in some of the many, many, many stickers I also purchased.

So what’s bad about Cracker Barrel, other than what I mentioned above? Well I’m never a fan of choosing chain over local. And the CB is particularly offensive because the entire conceit of the company is that they are down-home and folksy in a way that probably has no relation to how life ever actually was. The menu lists items such as The Cracker Barrel’s Country Boy Breakfast^® and Uncle Herschel’s Favorite^® (note, please, the trademark signs). On offer in the gift shops are episodes of The Andy Griffith Show, The Waltons, and The Beverly Hillbillies. The music playing  over the PA is likely to involve someone blowing across the top of a jug. And the shelves are loaded with overpriced versions of things you can buy at the grocery store like Hershey bars or Coke in special “vintage” containers.

Only in America could we be nostalgic for rural life during the Great Depression – and only here could a savvy company turn that nostalgia into consumer gold. I mean who isn’t a sucker for Hee-Haw lunchboxes and Atomic Fireballs? You just didn’t know you needed them!

And as Teddy observed with genuine surprise and delight in his voice when we walked into our third and last Cracker Barrel of the trip “all the Cracker Barrels are the same!” He’s right – that’s why we stop there, because it’s always consistent. But it’s also why we probably shouldn’t. Because that’s not really what travel is about. And I know better.

But man, do I love their pecan pancakes.

Don’t tell anyone OK?

We just got back from 2855 miles on the road. I’m working on posts about our trip; I’ve got lots to say about the place we went, about what worked, and about what I’d do differently, but while I work on gathering my ideas into written form, I thought you might enjoy some video evidence of the kinds of things we do to pass the time during those long hours in our small car.

A bit of background: My children love Scooby Doo with a passion that exceeds all reason. Thanks to YouTube, they actually know the names of all the classic episodes and will compare the various merits of “The Harum Scarum Sanitarium” and “A Highland Fling With a Monstrous Thing.”

As you will see, my husband is quite good at making up what we call “Scooby Stories” to pass the time. The name of this particular one (inspired of course by our trip) was “Scooby Doo and the Haunted Rest Area.” I think he does a very good Shaggy, don’t you?

I promised some pithy posts this week about traveling with the kids – what I learned (or relearned as it were) on our trip to Arizona last week. Here’s post Number Two in the series.

I wrote earlier in the week about jet lag and how tricky it can be to go backwards in time (i.e., in a westerly direction). One effect of the ensuing exhaustion was that the fabulous outing to the Heard Museum I had planned didn’t pan out very well. We did indeed ride the Light Rail from Mesa into Phoenix as I had thought we might. But I hadn’t quite counted on the length of the ride or the fact that it would induce torpor in my overtired offspring. By the time we got to the museum, the kids were cross-eyed and I was just cross and we really weren’t able to appreciate it as we might have otherwise.  The museum was fascinating and beautiful and there were lots of opportunities for hands-on learning, but when little hands are too tired to function properly, not too much learning happens. Then we were foiled in our lunch plans when the fry bread restaurant where we had planned to lunch proved to be a pretty long hike from the light rail stop. It was a windy day and the kids just couldn’t hoof it anywhere. And so my dreams of sharing food and artifacts that were native to the region in one adventurous outing were not to be realized.

So what learning experience worked better? Spending a good part of one morning picking oranges and grapefruits just outside the door to Grandma and Grandpa’s house (while wearing pajamas no less) and then making gallons of juice. Tommy stood at the counter for at least a half an hour, concocting a delicious citrus blend. “Mommy, you’ve got to try this one!” he’d yell over the sound of the juicer, “I made it special for you – more orange juice than grapefruit.”

Or “Daddy, this is my best one yet! It’s so good!”

And finally, with a glow of satisfaction, “Boy I sure am good at making juice aren’t I?”

I’m not saying that one should forgo museums that teach about local peoples and customs while traveling with kids, but it’s important to remember also that sometimes experiencing little differences, things you as a grown up might overlook, are as satisfying and exciting for children as an exhibit of beautiful pots or kachina dolls. We certainly have no grove of citrus trees in our backyard. It was an adventure simply because it was unusual to us. And the best part? Free refills!

I have lots to share about our recent trip to Arizona, but the unfortunate thing about a terrific vacation during which one goes completely offline for days at a time is that things tend to pile up a bit. And since many of these things are actually remunerative, I need to attend to them. So you’re going to have to wait for my Arizona day trip adventures and for my dreamy post about the amazing resort stay Matt and I enjoyed (which is a big part of the reason I’m behind in the first place).

So this week, in place of my usual content, I’m going to offer a series of short posts about what I learned (or as is often the case relearned) on this trip. You know – those quick little nuggets of hindsight that follow any extended trip with children.

Note this picture of Tommy. Now, he is a bit wild-eyed after countless games on Grandma and Grandpa’s Wii, I’ll give you that. But you may also notice the black circles and the vacant stare, a product of complete and utter exhaustion. Although our trip to Arizona was wonderful in many ways, the poor child had this very look about him almost every afternoon we were there.

I’m of the firm opinion that it is always easier to travel forward in time than backward. By this I mean that I’d rather take the red-eye to Europe than a daytime flight to California from the East Coast. Last summer when we flew to France, we flew overnight and got there early in the morning, which you’d think would be a nightmare. But the kids had a quick nap on the way to our apartment and then we kept them up most of that first day. Sure we were all in bed early, but after one night we had no problems at all.

For some reason I thought this approach would work going the opposite direction as well. I had booked our flight first thing in the morning, so we got up very early to go to the airport and both kids had a short nap on the five-hour flight. We arrived in Arizona midday and headed right for the pool. Although both kids were clearly pretty tired by 2:00, I declared that we’d just keep them up and put them to bed a little early.

The result? They were both passed out by 6 and up at 3? 4? Something along those lines.

My tip for this is simple: when you are traveling west and gaining rather than losing time, give your kids a nap that first day, even if they don’t normally take naps. Especially if you got up early to catch the plane. Poor Tommy could not get his clock set right until we got home and was up really early and pretty tired the entire time we were there. This of course had an impact on some of the activities on the agenda (more on that later in the week).

One would think that I would have learned this particular lesson some time ago, but you know, I’m an eternal optimist and seem to always be surprised when we have sleep troubles on the road…

If anyone else has ideas or thoughts about this, I’d love to hear them!

OK, so perhaps I spoke to soon about the beneficence of the travel gods. The Packers got their clocks cleaned and things did not perhaps go quite as I had planned on Monday night. Allow me to elaborate:

We were staying in a suite with the kids out on a fold-out couch and Matt and I in the bedroom. In an effort not to be wakened at some terribly early hour by Tommy, we put a clock out by the kids’ bed and told him that he wasn’t to come in and get us before 7. We set up bunches of toys and books and even showed him where the juice boxes were in the mini-fridge. Then we patted ourselves on the back and went to sleep, looking forward to a luxurious night of sleep.

At some point both Matt and I woke to see that the children had turned the light on out in their room. We both assumed it was around 6 (we didn’t have a clock to check see, because we had given it to them). I fell soundly back asleep and Matt dozed. Then after a while he realized that it wasn’t getting any lighter outside. So he got up and went to check.

Turns out it was 4 a.m. The children had been up since 2:30, playing, eating pretzels, and drinking juice.

Every time I think I’ve got it figured out, I’m shown just what an amateur I am….