I’m hosting an exciting event in San Francisco on October 18 that’s part of a nationwide network of events called Meet, Plan, Go! to help others plan and fulfill their extended-travel dreams. I hope you’ll read more about it—and find out why we went on our journey, in spite of a list of reasons not to, and concluded “it’s the best thing we ever did.”

Related posts:

1. How To Plan A Year-Long Family Travel Itinerary
2. Happy New Year and New Blog

I launched a new site a few days ago to combine my passions for running and travel. It’s called The Runner’s Trip, and the tagline is Run Long, Travel Far, Discover More. The first post and about page describe its mission. In many ways it’s an outgrowth of this blog and my first running blog. I’m mothballing Away Together and encouraging readers here to subscribe to the new one.

I greatly appreciate all who followed our family travel blog and shared their comments on our posts. I look forward to traveling more with my family and blogging about the destinations on The Runner’s Trip.

Thanks again for taking the time to read this. I hope you find the new blog inspiring, motivating, informative, and entertaining.

Related posts:

1. One Year Later: The Time-Capsule Travel Letters and the ‘Eat Pray Love’ Backlash
2. Happy Campers Touring North NZ by RV
3. How To Plan A Year-Long Family Travel Itinerary

Morgan, Colly, Kyle and I each sat down and wrote letters reflecting on the experience, showed them to no one else at the time, sealed them up, and then opened and read them out loud over dinner in June on our last night before driving home. Now, the letters sit on my desk as reminders of what the round-the-world trip was all about. Today, for a couple of different reasons, I re-read them to reflect on how the 10-month trip affected us individually and as a family.

One reason is the snarky backlash, prompted by the film release of Eat, Pray, Love, to long-term travel for the sake of change, education and self-reflection. (I haven’t seen the film and don’t really want to since I liked the book and hear the film adaptation doesn’t do Elizabeth Gilbert’s writing justice.) As a Salon.com critic dismissively puts it in an article about “The New Colonialism of ‘Eat, Pray, Love,’” the new breed of travelers “want to spend a year in a faraway place on a ‘journey.’ But the journey is all about what they can get. … I don’t want to deny [Elizabeth Gilbert] her Italian carbs, her Indian oms or her Bali Hai beach romance. We all need that sabbatical from the rut of our lives. But as her character complained that she had ‘no passion, no spark, no faith’ and needed to go away for one year, I couldn’t help wondering, where do those people in Indonesia and India go away to when they lose their passion, spark and faith?”

Okay, that’s a fair enough question to ask, but I object to the idea that families taking long-term trips similar to ours, and living a significantly different lifestyle in the process, are doing it because it’s “all about what they can get.” Our motivation was much more, “What can we give up?,” “What can we learn and teach our kids?” and “How can we better connect with each other and with others?” It was, to a great extent, about thinking and acting more openly, more mindfully and less materialistically so that we have a better chance of functioning well as a family, and of raising kids with a socially responsible world view and a heightened appreciation for our privileged lives back home.

The other reason I reviewed our time-capsule letters is because tomorrow, August 15, marks the anniversary of our departure. Having just returned from a shorter trip, we are taking a deep breath to get back to school and back to productivity, all the while trying not to lose the lessons gained from the journey.

So the year away is really over. Was it worth it? (Yes.) Where do we go from here? (Still figuring that out.) Those letters provide additional clues and details. I decided to excerpt some short passages here to highlight some aspects of long-term family travel.

Colly in Malcesine, Italy

From Colly, age 11 at the time, on what the trip is all about and how it has affected our family:

“Some of the words people might think of when they think of this trip are ‘fun,’ or ‘cool,’ or ‘relaxing.’ To me, those words suck. As Mom and Dad would say, those are dull words that don’t describe a tenth of what’s going on. I don’t think there’s a single word that can even start to describe our trip! But, if I had to sum up our trip all in one word, I think that word would be ‘trying.’ We are trying new foods, we are trying new places, every day we are trying new things, and those things don’t always work out but at least we’re trying. Our trip has changed all of us so much. I am reading way more than I would in Piedmont, we all need less stuff, and, well, Kyle is still in love with ice cream. I think that this trip has without a doubt made us more of a family. We are definitely closer than we’ve ever been before. All in all, I am tremendously grateful that this trip is happening and I do not regret it at all.”

Morgan near Karamea, New Zealand

From Morgan, age 43, on whether this trip represented a “midlife crisis”:

“I bristle at the term ‘midlife crisis’ for the connotations of a somewhat selfish and sad desire to recapture a moment of youth. The term ‘midlife opportunity’ is a much better term. There are many opportunities in life that people never take, and can spend the rest of their life agonizing over whether they should have. They key to the midlife opportunity is recognizing that such opportunities actually do exist, and having the guts to make the wrenching changes necessary to seize them. Taking this trip was seizing hold of an opportunity to do something different with the remainder of my life. Now, with half the trip behind me, the question becomes: was it worth it? The answer is an unequivocal yes. It has taken me five months to slowly unwind the feelings that I have about what I left, and to get excited about a different future. The process of travel itself has allowed me to slowly change my focus from the past to the future. Travel forces ‘the new’ upon you on a daily and moment-to-moment basis. Trying to figure out how to order in Spanish, or work a foreign ATM or get a phone card in another country, or figure out what’s on the menu, all combine to make change a constant in your life — and a pleasure. Rather than fearing change, I’ve come to live with it on a daily basis involving all the small things in life. This trip for me has been much less about any particular place or thing, but more about the process. I hope the remainder of this trip continues the process of future-thinking that has started to take hold.”

The kids and me about to board a bus for a 17-hour ride to Mendoza, Argentina

From me, age 40 at the time, looking ahead to our return:

“When I reflect on our five-and-a-half months of travel, one thing that hits me is how much I love spending time together as a foursome. I thought I might yearn for more time alone, but the opposite happened: I’m happiest when we’re together, in a small space, such as the car or hotel room. My main hope pertains to this summer and beyond: that we don’t lose the closeness — the bond — we’ve strengthened during this journey; that we don’t lose the ability to be flexible and free-thinking; that we don’t get stuck in a rut and become more materialistic.”

Kyle on the Colorado River

And from Kyle, age 8 at the time, on the joy of discovery through travel:

“I have been to many places and a lot to come. It feels a long time from rafting [in Colorado at the start of the trip], but I still remember it because it was so fun. I also loved the dulche de leche from Argentina, and I really liked Patagonia with all the dogs. And luging [in New Zealand] was so fun and fast. I hope we get to Australia safe. I really hope I discover new ice cream flavors. This trip was fantastic so far and I’m excited for new things to come.”

A week ago, an article in the Sunday New York Times called “But Will It Make You Happy? Consumers Find Ways to Spend Less and Find Happiness” did a much better job, in my view, of portraying the meaning of long-term travel than the critical response to the film Eat, Pray, Love. The Times story detailed new research supporting the not-too-common common-sense wisdom that happiness comes less from acquiring material possessions and more from meaningful experiences, such as travel, and from cultivating positive relationships. Amen to that. I’d much rather spend disposable income on family day trips and saving for travel than on replacing our faded sofas and buying new clothes.

According to the Eat, Pray, Love critics, we’re guilty of taking a journey to discover happiness. We got rich from experiences, knowledge and relationships. I’m not sure that makes us selfish and self-centered, but it certainly makes us feel lucky and grateful.

Related posts:

1. Eat, Run, Love
2. How To Plan A Year-Long Family Travel Itinerary
3. Happy New Year and New Blog

I wanted to hear their breathing and feel their closeness one more night before everything changed back to our non-traveling life — before the movers came and filled our house with so much of the furniture and boxes of stuff that I now feel ambivalent about owning, and before my kids moved back into their own rooms and we all established our separate domains in this house that feels too big and fancy. I wanted to curl up in my sleeping bag and fantasize we were camping the way we did on the banks of the Colorado River or on the beach of New Zealand’s Abel Tasman Park.

Everyone has been asking how it feels to return home. The short answer is: weird, and tiring! I haven’t felt this conflicted and unsettled since … well, since we pulled out of our driveway to start the trip on August 15, 2009.

The penultimate stop: We drove through Yosemite on our last day and arrived home about four hours later.

At first, we were giddy with anticipation while driving back from the Eastern Sierra and seeing familiar landmarks that meant we were getting closer to home. Kyle even pointed to a freeway barrier and exclaimed, “I remember that wall!” We collectively felt the poignancy and optimism of starting a new chapter in life as Morgan heads down a different career path, I start some new projects, and the kids fix up their rooms and gear up for school.

Finally we reached our freeway exit and drove the final mile. The kids literally were shrieking with excitement and I held my breath as we braked to turn left onto our street, knowing our house would come into view and signal that we really had made it back, the round-the-world odyssey really was over. How would it look? How would I feel?

And then we made the turn, and what I saw caught me by surprise and deflated the moment in the most fitting and funny way. There at the edge of our driveway, like a monument or middle finger, stood a big ol’ porta-potty for use by workers at our neighbor’s house. How perfect: a harbinger of all the crap — of all the moving boxes, bags of mail, health insurance headaches and wood rot in the windowsills — waiting for us once we started to unload and settle in. I had to laugh.

This all happened three weeks ago. It has taken me this long to start to get my head around the transition and to return to this abandoned child of a blog.

We arrived on the Summer Solstice, when everyone was taking off for summer vacation. By contrast, we’d experienced summer all year long, having been in the Southern Hemisphere October through February, and it felt to me as though summer should be ending and we should get back to productivity. My daughter, let down by the realization that many of her friends had left town just as she was returning, unknowingly expressed my mood by what she wore her first full day back: she dressed all in black and donned an absurd Santa hat she found in a moving box, and she glumly hobbled around on crutches, having dislocated her knee the prior week, like a bird with newly clipped wings.

It felt so odd and slightly stressful to move our furniture back and confront the detritus of our past lives — the boxes and boxes of clothing and memorabilia I had forgotten about. I don’t need this I said to myself repeatedly — I don’t need the uncomfortable dress shoes I bought for a job I no longer have, the boring coffeetable books I displayed but never looked at, the 12 extra tea cups I saved for brunches I never hosted, the dusty picnic basket I put on top of the fridge for decoration even though we never made time for picnics — so I started a give-away pile that continues to grow.

And all those linens for our one bed — Morgan and I shook our heads as we unpacked giant boxes filled with the down pillow-top mattress cover, the thick damask duvet and the nine pillows. What bed needs nine pillows? We added the down pillow-top cover to the give-away pile because we’ve grown accustomed to futon-style thinner bedding while traveling, but we spread out and tucked in those expensive sheets and stacked all those velvet pillows in their place. Then Morgan put his hands on his hips, stuck out his chest and theatrically proclaimed, “I feel like a little prince!” which gave me another fit of crazy crying-laughter because this bed — this epitome of our union in comfort and luxury — no longer seemed like a cozy fit. But how long could I justify sleeping in my sleeping bag?

Everything in the house seemed to grow while we were away because our sense of size had shrunk; my bureau dresser, for example. It’s about 4 feet tall, with three columns of drawers in ornately carved mahogany. I began unpacking my things into the drawers on the right-side column because that’s what Morgan and I did whenever we’d unpack in a rental — I’d take the drawers on the right and leave him the left — and as I tried to remember how we divided the drawers in the middle column, I had a going-down-the-rabbit-hole moment of jumbled perception and jarred memory when I belatedly realized that Morgan in fact has his very own dressing area in the adjacent room with his own drawers, and this entire bureau is mine to use. I had totally forgotten this fact of how we used to live. I’m supposed to use this all myself? Why do I need all these drawers? Does this mean I can’t share space with Morgan anymore? I don’t want to unpack here, I never liked these frou-frou brass handles … all those hyper doubts and complaints sped through my mind as I unpacked two pairs of jeans and left the lower drawers empty. Only the drawer for running clothes had enough to fill it.

I was unpacking the clothes from two giant suitcases we used for storage — massive suitcases with wheeled bottoms that we bought long ago, before we realized the benefits of smaller, non-wheeled luggage. “I can’t believe we ever used to travel with those,” Morgan said. And then he looked at the one wheeled suitcase that we had taken on our trip, which was sitting near the bigger ones from storage — the black suitcase we used as a communal school supply and gear bag, which we derisively nicknamed “The Tick” because it looked so bloated and would stick to us when we wanted to get rid of it. Around the world we complained about The Tick, since it seemed so heavy and unwieldy compared to our lightweight clothing packs.

The one regular suitcase we traveled with in addition to our packs, aka "The Tick," flanked by the larger suitcases we used to use.

“Oh my god, did The Tick shrink?” Morgan asked. Indeed, it seemed like it had shrunk when we placed it next to the suitcases we used to use. Travel, I realized, truly had changed our perception of size and necessity. All my negative feelings toward this scuffed-up, black-sheep suitcase that we had lugged around the world melted into feelings of fondness and the realization that it symbolized our simpler-living, road-schooling nomadic life. I declared with sappy emotion, “I love The Tick! I want to keep it forever.”

In addition to moving back in, we faced the reality of literally plugging back in; that is, of re-establishing accounts with service providers such as electrical, trash, phone and cable that all generate bills from which we had been liberated. I cringe daily at the sound of the mailman on our porch delivering junk mail and bills.

We got a new SIM card for Morgan’s cell phone (the old one being leftover from Europe) and for over a week we shared that one phone, since I didn’t want to deal with setting up a land line and didn’t really want my own cell phone. I had this reclusive feeling of not wanting to hear a phone ring and not wanting anyone to contact me — not yet, anyway. The funny thing was, the new SIM card came with a number still registered with someone else’s name, someone named “Dorothy Bean,” which the phone company can’t seem to clear up, so all our outgoing calls show up on caller ID that way. I sort of like the element of disguise. Now I can call Morgan “Mr. Bean” and remember all the times he acted like the bumbling Brit on our travels by circling repeatedly around round-abouts while we hastily determined which exit to take.

I’m afraid I’m coming off like a complainer, and I’d like to say “yes!” when people ask, “Is it good to be back?” In many ways it is good, especially from the kids’ perspectives, since they’re happy to reconnect with friends and walk freely around their familiar neighborhood. And what a gorgeous neighborhood it is. I have renewed appreciation for how lovely these landscaped gardens and well-maintained homes are, having unpacked in so many modest abodes in areas with crumbling infrastructure. And some of the unpacking and settling back in has brought genuine joy. I was happy to  unpack my kitchen tools and restock our pantry, for example, since I’m eager to cook recipes we haven’t tasted in a year.

Reconnecting with friends and neighbors has been the best part of this transition. Several families invited us to their homes for dinners, coaxed us to return to our annual tradition of building a 4th of July parade float, and paid us the ultimate compliments when they said we seemed more mellow and happy. Then, one week after our return, seven extended family members came to stay under our roof for several days, delightfully filling up this house and making it feel more like a home again.

Morgan used our moving boxes to take the lead on building the annual neighborhood float ...

... while I worked with my sister-in-law and Colly (she's in a Wilma Flintstone costume) to put finishing touches on it.

Morgan and two neighbors show off the end result: a Flintstone-themed parade entry for the 4th of July. This is the kind of community fun we missed while traveling, and which eases the transition back home.

Round-the-world travel gave us so much, and yet we missed the connection with local community and extended family. But it still feels weird to be back, and oh how I miss discovering new places, people and perspectives through far-flung travel. I’m trying hard not to lose touch with the positive ways that travel changed our behavior and awareness. I really don’t want to stir up the manic, multitasking, materialistic, controlling, bitchy and provincial parts of my personality that long-term travel helped me tame, nor do I want our stronger family bond to weaken.

I’ll try to write about the challenge of “maintaining change” (that’s not an oxymoron, is it? I hope not) in a separate post. For now, I’m happy to report we haven’t lost that awareness or closeness, and we’re really trying to live differently than we did before the trip — though I admit, that bed and all those pillows feel pretty darn comfortable.

Related posts:

1. Good “Car-Ma” For Long Car Trips
2. “Back to School” Becomes “Leave to Learn”
3. The Sappy Departure

As we stood ordering bagels, we suddenly remembered we had eaten lunch at the same Noah’s on the day before we flew to Buenos Aires in early October. “I feels like we were just here,” Colly said, and I agreed while my chest hiccuped with anxiety.

It felt as though all those months abroad — which had stretched so elastically and netted so much in a single week, so that on the first of every month I’d express disbelief at how much we had experienced — had snapped back and condensed into a blip to make mental space for the task of reorganizing our lives and getting ready to move back into the house.

Checking out of a hotel in Marlow, England, on our last morning before flying back to California.

I’m feeling profoundly mixed emotions upon our return and need to think more about the transition before trying to write much about it. I got weepy on our last night in Marlow, a lovely town outside of London, as we checked out of a hotel a final time and toasted our trip; then, I got teary with joy as we approached my hometown of Ojai last weekend for a reunion. I also am in the process of thinking through the next phase of this blog, so stay tuned and thanks to all of you who’ve read it regularly!

In the meantime, I’m publishing the following list as proof and as a reminder to myself that we really went to all of these places. We called this our “sleepover list” and had fun updating it as we traveled. Most are linked to previous blog posts if we wrote about that destination. Three places are listed twice since we visited there twice, so the number of places totals 83, but the bottom line is that we moved and unpacked 86 times!

The Sleepover List: August 15, 2009 – June 15, 2010:

1. Claremont hotel, Oakland (slept there the night before we left since our house was all packed up)
2. Holiday Inn Express, Fallon, Nevada
3. Days Inn, Delta, Utah
4. My brother and sister-in-law’s cabin on Last Dollar Road in Telluride, Colorado
5. Colorado River campsite during rafting trip
6. Holiday Inn Express, Moab
7. Mountain Village condo near Telluride
8. Mesa Verde National Park motel, Colorado
9. Double Tree Hotel, Durango, Colorado
10. Pearl Street rental home in Boulder, Colorado
11. Quality Inn near Black Canyon National Park, Gunnison, Colorado
12. Telluride family cabin again
13. Red Feather Inn near the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, Arizona (what a dump!)
14. El Portal Hotel, Sedona, Arizona
15. Holiday Inn Express on Route 66, Barstow, California
16. Morgan’s parents’ house in Pacific Palisades, California
17. Casa Ojai Best Western, Ojai, California
18. Embassy Suites near LAX
19. Recoleta apartment, Buenos Aires, Argentina
20. Llao Llao hotel, near Bariloche, Argentina
21. Cabaña at Villa Huinid, Bariloche, Argentina
22. Guardianes del Bayo, Villa La Angosturo, Argentina (aka the place with all the gnomes)
23. La Comarca Suites de Montaña hotel next to the gnome cabaña,Villa La Angosturo, Argentina
24. Overnight on the bus to Mendoza (this link is to Colly’s great blog post about the experience)
25. Casa Glebinias, Chacras de Coria (near Mendoza), Argentina
26. Meridiano Sur hotel, Santiago, Chile
27. Quay West apartment, Auckland, New Zealand
28. First night RV: Waiwera Holiday Park, North Island
29. Second night RV: Beachside Holiday Park near Paihia in the Bay of Islands, North Island
30. Third night RV: Kerikeri Top 10 Holiday Park, Kerikeri, Bay of Islands, North Island
31. Fourth night RV: Kauri Coast Top 10 Holiday Park near Dargaville, North Island
32. Last night RV: Orewa Beach Top 10 Holiday Park, Orewa, North Island
33. Cabin at Blue Lake Top 10 Holiday Park, Rotorua, North Island
34. Van der Boom’s house, Whakatane in the Bay of Plenty, North Island
35. Great Lake Motel, Taupo, North Island
36. Holiday Inn, Wellington, North Island
37. Cabin at Harris Hill farm, Nelson, South Island, New Zealand
38. First night campground in Abel Tasman National Park, South Island
39. Second night campground in Abel Tasman National Park, South Island
40. The Barn backpackers’ lodge, Marahau, South Island
41. Abel Tasman Marahau Lodge, Marahau, South Island
42. Chelsea Gateway Motor Lodge, Westport, West Coast of South Island
43. Karamea Last Resort, Karamea, West Coast of South Island
44. Charming Creek B&B, Ngakawau, West Coast of South Island
45. The one and only Blackball Hilton, Blackball, West Coast of South Island
46. Greymouth Gables Inn, Greymouth, West Coast of South Island
47. Flock Hill Lodge along Arthur’s Pass, South Island
48. Kirkpatricks’ guest house, Queenstown, South Island
49. Meriton apartment, Sydney, Australia
50. Jemby Rinjah Eco Lodge in Blackheath by the Blue Mountains, Australia
51. Albury Country Comfort Motel, Albury, New South Wales
52. Jubilee Lake Holiday Park, Daylesford, Victoria
53. Anchor Belle Caravan Park, Phillip Island, Victoria
54. Apartment at 1 Esplanade, Lakes Entrance, Victoria
55. Cabin at Batemans Bay Big4 Holiday Park, Batemans Bay, New South Wales
56. United States Embassy, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory
57. Apartment at Clifton Suites, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory
58. IBIS airport hotel, Sydney (what a dump!)
59. Kowloon Shangri-La hotel, Hong Kong
60. Oakley Court Hotel, Windsor, England (barely 14 hours between flights)
61. Apartment in the Barri Gotic quarter, Barcelona, Spain
62. Aiguaclara Hotel in Begur, Costa Brava, Spain
63. Renaissance airport hotel, Barcelona
64. Apartment in Rome, Italy
65. Apartment in Venice, Italy
66. Albergo il Focolare, Treviso, Italy
67. Hotel Du Lac on Lake Garda, Malcesine, Italy
68. Apartment in Vernazza, Cinque Terre, Italy
69. One night in the awful hotel-that-shall-remain-nameless, Florence, Italy
70. Hotel Loggiato Dei Serviti, Florence, Italy
71. Hotel Hermitage, Prato, Italy
72. Hotel Campione near Lugano, Switzerland
73. Hotel Cascada, Lucerne, Switzerland
74. Hotel Splendid, Interlaken, Switzerland
75. Apartment on Lake Geneva, Montreux, Switzerland
76. Hotel Perren, Zermatt, Switzerland
77. Hilton Garden Inn, Bologna, Italy
78. Hilton Airport Hotel, Rome, Italy
79. Marriott Grosvenor Square, London, England
80. Oakley Court Hotel, Windsor, England
81. The Grand Hotel, Brighton, England
82. Silverdale B&B, Seaford, England
83. The Compleat Angler, Marlow, England
84. Morgan’s parents’ house, Pacific Palisades, California
85. Lower School dorm at The Thacher School, Ojai, California
86. Morgan’s parents’ condo in Mammoth Lakes, California

That’s it! Next stop, on June 20, home in Piedmont, California!

Related posts:

1. Eat, Run, Love
2. Two Months To Go
3. Playing Around Rotorua

After 10 months of family travel, I don’t have a comprehensive packing list to share (here’s a good one for starters if that’s what you’re looking for), but I can detail some of the gear and clothing we found indispensable. A lot of essential items seem obvious, so I left them off this list; e.g., our Mac laptops, photography equipment, running shoes, and the iPhone to which we’re truly addicted. (We had the iPhone unlocked and replaced the SIM card in every country to get a local phone number and GPS, which is a pain but doable — and worth it.) Instead, I listed personal favorites that travelers might not think to pack.

I also listed useful supplies for “roadschooling,” and finally a few items we could have left at home — things we brought because we thought we should, but it turned out we didn’t need them.

For families heading off for long summer trips or sabbaticals, I hope this helps make your packing job easier. For those of you who’ve traveled for long stretches of time, please add your tips on what or what not to pack in the comments below.

Can’t Imagine Traveling Round the World Without These:

Colly and me catching a train to Venice with our Osprey Porter packs on back and our daypacks (with laptop holders built in) on front.

Osprey Porter Packs: After months of having this luggage virtually grafted to our sides, it’s hard to imagine life without our Osprey convertible packs. They held up great — no busted zippers or other malfunctions — and we found them comfortable and well-designed. I loved being able to pull out the straps and carry mine on my back when need be; then I’d tuck the straps back in to make it more of a duffel bag when checking it on board. Morgan and I each got the Osprey Porter 90and for Colly we got the smaller Porter 65. For Kyle, we went with a rolling convertible backpack, the Osprey Sojourn 22.Note: I am a firm believer in not using suitcases with wheels, since the wheel frame adds significant weight and you end up having to pick the bag up frequently to carry up stairs anyway. (The very useful site onebag.com has a good discussion on “Wheeled Bags and Other Bad Ideas.”) But Kyle was too small to carry his, so we got one with wheels so he could pull it. We also used an old, small Tumi suitcase with wheels as a “mobile office” filled with books and gear. I hated that clunky, heavy suitcase and wish we could have done without it.

REI Travel Document Organizer: We use this 6″x10″ case to hold our passports and extra credit cards and money. I carried it with my laptop pack, which I always kept in hand or looped around my leg while sitting, until we reached our lodging, and then I’d lock it in the safe (or hide it in folded clothing when no safe was available). I believe in hiding passports and extra credit cards and money with belongings left in the locked room rather than carrying those essential documents while sightseeing because pickpocketing or car break-ins seem more likely than room thefts. When we walked around, we carried only a driver’s license for ID and one credit card so that in case of theft or loss we’d have to cancel only one card. The document organizer made it easy to keep these things together and hide them.

Black Fleece Pullover and Rain Shell: Since I had only a few outfits that I wore repeatedly, I learned to dress in layers for warmth and to wear black as much as possible so dirt won’t show. I dressed up outfits and added color with scarves but basically lived in my black fleece pullover (and a few T-shirts made of high-tech synthetic fabric that dries easily and won’t wrinkle). The kids and I all had waterproof shells rather than thick coats, and they were warm enough for almost-freezing temps when coupled with the fleece underneath and gloves. Morgan decided to bring a thicker waterproof jacket and ended up glad he did, even though it’s fairly heavy, since it’s so versatile  and dressy enough to wear out. In Barcelona, I finally broke down and bought a thicker, dressier jacket to look more fashionable in European cities, but it felt like a luxury rather than essential, and I had to get rid of other clothes to make room in my pack for it.

These are the jackets I recommend, seen here when we're in the cold of Patagonia last October. I'm also carrying the Eagle Creek packable daypack recommended below.

Kindles:We love our Kindles! We started out with two and ended up getting a third, plus we use the Kindle iPhone app for another reading device. Given all the reading we did on the trip, it was a godsend to have a lightweight reading device in lieu of heavy books, and to be able to easily purchase books in non-English-speaking countries. The iPhone Kindle app was particularly useful for travel guides; several times in Italy, for example, we downloaded a Rick Steves guide to a particular city, and we’d refer to it on the iPhone while getting around town and touring a site.

My pack with some of the compression clothing sacks pulled out.

Eagle Creek Compression Sacks:The plastic bags are like giant Ziplocks that come in small, medium and large sizes to hold clothing. You pack your clothes in and squeeze the air out to make the clothes as compact as possible; plus, they work as organizers so you can separate your clothes into different sets rather than having them all jumbled together in the bag.

Swiss Army Knife: I’m amazed by how many times we ate out of cans and used our Swiss Army knife for opening them, or used it for myriad other purposes. I’m also amazed by how many times I forgot that it was in my carry-on bag and it got through airport security anyway.

Our lovely braided rubber clothesline, strung between two chairs in the sun and doing its job.

Braided Rubber Clothesline:We washed clothes in the sink once a week on average, and this little clothesline came in handy every time. It’s designed so you can hang several pieces of clothing from it, rather than just a few pieces draped over. We also stocked up on individual packets of hand-wash laundry detergent.

Headlamp:A lot of packing lists say to bring a flashlight, but I say get a headlamp instead! A couple of times we were in places where the power went out at night, and it was reassuring to have a headlamp so that both hands were free. Also, since the four of us often shared a single room, one of us could use the headlamp as a reading light when the others wanted to sleep.

Shoe Tag ID:Any time I go off on my own to run, I make sure I have this ID tag on my shoe so that if, heaven forbid, I were hit by a car or in some other accident, then I wouldn’t be a Jane Doe. What I like about this new generation of interactive tags from Road ID is that you can update the contact info online, so that emergency responders can go online or call a phone number on the tag to get your medical and contact info and then contact loved ones. This is particularly useful for travel when your contact info frequently changes. I also got two of the company’s dog-tag IDs for the kids to wear around their necks on travel days, in case we got separated in airports or big cities and they couldn’t communicate with authorities about their personal contact info.

Portable External Hard Drive: Prepare for the likelihood your laptop will get stolen or broken during travel. We backed up ours weekly with the Western Digital My Passport for Mac and made sure to pack the hard drive in a separate bag from the laptop carrier.

Really Handy Extras:

GoLite Mini Rain Shell: This paper-thin but powerful windbreaker folds up and stuffs into a pocket-size, ultra-lightweight triangle. I took it with me running and sightseeing frequently, just in case I needed an extra layer. It’s amazing how one thin layer provides so much wind and rain protection. I couldn’t find a link for it online, but the GoLite site (a great company for lightweight adventure gear) might offer it again or something similar.

Running with my GoLite rain shell in the Lake District of Argentina. This jacket weighs only a few ounces and folds into a pocket.

Eagle Creek Packable Daypack:This thin lightweight daypack folds up into a pocket-sized pouch. I liked it better than regular, heavier daypacks for hikes and sightseeing, and it was useful to have another bag to carry things like groceries.

Cheap Plastic Flip-Flops: I bought some in New Zealand when we stayed in lots of campsites with communal showers. They’re useful to slip on and wear in showers with icky floors.

Scissors: We use the scissors in our homeschooling kit all the time. I also brought along high-quality hair cutting scissors to cut Kyle’s and Morgan’s hair from time to time.

Portable Power Strip:We used this small power strip to increase the number of outlets in our lodging to accommodate our laptops. Coupled with the Apple World Traveler Adapter Kit, we could power up anywhere.

Roadschooling Essentials:

I’m listing some of our schooling supplies because they can be useful for family travel even if you’re not doing school on the go.

Pencil Box with Supplies: We have a 5″x12″ hard plastic pencil case that contains pretty much all the supplies the kids need: pencils and sharpeners, scissors, markers, paper clips, ruler and protractor, PostIts, tape, dice and playing cards. The only thing that doesn’t fit in it that we also use a lot: a stapler.

Small White Boards with Dry Erase Markers: We have three 9″x12″ white boards and use them constantly for lessons, especially math problems. They cut down on the need for scratch paper.

E-versions of Books: Most of the kids’ schoolbooks are online or in PDF form. We got login access for their math and science texts, so they can read them online. Colly’s history book publisher didn’t have an online version, so we purchased the book, removed the binding, and took it to a copy story to have the whole thing scanned as a PDF. (Halfway through our trip, however, I decided to get and carry her heavy math book because I was unhappy with the online interface, and our Internet connections were spotty and expensive.) We got most of their books for pleasure reading in Kindle format. We supplemented their e-books with online resources, our favorite being Brain Pop. I can’t say enough about how fantastic Brain Pop is, and it provided a great substitute for TV.

Mobile Scanner:This lightweight gadget is only 11″x2″. We scanned and sent a lot of their work to their long-distance teachers, and this scanner also came in handy a few times when we needed to scan something for personal business.

Journals and Paper: Even though the kids used the laptops daily, good ol’ paper and pencil were still the best for creative writing and drawing. We also brought graph paper for math.

Things We Thought We Had To Bring And Never Used:

Travel Towel: Every place we rented — even the RV — provided towels and other linens. Unless you’re camping the whole time or staying in hostels where no towels are provided, don’t bother bringing a towel.

Toiletry Kit for Carry-On: For the first few months when we flew, I’d include a toiletry kit with our essentials in my carry-on bag in case our luggage got lost. I never used these travel-size duplicates of things in our main toiletry kit, and it ended up being clutter we didn’t need. Keep in mind that unless you’re traveling to a very remote area, essential medicines and pharmacy supplies can be purchased pretty much anywhere.

Guidebooks and Maps: All the info you need is available in e-book format, from websites and from tourist info offices in destinations. Leave the heavy books at home.

Sink Stopper: Why is this on all packing lists? We brought one and never used it, even though we always did laundry in the sink. A plug was always available, or we could have plugged it up with a washcloth.

Final words of advice: Travel light so you can easily carry all of your belongings!

Kyle and Colly packed and carried all their own stuff for the year.

So many times we had to run to catch a train or squeeze into a small cab, and each time we expressed relief that we didn’t have more luggage. It really is possible to live out of a couple of small bags. Plus, there’s the added benefit of teaching our children (and ourselves) to be more self-reliant and less materialistic. The less you bring to carry, the happier you’ll be on the go.

Related posts:

1. When It Rains…
2. How To Plan A Year-Long Family Travel Itinerary
3. One Year Later: The Time-Capsule Travel Letters and the ‘Eat Pray Love’ Backlash

A view from the Cinque Terre coastal trail, with the town of Vernazza coming into view.

Last night I read Goethe and ate divine pesto, and this morning I ran across a mountain and climbed back into bed with Morgan.

It’s all about life, Italy and the pursuit of happiness.

(Bear with me while I explain what Goethe has to do with it …)

I didn’t expect to pick up 18th-century German Romanticism more than twenty years after my last college lit class. I’ve been eating up delectable novels and memoirs like Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love and told myself I should ingest some historical fiction or classics (similar to how I reach for bran flakes and skim milk to balance out the pasta and wine).

Then, around the same day, we serendipitously stumbled upon Goethe. His name was everywhere. We were in the town of Malcesine on Lake Garda, a giant drop of blue in Northern Italy hanging like a bead off the skirt of the Alps, and were spending five nights there for no better reason than because three months earlier, in New Zealand or somewhere, Morgan had looked at Italy on Google Earth, saw the splotch of blue and the steep topography around it, and said, “I wanna go there!”

Kyle on a snowy ridge in the Alps above Lake Garda during a hike he took with Morgan.

As we drove the freeway up from Verona and the steep mountain pass down through Turbole, we started noticing inns and restaurants named after the German literary great.

Once we settled into our lodge, Morgan logged on to research why Goethe was such a big deal in this neck of the woods. “You gotta read this,” I soon heard him say.

We found ourselves following in Goethe's footsteps.

I looked over his shoulder at a newspaper article from 1986 about local bicentennial celebrations of Goethe’s sojourn to Lake Garda: The 37-year-old Goethe set off for Italy from Weimar at 3 A.M. on Sept. 3, 1786, in the midst of a full-blown midlife crisis. Impulsively, he took a short leave of absence from his post as the right-hand man to the young duke of Saxe-Weimar, jumped into a coach without a servant or much luggage, assumed the name Filippo Moller and left for what turned out to be almost two years of renewal in the Mediterranean. … In Italy, Goethe experienced what he called a rebirth, living a life “exactly like a youthful dream.”

I wound up entranced by Goethe’s early novel, The Sorrows of Young Werther, and learned more about his Italian journey while touring the 6th-century Malcesine castle, a place he explored after docking his boat there due to bad weather.

The castle and town of Malcesine, which Goethe visited 224 years ago.

Ever an artist, Goethe pulled out his sketchpad and settled in to draw the castle. An exhibit at the castle detailed how the stress of Goethe’s job left no room in his life to pursue artistic interests, and how by radically changing his circumstances, the poet hoped to get closer to the meaning of his existence.

It will come as little surprise to those who know us that Morgan and I could appreciate the motives behind Goethe’s odyssey, much as I could relate to Elizabeth Gilbert’s decision, detailed in Eat, Pray, Love, to spend a year of self-inquiry through travel. It’s trite but true that the most satisfying kind of travel involves contemplating the meaning of life, and discovering and pursuing new interests along the way. It’s part of what we’ve been doing, and with a mere six weeks remaining until we return to California, we’re spending more time reflecting on where we’ve been — not just in the past year, but in the two decades we’ve been married — and what we might do next.

The topic came up again over dinner on the patio of the apartment we’re renting this week in Vernazza, one of the five impossibly beautiful villages that make up the coastal region known as Cinque Terre.

The town of Vernazza, with our apartment in the corner of the building on the far right, directly above the cafe umbrellas (that's our laundry hanging out the kitchen window).

The patio has a staircase that leads two flights down to the small town square and harbor, so the kids periodically ran from dinner to the beach. We opened a white wine harvested from the hillside outside our window, and served a rotisserie chicken and baguette from a deli downstairs. For the side, we cooked fresh pasta, covered it with locally made pesto, sautéed green beans and sliced an heirloom tomato (which isn’t labeled “heirloom” here — it just is). An outdoor restaurant sits right on the other side of the apartment terrace, and at one point a waiter, who had been observing our family meal with some amusement, came over and handed us a giant bowl filled with a couple dozen garlicky steamed mussels garnished with lemon wedges, compliments of the chef, just to be nice.

We lingered over the plates covered with mussel shells and chicken bones and looked across the water at the steep hill, where innumerable layers of dark gray rock stretch across in diagonal lines and then curve, dip, and rise again, as though charting geologic time, and we wondered how many millions of years it took the hill to push up from the sea. Then we looked over to the 14th-century church, so pretty against the pastel-colored buildings around the town square, and peered down to check on our kids, who were climbing on boulders protruding from the water, and we heard their giggles float up on the wind.

The church and hillside vines across from our apartment at sunset.

It was in so many ways the most satisfying dinner, and the potency and transience of the moment made me teary.

It’s not just that packing up and leaving home — and in the process leaving the security that comes with a familiar routine, a generous income and a solid reputation — forces change and exploration (of self as well as of surroundings) in a way no amount of therapy ever could. What moved me is the way in which this journey has delivered constant reminders — in the form of spectacular natural history as well as human artifacts such as Roman ruins and medieval castles — of the brevity of our time on Earth and the degree to which we’re microspecks in the millennia, so what can we do but seek happiness through relationships and experiences, and do the best we can with our greatest gift and trace of immortality — our children — during the limited time that we do have?

Kyle and Colly hanging out at the harbor after dinner while we watch from our apartment above.

I paused after that paragraph for a two-hour run. While Morgan and the kids slept in, I climbed the narrow coastal trail linking the towns of Cinque Terre.

I’m running more these days in part to prepare for a 35K trail race on my 41st birthday two weeks from now, which will be through a valley outside of Florence. Morgan is caring for the kids and arranging transportation so I can do the race, which is really giving me the gift of all the drama and endorphins that go with a tough mountain run, and what can I possibly give him in return on his birthday in September, after all he has given me? I smiled at the passing idea of a Rembrandt hat and cape so he could dress up like Goethe for Halloween.

But the main reason I’m running more, just as I’m letting myself eat and lounge around with Morgan and the kids more, is to soak in the sensations of these destinations and explore them as fully as possible before we head back home.

Kyle and I make a toast to each other with gelato cones.

As I navigated the rocks on the tapering trail and glanced over the edge to the ocean below, I considered something several people have said in casual conversation: “You must be sad the trip is coming to an end.” Oh yes, I really am, I automatically reply. But as I ran that cliff edge, I realized that assumption is only partly true; more than sad, I’m fundamentally grateful we’re heading home in mid-June.

Our days like this are numbered.

I’m thankful the trip has an endpoint because it is that very ending that enables me to so fully appreciate these numbered weeks. It’s that return date on the calendar that made Colly reach for my hand and squeeze it as we walked along the lakefront in Malcesine, and prompted her to say with maturity and tenderness beyond her 12 years, “I’m going to miss this so much.”

Along my run, I met an Italian man on the trail who had a creased face and a cigarette dangling from his mouth. He was carrying a gardening tool and looked stooped over as he walked toward a row of vines on the steep terraced hill. Generations of families have carved out a living by working the soil in this remote corner of the country, and it’s a safe bet he was carrying on a family tradition. I said buongiorno as I ran toward him, and he smiled and raised his eyebrows, a look of admiration crossing his face as he paused to study me and perhaps imagined what it must be like to run for fun. I wish he could have known how much I admired him at that same instant; he might be surprised that in that moment, I wanted to be less the fleeting, carefree passerby and more the local with a harvest to reap.

Morgan and I have talked over dinners and during runs about how we really can’t see our family joining the growing ranks of modern-day gypsies who travel indefinitely and call themselves “digital nomads” as they work and homeschool via the Internet wherever they might be (though anything is possible). We want to go back for the kids’ sake. This trip has been undeniably beneficial for their personal growth and education, as well as for our family bond, but they yearn for the friendships and familiarity that only their school and neighborhood can give. And we want to get back to aspects of life that we put on hold: maintaining a home, reading the local news, lending a hand to help in the community, socializing with friends, developing and finishing projects, earning the satisfaction of a job well done. Those things all really matter. The challenge, we know and vow to remind ourselves regularly, will be to preserve as much as possible the values and visions, and the rhythm of life and closeness with each other, that we rediscovered between Argentina and Italy.

Morgan took this shot of me near the north end of the Cinque Terre trail near Monterosso before we turned around and headed back.

Related posts:

1. One Year Later: The Time-Capsule Travel Letters and the ‘Eat Pray Love’ Backlash
2. 83 Places, 5 Continents, 10 Months
3. Playing Around Rotorua

The lookout next to our lodge in the Blue Mountains (click to enlarge).

The alternative title for this post could be, “How We Ended Up Off A Beaten Path Near The Blue Mountains.”

Our home for the week is at the end of a road in a thick, misty gum tree forest where wild parrots fly overhead and the cliffs of the Blue Mountains plunge into a forested canyon. In the mornings, the parrots flock for a feast of birdseed offered up by Colly and Kyle’s outstretched hands.

"A bird in the hand is worth a loo in the bush" -- the parrots make up for some of the inconvenient aspects of this eco lodge.

We’re exploring nearby trails, enjoying the offbeat towns of Blackheath and Katoomba, and unplugging at a cabin at the Jemby-Rinjah Eco Lodge, which is deep in the woods with no traffic noise, no Internet access and very few other guests. I love the simple, natural way of life — but I admit I was shocked to discover that the cabin’s toilet lacks what we all take for granted: running water and a flusher. It’s just a seat above a pit, a.k.a. “a roto loo composting system.”  At least I have good reason now to argue that the others should put the lid down when they’re done!

Whenever we find ourselves in a weird and wild place like this, I think to myself, We’re a long way from Piedmont — how did we get here? The simple answer is that we reserved this cabin about two months ago. We figured we wanted a rustic setting after two weeks in Sydney, but didn’t want to drive too far or spend money on a flight to elsewhere in Australia. The Blue Mountains National Park seemed like a no-brainer. Our research turned up a New York Times article recommending this affordable eco-lodge, and that was enough to convince us to book it.

As the above example suggests, planning an itinerary is a very unscientific and subjective process that involves looking inward at values and priorities as well as looking outward at the world of possibilities. It’s always a balancing act between dreams and reality — that is, limitless interests versus limited time and resources. Sometimes it’s fascinating, but just as often it’s frustrating.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the process not only because we’re in the throes of researching the final leg of our trip, but also because we spent a lovely half-day with a family in Sydney who invited us over to get advice on how they should plan their year-long trip around the world. Our conversation brought back so many memories of how bewildered we felt one year ago when we stared at the map on the One World airline website and tried to figure out which continents — let alone which countries and cities — we should visit, and how to make the route work out.

We’re less methodical and less organized than some traveling families we know who plan and budget every detail far in advance of departure. If Morgan and I were traveling without kids, we’d probably plan even less and be more like the backpackers we were on our college trip overseas. But the reality is that traveling with two kids means we can’t just “wing it”; we have to book places in advance so we’re assured we have a relatively affordable and pleasant place to sleep and to minimize the stress of getting from one point to another. Long-term family travel differs significantly from single or couple’s travel in part because we need apartment-style lodging that can sleep all four of us and has a kitchen for cooking meals, which usually takes more work to find than a standard hotel room.

Our cabin here has the kind of cozy kitchen we seek when researching rentals.

The problem with travel planning is it can turn into a giant time suck. We could easily spend eight hours a day on the Internet reading about destinations, debating one over the other, comparing lodging options, and then trading emails with apartment managers and arranging overseas wire transfers to those who won’t take credit cards. We have spent days like that, and it’s no fun. Rather than searching for “the best” deal in “the best” place, we found it’s better to research just enough to feel that a choice seems pretty darn good, and then go for it.

Over the past year, we’ve developed these guiding principles to plan our itinerary, and I hope they might help other families contemplating a far-flung, months-long journey:

Less is more. The biggest mistake any family can make in planning an itinerary is trying to go to too many places and do too much. Packing, checking out of a place, driving or flying, and then checking in and settling into somewhere new is stressful on the kids and kills the better part of a day. We’ve discovered we’re happiest when we go for depth over breadth; this is, we move around less and settle into a community for a couple of weeks. During two months in New Zealand, we experienced both road-tripping — sleeping in a new town almost every night — and two-week stays at a couple of main destinations (Nelson and Queenstown). It was exciting to see so much, but overall we had a more satisfying time at the two-week spots, where we could really get to know the community and establish normal family routines such as planning meals and doing schoolwork.

A year ago, we considered choosing one major destination per month and renting an apartment there for four weeks. That would have been a cheaper way to go — the more you move around, the more money you’re likely to spend on lodging and everything else — but in hindsight I’m glad we didn’t do that; we probably would start to feel restless after a couple of weeks, and we don’t want to sacrifice too many opportunities to explore different places. For whatever reason, one to two weeks feels like the optimal amount of time to spend in any one location.

Accept the fact you can’t see every “must-see.” While we were in Argentina, we agonized over whether we should buy plane tickets and take a few days to see Iguazu Falls. Now we’re in Australia, and people are telling us we’re crazy to miss the Great Barrier Reef. I feel certain, however, that we’ve done the right thing by skipping both those destinations because of the time, money and effort it would take to get there. We’ve got enough “must-sees” on our calendar. Plus, some of the most interesting travel times happen outside of typical tourist destinations, in ordinary towns where real people really live.

Book far in advance for holiday seasons, but otherwise it’s okay to fill in the details as you go. There is no way we could have planned everything before we left home — it would have taken too much time, and we were preoccupied with packing and moving out. All we did was determine the outline of the itinerary so we could purchase the One World tickets (and even then we changed dates and destinations along the way), and we found apartments in our first two major destinations. We also found a special place to stay during the week of Christmas. Otherwise, we’ve been ironing out the details and booking lodging approximately two months in advance of where we’ll be. It has worked out well, although we learned the hard way that we should have booked earlier for the holiday season Down Under (mid-December through January) because some places we wanted to stay were already full. Similarly, if we were going to be in Europe over summer, we would have to book much farther in advance.

One advantage to staggering the process and letting the itinerary evolve more organically (for lack of a better word) is we’re more open to change. For example, we initially planned to go to Athens and a still-to-be-determined Greek Island, with a side trip to Ephesus, Turkey, to see the Roman ruins there. Then, about three months ago, we started hearing a steady drumbeat of Istanbul, Istanbul, Istanbul. An article here, a friend’s recommendation there — it was strange how we seemed to be receiving signals to go there. We resisted because getting there seems expensive, complicated and culturally too confusing. But then a couple of others whose opinions I respect mentioned something out of the blue about how they loved Istanbul. Meanwhile, the more we heard about Athens, the less alluring it seemed. The upshot is we’re going to change things around to go to Istanbul and spend more time in Turkey, less in mainland Greece.

Our front porch this week leads to a dense gum tree forest. Our kids are always happier in settings like this (and by extension, so are we), where they can wander outside and play, than in big cities.

Limit time in big cities, or at least balance it with time in the countryside. If we go to Istanbul, it’ll be for a week at most. We’ve found that big cities have two main drawbacks: they’re expensive, and they’re stressful on the kids. Colly and Kyle enjoy the city sites for a few days, but then the noise, the crowds, and the inability to go outside the front door and play freely starts to wear on them.

Plan around a hobby. For some, this might be art history or regional cuisine or mountain climbing. For Morgan and me, it’s trail running. We picked destinations with scenic trails and are taking detours to trail running events, which is why a campground in Daylesford, outside of Melbourne, is on our itinerary next weekend — it’s the site of a “dirt fest” with trail running, mountain biking and events for kids. I’m sure there are at least a hundred other destinations in Southern Australia that are more attractive and culturally significant than Daylesford, but we figure we’ll have fun connecting with other families and doing something we enjoy there. We never would have discovered the West Coast of New Zealand if not for the trail running event that prompted us to go there.

Morgan during a run/hike on a cliffside trail in the Blue Mountain range.

Don’t be shy — hook up with locals even if you barely know them. Tap into networks such as alumni groups, Facebook and friends-of-friends in order to meet people in your destinations, especially if those locals have kids that your kids can play with. In New Zealand, we met up with a friend-of-a-friend via Facebook and ended up having a magical day touring an area that only a local would know, and through this person we met a wonderful family who gave us the use of their house. Then we connected with really old friends who have kids our kids’ ages and spent a blissful two weeks in their home. I look forward to returning the favor to the family from Sydney when they swing through Northern California. Meeting new people and forming relationships is part of the joy of traveling — of life, really.

Use tried-and-true websites. We cast a wide net on the web when we research but return repeatedly to these sites: Trip Advisor, Lonely Planet and The NY Times Travel section. Morgan also is a master at using Google Earth and Google Maps to “see” a place in advance. We’ve actually decided against certain apartments because the street view on Google reveals they’re in a place that looks particularly shabby or inconvenient. We also rely on other traveling families’ blogs for recommendations (such as those listed on the right hand column of our blog). We don’t carry many guidebooks because we don’t want the weight; we read a few select books mainly to get an overview on a country or region, rather than specific recommendations.

Remember, “Wherever you go, there you are.” I start feeling flutters of anxiety about the big gaps in our itinerary that we still need to fill for April and May, but then the Jon Kabat-Zinn title Wherever You Go, There You Are pops in my head and helps me relax, having faith that we can make the best of wherever we end up if we have the right attitude. Whether we have a positive experience traveling depends less on the destinations themselves and more on what we do as a family — how we interact with each other, and with other people and the surroundings — wherever we go.

You can stand at the edge of the Grand Canyon and have a pretty lousy time if you’re annoyed by other tourists, pissed off at your spouse and frustrated that your kids don’t feel like hiking. Or, you can find yourself in a remote corner of Patagonia, smelling of carsickness after a difficult drive, and laugh uncontrollably upon discovering that your lodge lacks a view but has a bizarre collection of gnome figurines. As Morgan put it, “You can end up in some pretty weird places, but they can be a lot of fun.”

This is the iconic Blue Mountains shot: the legendary Three Sisters rock, which all the tour buses stop by to see. It's pretty, but ...

... we had a better time discovering this out-of-the-way waterfall on the other side of the canyon than staring at the Three Sisters.

Related posts:

1. One Year Later: The Time-Capsule Travel Letters and the ‘Eat Pray Love’ Backlash
2. Byways by the Blue Mountains
3. Announcing “Meet, Plan, Go!” for Extended Travel and Career Break Planning

The Sydney skyline as seen from a ferry.

As you can guess from the photo, we’ve started the five-week Australian leg of our journey! This past week was a blur as I left Morgan and the kids for a short trip back to California. The three of them transitioned from New Zealand to here, and I rejoined them midweek.

I felt the way this guy looks after I crossed the date line twice in a week. Morgan and the kids saw this koala at the Sydney Zoo.

At first I felt as bushed as a koala who looks drunk on eucalyptus midday. (Little-known fact from Friends of the Koalas: “Contrary to popular belief, eucalyptus leaves do not make koalas drunk. Koalas appear drunk or lazy because they have developed a low-energy lifestyle to compensate for their extremely low-energy diet.” What a bummer to discover — I liked the idea that this lovable species had evolved to be fat, lazy and perpetually buzzed.)

In the midst of the past week, each of us took time to mark the halfway point in our journey by doing the following exercise: write a letter to ourselves and the other family members. Reflect on the trip so far, making note of what memories stand out and our feelings about the past six months. Then imagine the second half of the journey (when we’ll go from Australia to Hong Kong, Spain, Italy, Greece and Turkey) and write down some hopes and expectations for those months. Don’t share the letter with anyone yet; seal it up and set it aside. Then, on the last night before returning home, open and take turns reading them to one another and reflecting further — not only about where we went and what we did, but also why we did it, how it affected us and what we’ll do next.

I have my friend Carolyn to thank (the one who hosted us in Queenstown, who’s an accomplished educator and world traveler) for suggesting this exercise, because it prompted me to think more deeply about how this trip has changed and surprised us. There’s no way I can fit all those ideas into a blog post, but I’d like to share some.

Here, then, are some surprises and revelations  in no particular order:

I really like my family. This wasn’t obvious to me before. Of course I love them — but did I like their company so much that I could spend all day, every day with them? As we planned this trip in early 2009, I seriously worried we would get sick of each other. I braced for the inevitability that we would bicker and get in one another’s way. What happened instead is they became my closest friends. We do bicker (that really is inevitable), but nonetheless I am happiest when we are sharing small spaces, such as a car or a hotel room, and when they are in sight or earshot. This is one reason I don’t miss our big house with its separate areas. Back home I occasionally found myself thinking “I need my space” or “my kids are driving me crazy,” but those thoughts don’t enter my head now.

Colly and Kyle are de facto BFFs. They’re reluctant to admit it, but the kids have developed a bond and have more fun together than ever before (see the earlier post on how long-term travel affects play and sibling relationships).

We don’t need much stuff. Traveling has made us less materialistic, less cluttered and more frugal. We have pared down to the essentials, and we value every item in our bags. I swear to God, nobody needs more than three pairs of shoes (sandals, running shoes, and close-toed leather shoes that are dressy but still good for walking around). We have purchased almost nothing as souvenirs, preferring to spend money on experiences and eating rather than on stuff. I look at price tags like never before and try to take home leftovers to make two meals out of one. We have to shop here in Sydney to replace some worn-out grubbies and to get some decent outfits for places like Barcelona and Rome, and the trip to the mall looms like a chore on our to-do list.

Kyle soaks in the Sydney Harbour scene. He's not the only one who's overdue for a haircut!

Related to the point above: We really don’t need all those toiletries and expensive skin and hair care products. I packed a mini-pharmacy when we left and discovered we didn’t need half the things we brought, and if we did need something, then we could buy a comparable product wherever we are. Brand loyalty faded quickly. My must-have conditioner from a salon ran out, and I replaced it with a product I had never heard of, at a mini-mart in Mendoza, for about one-tenth the cost, and my hair looked and felt pretty much the same. The idea of spending money to get my eyebrows and toenails done monthly now seems crazy. I recently wrote to a friend that these months of roadtripping have revived a latent hippie streak in Morgan and me, and we’re all overdue for haircuts.

I’m bigger. I weighed myself for the first time in months, and the scale confirmed what my tighter clothes and mirror told me: I’m enjoying the regional cuisine a little too much. I’ve got saddlebags that look well stocked for the long ride ahead. Lo que sea (whatever).

Long-term travel has leveled the playing field in our marriage. Morgan and I have a twenty-five year relationship with all the peaks, valleys and rocky terrain of a good trail run. These months away have helped our marriage in ways I didn’t expect, mainly because we’re more collaborative and united — we have to be, because we’re stuck together and need each other in these utterly foreign environments. We now work together on the essential things that often determine the (im)balance of power in a marriage, such as who controls the money, who cares for the house and who keeps the all-important calendar. The kids now look to their dad for answers and direction every bit as much or more than they come to me.  (One small example: Last night Colly asked me a question about makeup but went to Morgan for help with her hair.) Of course there’s still some division of labor — e.g. I do more than half of the homeschooling, he does more than half of the travel planning — but we trust one other to swap roles far more than we did before.

This notion hit me when I left them for my solo trip last week. I did not make multiple lists with endless reminders for Morgan about what he should do in my absence, and when he and the kids Skyped or emailed me details about their day, I did not second guess what they had or hadn’t done. I did not interrogate them about whether they were using sunscreen and flossing. I just felt happy for them and missed them. I trusted Morgan and respected him to a degree I know I wouldn’t have six months ago.

Morgan reading his Kindle in our Sydney apartment.

We’re reading books instead of the news. I’m guilty of political apathy. I’m not reading past many headlines. But I am reading — novels, memoirs, travel blogs — and savoring literature in a way I didn’t back home, where I had to deliberately make time to read just one book a month and my attention span shortened to article length. Morgan is reading about twice as much as I am, going off at least once during the day to read on his Kindle. And Colly and Kyle have become bookworms — they wander off and read, sometimes surreptitiously because they don’t want me to tell them to put away their books and get something else done. I truly doubt they would have discovered reading for pleasure back home, where reading is lumped together with homework and their time is so sliced and diced.

We’re not doing a lot of things we thought we’d do. Before we left, I had noble plans for various things we’d accomplish. I wanted to make a commitment to “voluntourism” — i.e., to volunteer for a worthy cause in each of our major destinations. I had images of the four of us pulling weeds in an organic farm in the countryside or handing out food at a soup kitchen in a city. None of that panned out. Volunteering takes time to set up, and takes time away from sightseeing, and quite frankly we have enough logistical wrinkles to iron out on a daily and weekly basis, so I let it go. I also wanted to attend a local church at least once a month, thinking it would be a good way to get a sense of the community we’re in, but we haven’t set foot in a church since we left the Bay Area (except to view the architecture). Like voluntourism, going to church felt like something we “should” do rather than really wanted to, so we let it go. Ditto with learning Italian (we started a “daily phrase” program but it petered out; I lost interest because it’s hard enough to study Spanish occasionally). And what about my fledgling career as a travel writer? Oh, yeah, I meant to get to that — I have all my notes from last year’s multimedia and travel writing seminars somewhere, along with ideas of stories to pitch to various websites and publications, and … well, this blog is about as far as I’ve gotten.

So far, no regrets. I wasn’t at all sure this trip would live up to the “no regrets” phrase in the blog’s tagline. The risks were huge: We jeopardized a career, strained relationships, risked our kids’ education and raided our savings. What if it all turned out to be a colossal mistake? What if we spent 11 months drifting around feeling homesick and anxious? What if we spent the whole time fighting? We had a long list of reasons not to leave home and go out on this longest of limbs. One thing that helped us make it happen was a refrain we heard from others who had taken time as a family for a similar trip: “It’s the best thing we ever did.” We heard it over and over, and now I’d say the same: It’s the best thing we ever did.

My favorite picture of the Sydney Opera House, courtesy of Colly.

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2. Sydney Wet and Wild
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Morgan and I spent a lot of time last week doing travel research and making reservations while the stormy weather kept us mostly inside.

Before Morgan and I left in mid-August, we talked a lot about how there will be times when traveling gets tough, when we feel fatigued and worried about the myriad consequences of uprooting for a year, and when we second-guess our choices. We knew we’d feel homesick not just for home per se, but for friends and familiar routines, and we might feel pangs of regret. That’s why we added the “no regrets” phrase to our tagline — not because we’re blithely traipsing off in the world with nothing weighing us down but our backpacks, but rather because we knew from the start that doubt might haunt us, just as first-time home buyers flirt with buyers’ remorse when the repairs pile up and bills come due. “No regrets” is shorthand for “no turning back, so let’s make this work, and in the long run we’ll look back and be so glad we did it.” Or in Spanish, vale la pena. It’s what we say to each other and to ourselves to bolster confidence and commitment, because what we’re doing takes an occasional pep talk.

Last week was one of those weeks.

This may come as a surprise, since the previous post about arriving in Patagonia was so effusive. As my brother noted, we seemed besotted with the landscape. We still are, but we had, for lack of a better word, a moody week, exacerbated by a steady rain and cold that limited our ability to get outside and explore. Cabin fever and my head cold infected the cabana’s coziness.

A tour of Bariloche's chocolate museum lifted our spirits one afternoon and also gave us all an interesting history lesson.

Nothing terrible happened — no accidents or thefts — just minor disappointments, annoyances and parenting/sibling flareups. For example, a close call on a run (described on my running blog) made us dwell on worst-case scenarios and the extra steps we need to take to avoid them. Then there was a fiasco involving the Kindle, in which something that should be simple — shipping a defective Kindle back to Amazon.com and receiving a replacement — turned into a weeks-long abject lesson in navigating international customs, taxes and language barriers, which took more money, phone calls and cab rides than I care to relate. Morgan, with the help of his dad back home, eventually sorted it all out.

We experienced a higher-than-average number of travel planning snafus, such as when I screwed up and booked some wrong dates for New Zealand and couldn’t simply change them back. Then, more hours spent speaking and emailing in broken Spanish to make a reservation for lodging we really need next week, and finally getting to the bank to make a deposit to secure it (because a lot of these places require cash deposits, not credit cards called in) — and then discovering, as the rain fell and cab drove away, that the bank closed an hour earlier. Now we know that banks close at 1:00 on Thursdays.

And then there was the case of the bored, clever 8-year-old gremlin named Kyle who kept changing passwords and other settings on IPhones, IPods, laptops, in-room safes and any other device with a button and a silicon chip, in spite of repeated reminders and warnings, which led to technical difficulties and parental reprimands. And a laughably bad daytrip, which Colly described on her blog better than I ever could.

Kyle has grown very attached to this dog, which belongs to the groundskeeper. He loves playing with her, but then gets sad when he remembers our dog back home and realizes he'll have to say goodbye to this dog, too.

Meanwhile, I struggled to put more than two sentences together on this blog, briefly contemplated a pitch for a freelance writing assignment and then abandoned all efforts for several days, convinced that no one would ever care to find and read my long-winded prose since I’m apparently the only one in the over-saturated travel-writing universe who has decided not to Twitter.

All four of us, at various times, argued over how best to spend our days and how best to homeschool. We tossed and turned at night over long-term plans and got teary about missed friends and holiday traditions.

I’ve probably lost a lot of readers at this point who have no patience or sympathy for this sad sack. I hope you understand my main motive: to document some of the down days along with the good times, so that we don’t forget them when we wax nostalgic a year from now, and so anyone contemplating a similar journey gets a more complete picture.

Colly, bless her heart and mind, channeled our collective mood into her blog post linked above and created a pro/con list about long-term travel. Thinking about what I might list, I realized almost everything would be a “pro” but could also be a “con.” For example, “more family time” — definitely a positive, until you grow tired of finishing each others’ sentences all day long and yearn to socialize with others. “Flexible schedule and more free time” — wonderful, except on days when you struggle to prioritize and feel adrift. “Homeschooling” — so far so good, but when for whatever reason the process backfires, it’s a painful double-whammy: you’re a bad parent AND a bad teacher. “Experience new cultures and simpler ways of life” — always good, and I’m so grateful to see the world from outside of the Piedmont bubble, but feeling like a fish-out-of-water occasionally wears thin.

Halloween 2009: The kids were blue because they knew from friends' emails that they were missing parties, school costume parades and trick-or-treating. Argentina doesn't celebrate Halloween, but Morgan and I surprised the kids with some candy and we all had fun taste-testing the Latin American brands.

A couple of days ago, for example, I grew frustrated at the grocery store by my inability to decipher the strange brands and felt helpless to cook anything decent for dinner since I don’t have any spices or proper cookware. As I fruitlessly looked for frozen pie crust, canned pumpkin and condensed milk, I thought, Can it really be this hard to make a pumpkin pie? Yes, when you’re the only one in the country who craves pumpkin pie in October, it is!

But these lows don’t last. I knew this one wouldn’t, and it didn’t. Like in a marathon, as a favorite piece of advice I once heard goes, “There will be highs and there will be lows, and neither will last very long.” The same is true with long-term travel. Appreciate the highs and ride out the lows. Look up and around and think, We’re really doing this, we’re really seeing all these parts of the world together. Hallelujah!

Several factors pushed us out of last week’s funk: Morgan’s good advice and dark humor, a momentary lifting of the clouds for a fantastic day trip (details and photos in a post to come), the hatching of bird eggs outside our window, and — as is so often the case — running. If I have one piece of round-the-world travel advice to share this week, it’s this: Nurture a hobby as you go. It can be hiking, art history — anything that adds more meat to the skeleton of an itinerary, motivates you to explore more of the landscape, and makes you feel better when you get stalled in one point. Thanks to running we toured Buenos Aires on foot, and now we’re altering our itinerary to fit in some more races (such as the Nov. 14 Salomon K42 trail marathon in Villa La Angostura).

Cause for celebration: The eggs outside our window hatched! All week long we watched the mother guard her eggs and squawk at anything threatening. Yesterday, Morgan rescued a chick that fell down a drainpipe.

Running takes us places not found in any guidebooks. For example, I experienced a sense of accomplishment last week when I booked a room in the middle of Nowhere, New Zealand, following a string of travel-planning setbacks. We’re going there so Morgan and I can both run a trail race the weekend of January 16 — the first race we’ve ever registered for that requires runners to carry a whistle and safety blanket — and I think I even managed to find a babysitter (broadly defined) to watch the kids during the event.

The race ends on the West Coast of the South Island in a tiny hamlet called Blackball, at a roadhouse called the Blackball Hilton (the use of “Hilton” appears to be a long-running joke). We wanted to stay there since it’s the only place around, even though the most recent review on tripadvisor.com warns, “The rooms were tiny, dated and not to mention dirty. The room had layers of dust in it, dead flies and dirty carpets. The bathrooms were at the end of a corridor, and were also very dated and had flimsy locks.”

I placed an international call through Skype to the proprietor and had a lovely chat with a lady who seemed to come from Kiwi central casting, who punctuated each sentence with “right-oh!” and “no worries!” She told me she would be delighted to keep an eye on my kiddos during the morning of the race, and Colly and Kyle could have the run of the pub and help her manage the festivities as runners crossed the finish line. This was all oddly reassuring, not alarming, to me. Sometimes you just have to go with a gut feeling. I reserved the night before the race in the Blackball Hilton’s “family room” (who knows what that room classification means exactly), and I hung up very happy and grateful to know that we have a date in New Zealand two-and-a-half months from now in a backroad tavern with 100 other trail runners to keep us company.

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1. Playing Around Rotorua
2. Essential Gear For Long-Term Travel
3. Welcome to Patagonia, Where Paradise Packs a Punch

Lots o' packing yesterday and today ... we had to put a bunch of stuff in storage, give away outgrown kids' clothes and pare down to the true essentials.

I’m rushing to write this blog post while packing for tomorrow’s departure to Argentina. We traveled through Arizona less than a week ago, yet it feels more like a month has passed. We arrived in LA for a few days to take care of some business, reorganize all our belongings and — most difficult of all — say goodbye to our dog Teddy, who will spend the next ten months in the care of my in-laws. Teddy will be in very good and generous hands, but oh, it’s hard to leave him!

Our journey is shifting to a more challenging and exciting phase as we go abroad, and I’d like to say we’re ready but I don’t think I’d ever feel completely prepared. We realized today, at the eleventh hour, that some travel logistics have not been arranged or confirmed, so Morgan and I found ourselves scrambling and then consciously taking deep breaths, concluding, “Oh well, it’ll work out, or we’ll figure it out when we get there.” I have spent the weekend trying to adopt a true traveler’s mind — i.e., embracing rather than fearing the unknown – and doing my best to maintain an outwardly positive attitude for the kids’ sake. Their tears started to flow last night as the prospect of missing Teddy magnified a bout of homesickness (or rather, “friendsickness”). Thankfully, a trip to the beach with their grandparents today made everything feel better.

I had a lump in my throat all weekend because we have to say goodbye to Teddy. He is a fantastic dog, and we loved road-tripping with him the past six weeks.

Before the memories of the past week grow more distant, I want to document our last special destination: Sedona. Funny thing is, when I paused to reflect on it this morning, an image of Kyle on a Colorado trail a couple of weeks earlier crossed my mind. He had randomly picked up a small rock and discovered a quartz crystal under the dusty surface. His eyes grew large and a smile broke out on his face, and as he clutched his little treasure, he headed down the trail with new energy.

Like Kyle bending down to pick up that rock, we made an unexpected and enchanting discovery on our way to Sedona that renewed our energy. I should be careful when talking about “energy” in the context of Sedona, however, because I don’t want to be mistaken for one of the New Age crystal-gazers who are drawn to Sedona’s red rocks and attest to the power of  “energy vortexes,” which supposedly spiral around certain points on the landscape and resonate good vibes. Then again, I did feel particularly good while there, so who knows whether I felt the vibes of a vortex or a placebo effect or just a buzz from a beer?

We met the Flintstones and had a yabba-dabba-doo-dah time.

Certainly our slightly addled states of mind upon entering Sedona primed us for fun and come-what-may adventure. We had no expectations, no plans, save for a last-minute booking at a hotel. We had decided only about a week prior to go there for a couple of nights in lieu of a detour to Vegas, our forethought limited to, “It’s only 30 miles south of Flagstaff? Might as well check it out, I heard it’s nice.” We had spent the night outside the Grand Canyon in the fleabag Red Feather Lodge, which is notable for its very un-P.C. retro Indian Brave motto and its inedible breakfast buffet offerings. (But, they take dogs — the only motel in the area to do so.) I was disoriented from insomnia and the belated discovery that we had crossed a time zone and gained an hour. Plus, we all felt punchy from a brief stop at the Flintstone Bedrock RV Park, where a two-story-high Fred Flintstone appears like a bad-trip hallucination in an armpit corner of the desert.  At that point, we didn’t know what to expect next.

After our stop at the Bedrock RV park on our way to Sedona, we weren't sure what to expect.

Meandering from Flagstaff on Route 89A, which is a windy road through a forested canyon, Sedona revealed its magic like the dusty treasure in Kyle’s palm. We had a hard time driving because we kept looking up and around to take in the grand sculpture garden that is Sedona’s landscape. Sandstone, carved and polished smooth by water and wind, rose up randomly in lumpy and jagged formations that perched precariously on the canyon’s hillsides, shaped like giant sand-drip castles. Horizontal stripes of color formed by ancient sedimentary layers — from nearly white limestone to black basalt — highlighted the canyon’s red and blond hues.

Sedona at sunrise on one of our early-morning runs.

We passed a sign saying Slide Rock State Park was ahead. Another sign for it mentioned a swimming area. We decided to check it out and change into bathing suits — and I’ll let the photos tell the rest of the story. Suffice to say the kids couldn’t get enough of sliding on those rocks and swimming in the frigid water. At one point one said, “This is better than the Grand Canyon!”

A series of natural pools makes up Slide Rock State Park near Sedona.

Colly takes the plunge.

Kyle slides into the frigid waters at Slide Rock Park.

Then it was time to get settled in Sedona proper — an odd town that’s a bit like Sausalito in the desert (ticky-tacky tourist shops juxtaposed with upscale resorts and artists’ retreats). As luck would have it, we got a room at the dog-friendly and always-booked El Portal, thanks to someone else’s recent cancellation. It bills itself as a boutique “luxury hacienda” with only 12 rooms, each designed differently but all reflecting Sedona’s earthy and artsy aesthetic. The splurge was worth every cent — the lodge was exquisite in terms of comfort and service, and we all kept repeating, “This is so nice.”

Pausing to welcome the new day on the Munds Wagon Trail in Sedona.

We spent the majority of our two days on local trails, running in the morning while the kids slept in and then taking them on hikes before the sun rose too high, then going out again at sunset. Thankfully, Morgan’s broken toe is on the mend and he started running again. We had a spectacular two hours on the Munds Wagon Trail at sunrise. As if the visual feast weren’t fulfilling enough, the wind carried strains of “Amazing Grace” from a wooden flute played somewhere on the rocks by someone also was welcoming the day. With the kids, we explored the West Fork Trail of Oak Creek Canyon, which I learned was made famous by Zane Grey’s 1924 novel The Call of the Canyon (which I hope to read someday now). The kids soaked themselves at the creek crossings and splashed around with other kids who happened to be there on a field trip.

Sedona's Oak Creek Canyon viewed from West Fork Trail.

The book Sedona’s Top 10 Hikes by Dennis Andres was an indispensable guide during our time on the trails.

And now it’s time to end this post abruptly and go to bed to get up early for our flight to Buenos Aires, with a stopover in Miami. We’re in an airport hotel next to LAX. Estoy muy cansada (I’m very tired). Adios!

Colly and Kyle with our luggage checking into the airport hotel tonight. We reduced our luggage to four packs for clothing, one small suitcase for our "mobile office," four carry-on backpacks, one camera bag and one purse.

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2. Glimpsing the Grand Canyon
3. Good “Car-Ma” For Long Car Trips

Are we doing the right thing? And what exactly are we doing, anyway?

When the circumstances and those questions haunt me on a night like this — when I survey our family and our belongings consolidated into a shoebox of a room in a dumpy motel, and I consider our plans (or rather, our lack of planning) in the months ahead — I take solace and find humor in the loose-knit, far-flung network of other families who also decided to uproot their lives and experience a nomadic existence. Their blogs (several of which are linked to our blogroll listed on the right) have become a welcome source of support and socialization.

Most of these families, like us, decided to hit the road to educate their kids, strengthen their connection with one other and re-evaluate their values. It’s not about wanderlust as much as it’s about wandering together and surveying the big picture. I look up from reading their stories and view my night in this forgettable motel in a new light: I am so profoundly glad that all of us are here together, sharing two queen beds that are just two feet apart. All we really need — each other, and our essential stuff — is within arm’s reach.

The Rehm family -- Jason, Angela and Bode -- of BodesWell.org traded their Alameda home (pictured in the background) for a life of travel in their 1971 van this year. (Photo by Aric Crabb, courtesy of the Contra Costa Times)

One blog I got hooked on is BodesWell.org, the story of a couple from Alameda, Angela and Jason Rehm, and their 4-year-old son, Bode, traveling the country in a 1971 VW campervan that Jason restored. On the one hand, we have a lot in common because they’re also from the East Bay, they’re close in age to Morgan and me, and they also departed in mid-August. On the other hand, they’ve chosen an entirely different — and in many ways more difficult — adventure. Keeping their van running is a never-ending challenge. As I follow their mechanical meltdowns and consider how difficult it must be to travel by car with a 4-year-old (as opposed to traveling with older kids, like Colly and Kyle, who are more self-reliant and can entertain each other), I think, How do they do it? They must be brilliant — and slightly insane.

Eager to know more about how — and why — they’re doing it, I conducted a Q&A with Angela via email:

Q: You’ve been traveling in a restored 1971 VW bus with your husband and 4-year-old son for about a month now. What’s been the best part about it?

Angela: Spending time with my family and improving our dynamics together. I stayed home with Bode before the trip, and it wasn’t always easy. I thought we may really be at odds with even more time spent together. But two great things have come from this experience so far: (1) having two parents around more often has made it easier, and Jason and I are learning from each other; and (2) Bode and I really look forward to the days we go off, just the two of us, and explore.

Why did you both decide to embark on this journey now and travel in this way, as opposed to waiting until your son is older, or choosing a more reliable mode of transportation, or choosing fewer destinations and staying put in one place longer?

My husband is a VW enthusiast and has always wanted a van. Once he began restoring one, I think he wanted to utilize it. He’d also been doing some soul searching and decided he wanted to spend some more time with his family. This trip was his idea, and I thought he was crazy at first. But the more we talked about it, the more sense it made. I was getting a little bored as a stay-at-home mom. The economy also had something to do with it. I wasn’t working, and wasn’t sure I’d be able to find a job in the next year. Why not embark on an adventure? Maybe I’ll have more options later.

Also, Bode will be starting school in a year, so we thought it was good timing before we get locked into school routines for the next 12 years. After reading your blog, I’m inspired, and hope we can continue to travel. We both love travel. The camper van provides us a mini-home, so although we’re constantly on the move, there is a sense of normalcy. Although it isn’t always easy with a kid, it sure is exciting!

What’s been most challenging?

New rules. On the road, different places have different rules. Bode is trying to test the rules. Also, when in difficult situations, we’ve broken the rules to make it easier on ourselves. Of course that comes back to bite us. For example, in trying to keep Bode still while broken down on the side of the road, we gave him some soda. He’s asked for some every day since.

Bode likes to test his limits. (Photo courtesy of the Rehms.)

Any regrets?

Not yet! I wish we had more time to create customized storage and better organize the van. There is daily chaos trying to find things and remember where we put them. We are hoping when we visit family around Thanksgiving we might have time to do this. Of course, we may have it figured out by then.

How about homesickness?

We miss our friends. Bode talks about his friends a little but he hasn’t shown signs of homesickness. We make a special effort every day to take him somewhere to play with other kids and burn off some energy. I miss having the time to check in with my girlfriends, but I’m using Facebook much more than I did before and it is a great way to keep up with everyone.

How do you think this road trip is changing you personally?

I asked Jason about this question, and he said “Less Reality TV”. It was a joke, but I think it rings true. Less distractions, more living. I’m happier, and my family is too. It certainly isn’t for everyone, but if you can find what makes you happy even if it isn’t easy, do it!

And how do you think it’s changing all of you as a family?

Our expectations of where our lives are headed have changed – in a good way. I think we’re all seeing things in a different way. Also, relying on advice and help from others has been a big wake up call about how good people really are. I hope Bode learns some great life lessons along the way, even if he doesn’t remember the specifics.

Any predictions about how things will go and how you’ll feel about the trip over the next 6 – 12 months?

I’m hoping things will continue to get easier. I’m sure it won’t all be easy, but after blowing the engine during our first month, I’m sure we can handle whatever is thrown our way. We are all excited about spending a warm winter in Mexico, learning the language and doing volunteer work.

Have you considered changing your mind and returning home?

We leased our house for a year, so there is no going back. We have friends and family all over the US and could stay with them should the going get rough. Before we embarked, we also discussed taking mini-vacations from our vacation, flying to visit people or going to Europe for a few weeks. So far so good, though. We haven’t felt the need to bail out.

What advice do you have for others considering extended travel with their spouse/partner — what are some things to consider and discuss before beginning the trip?

Make sure you travel well together. Jason and I have taken several extended trips together and have the same idea regarding what we want to do, see and accomplish.  We all have a great sense of adventure and want to get out and see the world. We work well as a team when traveling, almost more so than at home.

What advice do you have for parents considering extended car travel with a young child?

Be flexible. We don’t always get as far as we like, or do the things we would have done before kids. But, it is really great to not be in a hurry and to have these experiences together. And, don’t pack all the toys and distractions — they don’t need them when every day is different.

Do you have any motto or quote about your journey or approach to life that you want to share?

Have fun.

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1. “Home”schooling So Far
2. “Back to School” Becomes “Leave to Learn”
3. Good “Car-Ma” For Long Car Trips

We took time to stop at parks, like this one in Fallon, NV. The kids were delighted to find rusting and not-entirely-safe playground equipment from a previous generation. Colly forgot the word for "merry-go-round," since she so rarely sees one, and said, "They have one of those tables that spins!"

The four of us plus the dog just drove 1100 miles from Northern California to Southwestern Colorado, and along the way we avoided family feuds and never resorted to Happy Meal bribery (as in, “If you can be patient until the next town, then we’ll stop at McDonald’s”). The kids agreed it was one of the “funnest” long car trips in recent memory, and they didn’t seem to mind that we had no DVDs, no video games and limited personal space in the tightly packed Subaru Outback wagon. Here’s what I learned or was reminded of regarding car travel with kids as we passed the miles:

• Take time to get there. We divided the trip into 3 days and 2 nights, even though it can be done pretty easily with just one overnight. Arriving at our midway destinations with time to spare allowed the kids to swim in the motel pool and play at local parks.
• Share the music and listen together. We all have our own IPods and could have driven with earbuds firmly implanted, in our own little worlds. Not that there’s anything wrong with that for some of the time, but we chose to listen to one IPod at a time (trading off between the kids’ playlists and ours) and played it through the car stereo for all to hear. The upside: the conversation kept going, and the kids were happy that we were willing to listen to their music.
• Let the kids pack easy reading that they truly want to read. Colly indulged in magazines like Tiger Beat and QuizFest, while Kyle devoured the Bone graphic novel series. They ended up reading magazines and comics together for literally hours, quizzing one another on topics such as “Are you a JoBro genius?” and “Who would you be at Hogwarts?”
• Let them be bored. My impulse is to hand kids things to do and offer suggestions upon hearing the first complaint.  That might be necessary with toddlers and little kids, but for school-age kids, it’s worth holding back to see what the silence and squirminess produce. Their imaginations kicked in, as when one asked the other, “Wanna play half-and-half?” “Half-and-half” is a game they made up by drawing an outline of something, such as a person or house, then folding the paper in half down the middle of the drawing and taking turns decorating half the picture without knowing how the other person was decorating the other half.
• When kids ask questions about the surroundings, answer with, “What do you think?” or “Why do you think it’s that way?” When we were on a stretch of Highway 50, for example, we pointed out a sign indicating it was part of the old Pony Express, and they both asked, “What’s the Pony Express?” (I couldn’t believe they didn’t know or had forgotten.) We had them guess as to what it might be and then stopped for lunch at a diner filled with Pony Express memorabilia so they could figure it out.
• Don’t assume kids have to have DVDs or video games to fill the time on long trips. We didn’t even pack audio books this time (though in the past we’ve enjoyed listening to audio books together).
  

  Limited laptop time: Here, the kids were messing around with the Mac's Photo Booth.

  The only electronic games the kids played, for short periods of time, were chess and Photo Booth on my laptop or on Morgan’s IPhone.

• Get in the back and play with the kids. I sometimes squeezed into the middle back seat, in between them, so the three of us could play Hangman and Thumb Wars.
• Anticipate and accept moodiness and arguments. Trying to mediate sibling rivalry is a no-win prospect — a simple “I trust you both can work it out” works almost every time — since 9 times out of 10 the fight is at least in part a competition for parental attention. When one person seems distant or grumpy, don’t try to reel them in by repeatedly asking what’s wrong or demanding to know what they’re thinking. Let them start talking if they feel like it.  I was reminded on this road trip that moods change like the landscape and are best simply observed.
• Pack a “last resort” toy or book for each kid that can be pulled out as a surprise if the going gets really rough. Anything by Klutz is a good bet. I tucked away two Klutz books in my backpack but never had to pull them out. When we got to Colorado and the car trip was over, I gave them to the kids as surprise thank-you gifts for being good travelers.

Got any other ideas for happy family car trips? Please share them in the comments below. And enjoy this sampling of the dozens of Photo Booth creations from our back seat:

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All packed up and ready to go. Goodbye, home!

“Why are you crying, Mom?” Kyle asked this morning as I pulled away from my next-door neighbor’s hug. “Are you sad or happy?”

I thought about what had unleashed the tears: the final walk through our bedroom, where the hardwood floors echoed from emptiness because nearly everything is in storage. Then the last good-byes. It hit me that I will miss our home and neighborhood terribly. It also hit me that everything we had planned during the past six months had come down to this moment, and all the work and difficult decisions had made us ready to go — and we really, finally were ready to go — so I was crying tears of relief. And also, I was indeed happy that at this crossroads in our lives, when a great deal is transitioning personally and professionally, we had chosen to go in a direction that Morgan and I believe will keep changing us for the better even after the trip is over.

“Both,” I finally answered.

“Well,” Kyle said, “if you’re sad and happy, that makes you sappy.”

I am sappy, so much so that the family began mocking my sentimentality last week. “This is the last time we’re going to Crogan’s,” I said the other night as we approached a favorite pub. “Awww,” said Colly, her voice dripping with pity, “and this is the last time we’re touching this crosswalk button!”

“The last time” became a running joke until Morgan got the last word on our final morning at home. He marched to the bathroom after coffee and Cheerios and proclaimed, “This is the last dump!”

Over PB&Js on paper plates, Morgan and I held a meeting in our kitchen to determine how to pare down and securely pack essential items such as passports, credit cards, cords and plugs.

I cleaned out every closet and drawer, handled the logistics of turning the house over to tenants, and made final decisions about what to pack and how to make it fit. The kids bounced around friends’ homes and perhaps wondered why Mom was letting them eat so much ice cream, watch so much TV and play so much Wii (on their friends’ Wiis, that is. We don’t have one. My philosophy last week: Let them enjoy time with friends to the fullest, and the more they can take care of themselves, the better.)

Stuff in storage.

We’re planning to go away for just 11 months, more or less, and yet … who knows? Anything can happen, which is why tears of anxiety contributed to the crying. Allow me to linger and prolong this goodbye once more by digressing to something that might seem a tad off topic. Let’s talk about the subjunctive tense in Spanish, okay? I like the subjunctive because it acknowledges the inherent uncertainty of circumstances. If you use the subjunctive when you’re supposed to (as is the case when you ask someone to do something, or you express a hope or desire), then you’re essentially admitting that you don’t have control over a situation. You’d like it to be a certain way, and you think it might likely happen that way, but you really can’t say for sure. Cuando ( “when”) triggers the use of the subjunctive, as in, Cuando volvamos a Piedmont … ( “When we return to Piedmont …”). Changing just one vowel (volvamos instead of volvemos) speaks volumes. It means we can’t be sure of our return.

All the stuff we're taking. (It includes extra stuff for the dog and Colorado. We'll lighten the load when we go abroad.)

So we pulled out of the driveway and headed toward Colorado (first to my brother’s in Telluride, then to Boulder), where we’ll be until we go abroad in early October. I had anticipated a potentially awkward silence in the car, as the four of us worked through feelings. (Perhaps I should say “five of us” since Teddy the dog, who’s traveling with us until we go to Argentina, seemed extra clingy and concerned). I purposely held back from trying to fill the silence, and I refrained from suggesting that the kids do anything in particular. I vowed, starting today, to be more of an equal and less of a manager in our foursome.

Teddy didn't want to be left behind!

We had gone scarcely a half hour, over the Benicia Bridge, when Kyle asked how far we had to go. I stopped myself from telling him the answer, passed a map to the back seat and said, “Here, see if you can find where we are now, and then find Highway 80 to 50.” Colly and Kyle unfolded the paper and became confused but started laughing, as if they couldn’t fathom the inefficiency and antiquity of tangled lines on folded paper in an age of Google maps. Again, I stopped myself from “helping.” I listened to them work together to figure it out, and as I closed my eyes while Morgan drove, I thought, “This is going to be good.”

I knew our first stop could set the tone for the first leg of the trip by virtue of it being the first stop. The old debate re-emerged: Taco Bell or McDonald’s? I didn’t chime in because to object would make them want it more. Kyle said he felt carsick. Morgan said he’d pull off at the next exit. We got off in Newcastle (just south of Auburn) and hung a left at a tricky intersection, inadvertently passing the cluster of gas stations and fast food. We got on a side street headed who knows where. And then we arrived on Main Street, where a line of 19th-century fruit packing sheds stood near the railroad tracks. The long rectangular buildings looked like giant boarded-up chicken coops with weathered wooden sidewalks. There was a junk emporium (its sign really advertised “Junk!”) that conveyed unwarranted cheerfulness, and a shuttered gelato stand that expressed dashed optimism. In between them stood the Newcastle Cheese Shop & Deli, “Home of the Rat Trap Sandwich.” Eat there? Hell, yes!

Colly at our first stop: The Newcastle Cheese Shop & Deli, "Home of The Rat Trap Sandwich."

We did not order The Rat Trap (a sandwich with a sampling of every kind of meat and cheese). But we did get some of the freshest, largest, most satisfying deli sandwiches on crusty bread that I have tasted in recent memory. I closed my eyes again as Morgan drove and thought once more, “This is going to be good.”

Now we’re in Fallon, Nevada, at a dog-friendly Holiday Inn Express. We didn’t want to drive very far the first day because nobody felt up for it. We plan to take Hwy 50 to Colorado and arrive in Telluride on Monday.

One final thought: What helped make the past couple of weeks manageable and so memorable were certain friends who took time out of their routines to cook us dinner, have us over for lunch, watch our kids and run favorite trails with me. You know who you are, and I’ll miss you!

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My "roads scholars" pictured earlier this summer near Tahoe.

I know it’s kind of crazy, because we’ll encounter extraordinary educational opportunities at every turn. Plus, most wise people recognize that learning takes place all the time and is more apt to blossom outside the confines of a classroom. So why the worry and resistance to the idea of homeschooling?

At the root is my fear of being inadequate as a teacher, and anxiety that my kids won’t “keep up” with their peers. My knee-jerk response to anxiety is to try to control the circumstances and outcomes; hence, I got our school supplies in place, got the kids working on academic review workbooks, and envisioned us sitting around a table starting a half-day, five-day-a-week schooling routine on the same day their real school back home reopens (August 26). In other words, I felt determined to replicate their 3rd- and 6th-grade classroom experience during travel.

Thank goodness I had an epiphany (or more of a “well, duh” moment) that my approach might cause us to miss a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for us all to learn in a different, potentially better way. I came across information and encouragement, highlighted below, that has made me less stressed, less rigid and much more excited about our adventure in “roadschooling.”

First, some background on how “school” will work for our family this year: We are fortunate to be in a high-quality public school district that granted both kids independent study contracts for the school year. Kyle has a 3rd-grade teacher assigned to him from his elementary school, and Colly has a 6th-grade teacher assigned to her from the middle school. Last spring, we all met and devised a plan for the coming year. (This was fairly simple because, as luck would have it, another local family did this same thing the previous year and paved the way for us to follow their example.)

Under the contract, the kids will follow the core curriculum, communicate with their teacher approximately once a week via email and periodically turn in a sampling of work — enough homework and special projects so that the teacher can see the child is following the program and meeting the standards. It’s up to Morgan and me to do the bulk of instruction and review their work. We see it as a win-win: our kids get an educational plan designed to meet grade-level standards, plus a teacher to help them long-distance. They also get to feel like they’re still a part of their school. We parents get the structure of the curriculum and expertise of its teachers, and we avoid the bureaucratic and legal hurdles many homeschooling parents face when they pull their kids out of school. The school district, meanwhile, gets the daily attendance money from the state that it would otherwise lose if our kids un-enrolled; plus, the district gets two kids who will re-enter school the following year more likely to succeed, having followed the school’s program during their year away.

Kyle's summer workbook (click for amazon link). Colly did the Grade 5 - 6 one.

Sounds great, doesn’t it? My doubts crept in, however, when I grappled with how and when to teach my kids. As a warm-up, I bought them each workbooks in the Summer Bridge Activities series to review the basics they learned the previous school year, and to get us all used to “doing school” at home. The workbooks themselves are quite good — a nice mix of language arts, math, science and history, formatted in a manageable “daily dose.”

But after about a week, our workbook routine began to devolve from enthusiastic and fruitful (concepts reviewed, discussions sparked) to laborious and futile (kids groaning and rolling eyes while saying, “Do I have to?” … me hovering and overly correcting their work, repeating “Just get it done”). I see in hindsight I was too authoritative about determining when they should work during the day, and I set arbitrary deadlines for when they should complete the lessons. I beat myself up: In a mere matter of weeks, I made them view academic work as a chore and to dread having me as their teacher.

I took a deep breath, cut myself slack and tried to open my mind. (Easier said than done!) Here is some of the advice that helped me regroup and take a fresh approach to this year of schooling:

• Have confidence that the kids will learn not only what they’re “supposed to” learn, but immeasurably more; and that what they learn on the road and through their own volition is more likely to stick and positively shape them. This point is emphasized by homeschooling experts such as Helen Hegener, who wrote that her children taught her to “relax and trust that learning was always happening, with or without my help, and the learning that happened without my assistance was much more likely to be useful and relevant.” I also heard this point made by other round-the-world blogging families such as The Andruses of Utah, who wrote: “On the road, school is a round-the-clock, ever-changing experience, a 7-day-a-week field trip that teaches them more about the world and themselves than they could ever learn at home.”
• Try not to always measure their progress and productivity by traditional, quantitative means (e.g. minutes spent reading, number of answers correct), and don’t keep comparing them to their peers back home; rather, embrace this chance to let them learn individually and independently, more in tune with their own pace and learning style. Measure their success as much by the spirit of the process as by the end result. The confidence and love of learning they gain will pay off in the long run. I know this advice is hard for me to follow, so I’ll re-read those lines the next time I grow impatient by how long it takes my daughter to do a page of math problems or exasperated by how many seemingly simple words my son misspells in a paragraph. If she “gets it” and feels good about it, that’s great, no matter how long it takes; if he has bright thoughts and clever word choices driving those misspellings, then that’s terrific.
• Stop thinking of myself as a teacher who can dump facts into my kids’ heads, as if I could program them to download information at my command. It helps me to recall a moment when we were in the Smithsonian last Spring Break. The kids kept wanting to run off and see something that caught their eye. Their voices bubbled with interest, “Look, Mom, check this out!” But instead, I held them back; I said, “No, wait, come here and listen to this,” and I would proceed to read out loud each exhibit’s caption. They grew bored and stopped listening to my lectures. Then they lost their eagerness to run and explore other exhibits — they just wanted to run away from me. It’s an all-too-typical example of how I can be overly controlling and fall into power struggles with the kids. On this trip, I’ll try to follow their lead more often, and to think of myself as a student alongside them, hopefully sharing and supporting their curiosity.
• Be flexible with expectations and scheduling so that we can learn by exploring our surroundings, and by letting the kids follow their natural interests. (See point above.) How silly it would be to say “no” if the kids wanted to take a special hike or see a performance one weekday morning because we set a schedule to get through a textbook chapter during that time slot.
• Try to practice the principles of Positive Discipline by Jane Nelsen. This involves using encouragement and abiding by the belief that kids do well when they feel well; balancing kindness and firmness; coming up with solutions together to resolve conflict instead of threatening consequences; and letting children take risks, do things on their own and learn from mistakes. This book is one of the best and most effective parenting books I ever read. But it’s counter-intuitive to the way I’ve always done things, so I need to re-read it and keep working on it.
  

  One of my favorite parenting books, which helps with teaching too (click for amazon link).

We’re taking risks and have lots to learn. I’m sure we’ll make mistakes all along the way. But I’m going to try to view that as cause for celebration, not concern.

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Every day I try to pack a little and end up making a mess. Take the bathroom cabinet, for example.

On it rests a first aid and toiletry checklist, divided into columns of items we’ll need every day and things we’ll need only in case of illness, and further subdivided into items for  individual family members. The deep cabinet holds junk to throw away (e.g. smeared Halloween makeup, sticky cough syrup bottles with a quarter-inch of liquid, absurdly thick and long pads sent home from the hospital after childbirth). But what about all those lotions and cosmetics — what will I really need? Moisturizer and bug spray for Colorado camping, a certain hair clip and lipstick for Barcelona … should we take ibuprofen and acetaminophen, both the adult and pediatric kinds?  What about the unopened ipecac purchased when the kids were babies? They managed to avoid accidental poisoning during the past decade, but who’s to say they won’t eat a bad berry when we’re in the boonies of Patagonia, and then what would I do? The mind flirts with worst-case scenarios — from swine flu to chopped-off fingers and snakebites — and pretty soon I’m sitting on the toilet, bent forward and clutching my stomach while further puzzling all the possibilities revealed by the half-emptied cabinet drawers, until I exit the bathroom and vow to deal with it later.

At times like that, it helps to have a guide. I have discovered several and want to recommend a couple here (more recommendations to come in future postings):

Onebag.com, “The Art and Science of Traveling Light” — my twentysomething nephew who recently trekked around India and China turned me onto this site. It’s built around the belief that you can go anywhere, for an indefinite amount of time, with a single carry-on bag — a philosophy more suited to solo travelers than families with young children, but extremely useful and inspirational nonetheless. Thanks to this site, we have downsized the number and changed the type of bags we plan to take.

We used to pull along two big rectangular bags on wheels — one for Morgan and me, a slightly smaller one for the kids — plus a third duffle loaded with shoes and bulky items. The 28-inch Tumi Alpha that Morgan and I shared retails for $950 and weighs 16 pounds empty. Often we would end up lugging the thing over stairs and curbs rather than wheeling it, and then paying an oversize-bag fee because it’s so heavy. After spending time on onebag.com and realizing how much weight a wheel frame adds to luggage, we decided to use smaller convertible packs. We also decided each child should be responsible for his or her own bag and therefore be able to carry it.

Morgan and I each bought one of these Osprey Porter 65 convertible packs (click on link to purchase). We're limiting the clothing we bring abroad to what we can carry on our backs.

After a lot of research and a trip to to REI, we settled on four from Osprey — two Porter 65s for Morgan and me, a smaller Porter 46 for Colly and a Sojourn 40 for Kyle (a small pack with wheels — he’s still too small to carry a pack of significant size). My new Osprey Porter weighs 3 lbs., 5 oz., costs $129, is small enough for carry-on and converts to a backpack. We’ll check all four of our packs while flying because we need to carry on these five other bags: a small suitcase that will hold school supplies, technical equipment, toiletries and Morgan’s laptop; my daypack that doubles as a purse and holds my laptop; Morgan’s daypack with his camera; and a small pack for each kid.

So, it comes down to this: We are challenging ourselves to fit all our stuff for nearly a year into just 4 packs, 1 carry-on-sized suitcase and 4 daypacks. (The first leg of our trip we’ll bring more stuff, since we’re driving to Colorado and taking along gear for camping, extra grubby clothes and the dog — but we had to think ahead to pare down for going abroad in early October.)

An essential guide for a year away (click to view on Amazon).

The Family Sabbatical Handbook: The Budget Guide to Living Abroad with Your Family by Elisa Bernick (The Intrepid Traveler, 2007) — I read this book cover to cover and marked many pages with Post-Its for easy reference. Her checklists are essential and her low-budget but highly fulfilling lifestyle is inspirational. All four of us took her advice to list the “three most important things” we would want with us while traveling — those comfort items and quirky things we wouldn’t want to do without. The exercise made us realize how little beyond money, plane tickets, passports and some medicine we really need. (It also made me realize we sound like an ad for Apple, which we don’t mean to be!)

Morgan’s three things: Iphone (which has an app that lets him read books loaded onto his Kindle), camera and running shoes.

Colly’s three things: Ipod, sketchpad with pencil (if Morgan can count his IPhone with Kindle as one, she can count the paper plus pencil as one!) and her favorite red Fred T-shirt.

Kyle’s three things: Ipod, sketchpad with pencil, and a small assortment of Star Wars Legos.

And mine: MacBook laptop, running shoes and my running log. The last item doubles as a diary; it’s a small calendar in booklet form I buy annually and have kept since 1994. Each day I jot down a sentence or two not only about miles run but also about mood, weather and whereabouts. Thumbing through past years and making an entry each day is my way of staying grounded and keeping track of how far I’ve come. It’s my life in shorthand, and I know I’ll want to preserve the 2009-10 editions.

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Then, life took a turn. Or you could say my husband Morgan and I both switched off the autopilot and had one of those “blink” moments where we knew what we needed to do, and it felt strangely right. Instead of hiring a decorator and moving furniture around, we researched countries on five continents, purchased One World airline tickets to sixteen destinations, developed an independent study plan for our daughter and son, and found tenants to rent our house for at least 10 months.

We're packing up and leaving our home sweet home in Piedmont.

Now it’s summer — the kids just got out of school — and my stomach feels knotted when I consider the two months left until our departure, which is August 15 (give or take a day). The details to debate and arrangements to make leave me short tempered and quick to cry, like an amped-up wedding planner in her third trimester of pregnancy.

Between now and August, we will clean out closets, pack away personal belongings and repair miscellaneous broken things. We’ll organize finances and copy important documents, and plan and scan the kids’ lessons for their 3rd and 6th grade curriculum. We’ll go to the dentist, get shorter-than-usual haircuts and fill prescriptions for things like Cipro. We will synch and streamline our laptops and cameras, untangle and condense all the cords that go with them, and smartly pack our suitcases with multipurpose, easy-care outfits that we will find time to buy.

We’ll try not to drink too much when we throw a goodbye party, and try not to cry when we give our dog to my in-laws. And in my free time, I will practice Spanish, learn new software and read novels set in countries we’re visiting.

(If I say all this like I believe it, perhaps it will increase the chance of these things actually getting done.)

People keep asking where we’re going, which is easy to answer (check out our map) — and in some ways not as relevant as it may seem. Going anywhere is the point. We will try to follow advice we read somewhere that travel, to be meaningful, should be less about where you go and more about what you do and how you interact with the people and environment wherever you find yourselves. The more interesting question — what we’re still sorting out — may be, how did we get to this point? As David Elliot Cohen described in his book One Year Off, it’s one thing to dream about chucking it all and going around the world; it’s quite another thing to actually decide to do it and get ready — and not chicken out before you go.

On some level, nearly everything we’ve been through and all that has shaped us for as long as we’ve been together (nearly 25 years) pointed us in this direction. On February 10, we sent an email to family and friends with the lofty subject line, “big news — a dream is coming true.” It read in part: “For a number of reasons, we have decided to travel for an entire academic year, August ’09 through summer 2010. Several factors make this the best and most practical year to do it with the kids. …We feel strongly we want to get out of Piedmont, broaden our perspectives, experience adventure and have a year of learning on the road — quasi-homeschooling — before the kids are too old.  … The itinerary is a work in progress; we’re choosing a number of destinations where we would like to get to know the community. … We’re going to spend a lot of our savings and offset some expenses by renting the house. As you might imagine, this trip is linked to potentially big changes in Morgan’s career and his position at the firm. … We’ve both thought long and hard about the concept sometimes called ‘repotting’ — of needing to uproot, replenish and settle into new circumstances enriched by that change — and his view is, if not now, then when?”

My schedule would be full enough without this trip preparation; I need to transport the kids to summer camps, plan meals and cook, do laundry, pay bills, run, walk the dog, volunteer and write. I thought that making lists would foster a greater sense of control and well being. Instead, more often than not, I wake between 3 and 4 a.m. envisioning cross-referenced and overlapping lists with bulleted points that feel like they’re firing at my brain:

• the big to-do list on my laptop’s calendar (“review insurance and get traveler’s ins.” … “prep for renters — give away old stuff, transfer utilities, make repairs, etc” … “clean out files and destroy old docs” … “make evite for party” …)
• the daily to-do list on my laptop e-sticky note (“dog to vet” … “set phone conf with CPA” … “stove repair” … “Spanish lesson, tengo que estudiar!“)
• the kids’ schooling list (“get access to online versions of textbooks” … “relearn 6th grade math” … “school supplies??” …)
• the packing list, with cross-ref’ed categories (“computers/photography/electronic stuff” … “clothing” … “meds & first aid” … “other toiletries” …)

Enough already. (Basta ya.) As Morgan said recently, “We’ve got the lists down; now we have to start checking things off.” I remind myself of what he is going through, which gives me a kick in the pants to get stuff done. He is dealing with complicated issues at the small law firm where he is a partner, and he must navigate a transition that is difficult for all involved.

It could be that I’m obsessing about the lists to divert my attention away from underlying fears about this transition and the impending departure from our comfort zone. I admit it: I crave control, follow routines and fear flying. Which is why this trip may be the hardest and most important thing I’ve ever done.

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