I’m always doing that: thinking of what we were doing this time last year. I’m also looking ahead and feeling anxious — excited, but nervous — about what we’ll be doing one year from now.

People ask all the time, “How are you doing? All settled back in?” That’s tough to answer. I usually say, “We’re doing well but still transitioning. We’re back home but not exactly settled.”

I wish I could either blog about new destinations or write a nice, tidy epilogue to the story of our trip. But we don’t have any noteworthy travel planned, and the story of what the trip meant and how it changed us is still developing.

So I want to share what we’re up to these days, and then, with some sadness and until further notice, mothball this blog. I hope the day will come when I have reason to give it a makeover and launch an encore edition.

Still having fun: Last week, Morgan and I got into the spirit of an '80s-prom theme party.

Morgan and I are working from home together (“work” broadly defined). I love having him here during the day; my concern that we’d clash while trying to be productive under the same roof proved unfounded. He’s in the process of developing ideas and networking with others to secure independent work that combines legal strategy and case preparation with design and multimedia. He’s also more involved in the community and found himself stuffing envelopes the other day for a fundraiser, the only dad in a cluster of moms. I hope he can arrive at something professionally that engages both his intellectual and artistic talents, and that also preserves the flexibility and work-life balance he appreciates so much.

I’m dividing my time writing, volunteering, running and, of course, parenting. I miss homeschooling the kids — not day in and day out, but frequently — and I get inordinately excited when they ask for help with homework, or when I spy an opportunity to enhance their regular lessons in some way. I’m doing a variety of satisfying things volunteering as a parent and an alumna, and I recently began donating time as an editor to help a cool group of women on a project to chronicle working life in America. I’m running a lot and excited about my first 50-mile race this weekend (details in my running blog).

But the main thing I’m working on — the biggest, scariest thing — is a book. A travelogue or a practical guide to long-term family travel would feel fairly manageable to produce, but I’m attempting something more personal (and hence way more difficult): a memoir about adopting a stripped-down, nomadic lifestyle and running around the globe to try to find the peace of mind and passion that kept eluding us back home. It’s about what happened and how we all changed when we took quality time to the extreme and used travel as an extension of therapy to shore up our marriage, bond as a family and re-evaluate our direction in life. Please wish me luck — I’ll need it. I’ve barely started and am hitting the wall in Mile 2 of this marathon.

Morgan and I have “no regrets,” as the tagline to this blog says. We need only look at the photos from the trip, or recognize how we work as equal partners with the kids and function as a foursome in a way we never did before 2009, to say with conviction that the year away changed us for good.

But it’s not easy to give up the status and stability that went with the law firm partnership Morgan relinquished, or to dive naked into the ocean of a book project with no buoy of confidence that it’s a story I can adequately tell — or even if I could, that it would get published. The structure, salary and built-in social network of a regular job tempt us at times, as when we bump into each other in the kitchen midday, dressed as though it were the weekend, and wonder out loud, “What exactly are we doing today — and with the rest of our lives?” But for now we’d rather feel unsettled, in all senses of the word — lacking stability, worried and uneasy, liable to change, not yet paid — than settled back in a routine that was slowly extinguishing him and spoiling me. “Gotta try new things,” as Morgan said repeatedly on the trip.

And how are the kids settling in?

Kyle and Colly, with our dog Teddy, leaving home for the first day of school.

I was so worried about how Colly would manage the transition to 7th grade, given the middle school’s heavy academic load and melodramatic social scene. Imagine going from 6th grade on the road — having one-on-one instruction, no homework, a flexible schedule, a pass-fail grading system, the world as the classroom — to 7th grade at the big middle school, where she sits in classes as one of 25 to 40, has two hours of homework nightly, tests with letter grades weekly, and hundreds of peers who got to know each other during the past year when she was away. Then, imagine having two kneecap dislocations over the summer, which necessitated a complicated surgery during the second week of school. That’s what Colly faced last month — and she responded like a world traveler. She is rising to meet the academic challenges and handling her load with more independence and aplomb than I could have hoped. She’s fitting in socially and developing hobbies, like cooking and film editing, to make up for the fact she’s hobbled by crutches. The love of reading that blossomed during the trip is still blooming — we have to enforce lights-out or she’ll stay up until midnight to finish more chapters.

I wasn’t worried about Kyle’s transition because he loved school in grades K-2 and gets along well with almost anyone, but he had a surprisingly hard time adapting to 4th grade. On a couple of occasions he teared up and his chin quivered with emotion when he asked if I could please homeschool him again. The classroom’s size (27 students), the teacher’s necessary emphasis on rules, and a relentless schedule of back-to-back assignments all combined to shock a boy who grew accustomed to learning at his own pace with individualized instruction and to following his curiosity down paths that deviated from a schedule. So much of his learning last year involved going places and experiencing things, it’s not surprising that he’s happiest with school subjects based on doing and touching: PE, science and instrumental music. He’s adjusting, but it saddens me that he now views school as something to endure. We’re trying to help by giving him a lot of free time at home. Whereas most of his peers do soccer, swim team or flag football nearly every afternoon and their weekends revolve around team games, Kyle does nothing after school but skateboarding, guitar, reading and homework.

As a family, we’re not as close as we were during the ten months on the road, but we’re communicating and getting along better than before the trip. We’re cooking a lot more and spending a lot less. The four of us eat together for breakfast and dinner, and we huddle around the TV to watch the shows we’re collectively hooked on (Master Chef, Glee, Project Runway and Modern Family). Morgan is just as likely as I am to pick up the kids, go to the grocery store, and deal with annoying things like plumbing repairs and insurance paperwork — the kinds of things he rarely used to do. I am still the one to pick up the dog’s piles on the lawn, but he mows it with a hand-push mower. (Getting rid of the mow-and-blow crew was one of the things we did to save a bit of money and help the environment.)

I was startled to see pumpkins at a pumpkin patch yesterday because we skipped the autumn season last year; we left Colorado right after the equinox and hit South America at the start of spring. I’m looking forward to buying some pumpkins to decorate our front porch, and to raking the liquid amber’s crimson leaves from our front garden. I’ll look for a pumpkin recipe to bake with Colly during our weekly cooking date. For these reasons and lots more, it’s good to be home — but I nonetheless feel pangs of longing when I flash back to that grocery store in Patagonia, on a day when a surprise spring snowstorm in the Andes foothills frosted blossoms with white. I searched the aisles in vain for canned zapallo to make a pumpkin pie and resorted to dulce de leche instead. This week, on second thought, I think I’ll find a recipe for empanadas.

“Away Together” was about going away together, and about finding a way together as a couple and as a family. Many, many thanks to all of you who were regular readers of this blog. I sometimes felt as if I were writing into a black hole and became convinced that our stories didn’t pass the “who cares?” test, but then your supportive comments came back and boosted my spirits tremendously. So long for now!

Related posts:

1. Playing Around Rotorua
2. “Back to School” Becomes “Leave to Learn”
3. When It Rains…

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

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

Lauterbrunnen

Over the past few days, we’ve glimpsed Switzerland at its prettiest and most poetic (which is such a relief after the stormy sky and mercurial moods detailed in the previous post).

Standing under Staubbach Falls.

The drive from Lucerne to Interlaken revealed alpine beauty that rivals even the Colorado Rockies and New Zealand’s Southern Alps. We checked into a cozy family room in a friendly little hotel, aptly named Hotel Splendid, and immediately headed out to explore before rain returned.

I’ve never seen as many waterfalls as we saw on the drive to Lauterbrunnen, a small town seven miles up the valley from the better-known Interlaken. “Lauter brunnen” means “many fountains” or “loud wells,” and there are 72 of them in and around town.  The waterfalls stream over sharp cliffs colored with alternating shades of dark and light gray, and then they’re swallowed by swaths of forests where the lighter green of new growth contrasts with the darker evergreens.

We stood in a meadow under Lauterbrunnen’s beloved Staubbach Falls, all of us feeling warmed by the sun and awed by the stream of mist floating down in the wind. I thought the moment couldn’t get any better, but then it did, because we saw a little plaque that indicated we once again were following in Goethe’s footsteps. He visited this spot in 1779 and was inspired to write the poem Spirit Song Over the Waters, which we read and discussed right there at the base of the falls until Kyle ran off to chase some sheep. (The next day Kyle wrote in his journal about the beauty of the waterfalls and concluded, “But most of all I love the mountains. They give me ideas for my mind.” I agree!)

After days of rain and indoor time, Kyle was so happy to run around here.

Overall, we really enjoyed Interlaken; I only wish the town could demolish its tacky modern high-rise hotels that look utterly out of place against the charming historic cottages done in quintessential Swiss-German architecture. The town’s original buildings look like they’re lifted from a Hansel and Gretle storybook, all woodsy and decorated with patterned carvings and stenciled paintings.

German is the dominant language in this region, but as is the case everywhere in Switzerland, we heard multiple languages and tasted a variety of cuisines. Our favorite meal was at a surprisingly authentic Mexican restaurant, El Azteca, where the Portuguese twentysomething waiter spoke so many different languages to the diners around us that I finally asked him (in Spanish) how many languages he speaks. He said six, as though it were no big deal (German, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and English)! One thing I love about Switzerland: It has solidified the kids’ desire to study a second language in school, which before this trip they had groaned about as though it would be an endless chore.

A well-marked trail network branches out through the valley, and Morgan and I left the kids alone in the hotel room one morning to run together (which we only do when we feel certain it’s a safe place, with someone we trust at the receptionist desk available to help in case of emergency). We ran a path back toward Lauterbrunnen and once again marveled at the views — until a cloudburst drenched us with rain so freezing that we turned back. Well, the sun was nice while it lasted!

Morgan on our rainy run. No wonder the grass is so green and the waterfalls are so full around here -- it's really wet!

After Interlaken, we crossed over to the French part of Switzerland and settled on the north side of Lake Geneva. We checked into a terrific apartment in the town of Montreux, about a half hour from Lausanne, and rejoiced to be in a rental with a kitchen again. We have stayed in too many hotels recently and therefore celebrated the opportunity to cook simple meals and avoid overpriced restaurants. The apartment overlooks the lake and has a playground in front.

Our apartment building in Montreux isn't terribly pretty ...

... but the view from its balconey sure is.

The kids quickly made friends with three siblings (who are completely trilingual — German, French and English) from the apartment below us. We met their parents, who invited us down for dinner, and it was such a treat to get to meet some locals.

One morning, after the kids hit their schoolbooks for about an hour and a half, we gathered around the laptop to learn about the history of Chateau de Chillon and to read Lord Byron’s poem The Prisoner of Chillon. The castle is just a mile away from the apartment, so we packed a picnic and set off walking along the lakeside trail to spend much of the afternoon exploring the medieval masterpiece. We’ve visited many castles along the way, but this was the best restored and had wonderful displays enhanced with period furniture and artifacts.

Morgan called up, "Rapunzel, Rapunzel!" when he took this shot of me in one of Chillon's towers.

Byron’s words — written in 1816 after he imagined how the prisoner Bonivard must have felt during his six years chained to a pillar there during the 1530s — came to life as we poked around the dungeon. Morgan excerpted lines from the poem for captions to some of the photos in this slideshow (click the play button, then the “full screen” icon in the bottom right corner, then the “show info” tab in the upper right corner to read them).

This is turning out to be a great week not only for seeing Switzerland, but also for homeschooling. I’ve been meaning to write a followup to our early post on homeschooling, since families planning similar long-term trips have been asking about how we do it, how many hours a day the kids spend on school, and that sort of thing. I’ll try to write it soon, but suffice to say that their learning is intertwined with travel more than ever and is difficult to quantify because learning happens all the time, wherever we go. We managed to strike what feels like a good balance between sitting indoors and working through their core curriculum, and going outside to learn more spontaneously and experientially.

Speaking of which, right now we’re headed to the Musee d’Alimentarium, a food museum in neighboring Vevey that explores the history and politics of food production as well as the science of nutrition and food digestion. It may not inspire poetry, but likely will be food for thought!

A statue of Charlie Chaplin gazes at a giant fork in the water outside Vevey's food museum. As we often say during this trip, "That's something you don't see every day."

Related posts:

1. Some Days Are Like That, Even In Switzerland
2. When It Rains…
3. Playing Around Rotorua

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

Getting to Venice from Rome was one of those days, at times completely nutty but oddly fitting with our new sense of normal.

When we woke Colly and Kyle up early with the phrase, “It’s a travel day,” they knew to pack, check under beds, and look for chargers and adapters left in outlets. We reminded them to eat a good breakfast since we’re not sure where or when lunch would be, and brush teeth quickly so we could pack the toiletry bag. The Rome apartment was the 63rd place we’ve unpacked and slept in since leaving home August 15, so they knew the drill.

Morgan and I packed up this bedroom in our Rome apartment.

We had to put the place back in order before the apartment owner came by at 8:30 a.m. Checking out of a hotel is what you do on vacation; checking out of an apartment while leading an itinerant life is something else completely. We had to do chores such as dishes and debate what groceries to keep. (I regrettably left behind breakable bottles of olive oil and balsamic, but I crammed leftover breakfast cereal into baggies.) The apartment manager showed up, returned our deposit and made a phone call in Italian to help us figure out how to check into our Venice place. The clock was ticking to catch our 9:45 train, so I enlisted the kids to guard our luggage in the lobby while Morgan finished the checkout and I went in search of a cab.

I walked six blocks toward the Coliseum to find a taxi queue, armed with only an Italian phrase book to explain that I would need the driver to pick up our family and then go to the station. The cabs were lined up as expected, but the first few were too small to transport all of us and our stuff. I approached a larger car that was fourth in the row, knocked on the window and said, Buongiorno, parla inglese per favore? He said the Italian version of “not really,” so I proceeded to use mostly Spanish, adding an “eh” sound on the ends of words.

The driver understood but then had to get out and exchange words with each of the drivers ahead of him so there would be no hard feelings that he was getting out of line. They exchanged lots of words — they seemed to be talking about family and sports — but finally we got on our way and I directed him back to where Morgan, the kids and our bags were waiting on the curb. We piled in and drove ten minutes, which cost 8 euros according to the meter, but the driver said in English, “No, it’s 12 because you have luggage.” We rolled our eyes and forked over 12.

At the station, multiple doors led to dozens of platforms, all of them crowded and everyone rushing. We had about 20 minutes to get our tickets and find our train. Morgan located an electronic ticket window, but it was broken; he found another, which was broken too. I waited with the kids and studied the train schedule to find our platform while Morgan found a third ticket dispenser that worked. Then he discovered the system had no record of the reservation that we made online three days earlier. With only 15 minutes left until departure, he had to go through the whole process of buying four seats, not knowing if they were still available or if we’d be able to sit together.

Colly and Kyle, meanwhile, stood by with a look they’ve developed this year: a very adult-looking blank expression, honed through myriad security lines and customs interrogations, that indicates they’ve switched to autopilot and are ready to cope with whatever happens next. At one point Kyle did a dramatic hyperventilating thing and said in double time, “I’m scared! We’ll miss our train! What’ll we do!” and for a second I thought his head might spin around, but then just as quickly he slipped back into a deal-with-it mode.

I cheered when Morgan pulled a piece of paper from the machine. Then we all rushed, as best as we could, to a platform half the station away. We found our train, but then we had to find the car with our seats. Once we found the right car, we encountered an aisle jam-packed with people and luggage. Our seats were toward the other end, so we told the kids to squeeze through and hold them for us while we figured out how to load and store our four packs and the heavy black rolling suitcase (the one we nicknamed “the tick” because it’s always bloated with schoolbooks and equipment and is such a pain).

We found ourselves stuck at the doorway, surrounded by people and struggling with bags. Morgan hopped off, ran down the platform to the car’s other door and ran back to tell me there was storage space down there. He told me to get the bags off and help him take them down to the other end. I looked at him, mildly aware of my armpit sweat soaking through my shirt, and tried to keep my voice calm as I said, “We are not stepping off this train when our children are seated in the middle and it’s leaving any second.”

Fine, he told me, we’ll split the difference; he hopped off again with as many bags as he could carry while I stayed and slowly maneuvered the rest of our stuff. In a minute, I looked down the aisle and saw him approaching me. Bag by bag, we squeezed past other travelers, took our seats with the kids and exhaled. “That was interesting,” Morgan summed up.

Victory! We made it on the train, got seats and found a place to stash our bags.

I abandoned my earlier good intention of homeschooling on the three-hour train ride because I wanted to zone out and figured the kids did, too. Colly pulled out her laptop and began creating a spoof Power Point presentation with clipart. Kyle watched The Simpsons on his iPod and read a chapter of Bridge to Terabithia. Pretty soon they were both sound asleep, and when they woke up at the Venice station, we realized we were famished.

Mmmmm ... train station pizza hits the spot.

We got off the train and headed for the station’s pizza bar. Colly and Kyle finished their slices and asked for gelato, so Morgan fished out some euros and told them they could have some if they figured out how to order it themselves. They wandered off on their own, out of sight — such is the trust, or foolish lack of concern, that we have developed after eight months on the road — and they came back grinning with scoops of stracciatella, the Italian version of chocolate chip ice cream. “Did you say grazie?” I asked, and Colly said, “Of course” with a “duh, Mom” tone, as though mildly insulted to be reminded to attempt to speak the language.

From there, it was just a few steps to the water taxi hub where we took in our first dazzling view of Venice. “Wow!” we all said, and just stood there, no longer in any hurry. This, I explained to the kids, is a place where not much has really changed over the centuries. Look, a city with no cars! Look, water lapping at the front doors! Look, buildings all built before Columbus even set sail! “Wow!” we all said again.

We pulled out the iPhone, which carried an Italian SIM card and local number thanks to Morgan’s cleverness, and called the not-very-helpful apartment manager who gave us baffling directions and told us a security code to punch in the door. Then we had to figure out which canal, boat, ticket and stop to choose. From there, everything progressed by trial and error, a classic case of three-steps-forward-and-two-back: buy four tickets, get on the wrong boat; no, no says the captain, pointing, quello (that one). Off the boat, down the dock, onto another taxi; no, no says another captain, pointing at a ticket machine. Oh, capisco, I get it, we gotta validate our tickets. Off again, fumble with the machine until a stranger takes pity on us and demonstrates the right way to do it. Finally we’re on our way — to where?

On our way down the Gran Canal to find our apartment.

“Um, excuse me,” I asked a couple from Hong Kong who spoke English and held a map of the canal, “can I take a look?” We realized that we had about 12 stops to go.

“You know, most families who come to Venice probably spend months planning the details,” I mentioned to Morgan, “and we’re just making this up as we go.”

We relaxed and soaked in the sights of the gondoliers standing and propelling their beautiful long boats and nodding hello to the water taxi captains who zoomed by in their fancy speedboats with the highly varnished wood sides. There were so many details to observe on all the buildings — so many mossy and sooty reliefs of faces and gargoyles that have looked down on travelers like us for who knows how many centuries. We went along the whole S-shaped Gran Canal before finally arriving at our stop, just past Piazza San Marco.

We heaved our packs on our backs for the last time that day and headed toward an alleyway a couple of bridges away. Around a nondescript corner and behind a gelato shop, we found the apartment front door, and as if by magic, the security code worked. The door opened to another extremely small passageway with nothing but a spiral staircase almost as steep and narrow as a ladder. Feeling like Alice in the rabbit hole but in reverse, I climbed up and braced myself for whatever we’d find on the other side of the next door.

The waterfront where we got off ...

... and the alley where we found it.

The apartment door was oddly decorated with sparkly smoked mirror panels that looked more Vegas than Venician. I opened it, and the first thing I saw was a remodeled bathroom with a large tub. “Oh, this is nice!” I called down to the others who were still navigating the staircase. Then I looked down the hallway to the rooms. “Oh, uh … this is weird!”

I saw a main room with exposed wood beams and antique hardware around the windows that gave a feel of Old Italy — but its orange sofabed and linens looked borrowed from a nursing home. The kitchenette, circa 1975, fit into a closet constructed of fake wood paneling. Then Morgan made the announcement we all have come to dread: “No WiFi, no data port.” Ugh, no Internet, no Skype.

I looked at the oddly oversized, decades-old microwave oven that sat perched like modern art on a tiny, teetering table in the middle of the hallway-that-passed-for-a-kitchen. Of course there would be no Internet in a place like this. Oh, well.

Our apartment had a lovely view, but ...

... the interior could have used some updating.

“C’mon, let’s go check things out,” I said. We dumped our stuff, secured our laptops and hid our money and passports as best as we could, and headed back out to explore. The kids, visibly wilting, perked up at the prospect of another gelato. (Our nutritional standards, like most aspects of our lives, have loosened up considerably.)

So goes our first-day-in-a-new-place routine: Find the market, buy some fresh milk and fruit. Scope out restaurants and the main streets leading to the main sights. Find a park with a playground and a good place to run. In Venice, this involved getting tangled in tour groups and lost down dead-end streets. Glassy eyed and loopy with growing fatigue, we had little sense of purpose or direction other than filling our stomachs and finding our way back.

We crossed San Marco Square ...

... explored streets like this ...

... and occasionally got lost in narrow passageways like this.

We used Morgan’s TripAdvisor iPhone app to search for nearby restaurants and were overwhelmed by listings for overpriced yet mediocre dining options. We didn’t want to cook in the slightly creepy new apartment, which didn’t have a proper stove to cook on, but we didn’t want yet another slice of pizza or overpriced noodles.

Then three things happened that reaffirmed my faith that things have a way of working out on days like this, as long as we get creative and don’t give up:

(1) We found a grocery store and I asked the checkout clerk, in broken English and Italian, if she had any restaurant recommendations for an affordable, good-quality place to eat. (Foolproof travel advice: When in doubt, ask a local.) She eagerly wrote out the name and directions to a restaurant not too far away. We had passed it earlier — it looked like nothing special, just long picnic tables covered with red-checked cloths and a TV playing sports — but we went there a few hours later, and sure enough, we were rewarded with a cheap but hearty and authentic meal.

(2) We had seen one of Anthony Bourdain’s foodie travel shows that profiled Venice on an airplane, in which he spotlighted one special hideaway where the seafood is remarkably fresh and the preparation is phenomenal. We figured it would be impossible to find in the maze that is Venice. And then, walking back to our apartment from the market, something caught my eye in the window of a restaurant: a small collection of stickers. One was from Michelin Guide and the others were for Italian food awards. I zoomed in for closer inspection at the menu. At about the same time, Morgan recognized the exterior from the show. Yes, it was Al Covo, the restaurant Bourdain profiled, and it was only about 30 feet from our front door. Of all the places it could be in Venice, it was virtually right under our nose! “This means,” I said, “you and I can have a date and leave the kids in the apartment watching a movie while we eat. We’d be so close, they could come get us if anything goes wrong.” And so we did a couple of nights later — and it was magical, and the kids loved having a movie-watching night on their own.

A couple of nights later, Morgan and I had a date here.

(3) Back at the apartment, Morgan figured out a way to wire the cell phone to the laptops and siphon a connection from Vodafone so we could have some Internet connection via the cell phone. The guy is a genius.

This day actually happened eleven days ago, and I felt ambivalent about taking the time to record these details in one of my longest blog posts yet. But then I thought about how we’ve had several more travel days in just the past week, each unique but similar in their unpredictability and sense of discovery. These travel days blur together, and I feel the ones from the first half of our trip slipping from memory. I want to be able to show others who ask about our trip what it was really like — how we functioned as a family while getting from one point to another — but mostly, I want to keep these days in mind to savor when I’m sitting in my permanent address and wanderlust, always simmering, heats up.

Related posts:

1. Snapshots of Venezia and Treviso
2. Eat, Run, Love
3. In the Backwoods of Blackball, Not Your Typical Hilton

A slice of beach and blue around Abel Tasman National Park.

New Zealanders use the term “adventure” loosely to market pretty much any activity under the sun. I was skeptical we’d experience a true  adventure here, especially if it were safe enough to involve the kids, but then my lifelong friend Carolyn, who moved to the South Island two years ago, booked a three-day kayak trip for our two families along the coast of Abel Tasman National Park. I had never kayaked before (unless you count an hour in a hotel lagoon in Hawaii), but how hard could it be? I had visions of paddling on glassy blue water and sipping wine with old friends while our kids played on a beach. Besides, we’re all old pros at camping. We were game.

Three days at sea and camping in the forest together seemed like a reunion too perfect to be true. We arranged to meet them on the Sunday after New Year’s.

Day One: “I’ve made a bit of a boo-boo …”

We drive from Nelson an hour and a half north to the tiny town of Marahau, at the gateway to the national park, and arrive at Abel Tasman Kayaks before 9 a.m. The sky is gray and the forecast calls for wind and rain, but we’re optimistic. It’s like Hawaii, right? The weather always changes and never gets too cold.

Carolyn and her husband Doug drive up shortly after, and Kyle, Colin, Liam and even Colly start goofing around (Colly’s wariness of playing with boys quickly evaporates). I’ve known Carolyn since preschool and Doug since high school, so seeing them feels like reuniting with extended family. We meet our guide and busy ourselves with gear.

Our friends the Kirkpatricks -- Liam (11), Carolyn, Colin (9) and Doug -- meet us at Abel Tasman Kayaks and start getting gear ready.

The kids immediately find ways to have fun.

Our 25-year-old guide is named Chee and strikes us right away as friendly and competent, but a tad quiet. “Have you heard the forecast?” he asks. We shrug and look hopeful, as if to say, how bad could it be? He says something about “25 to 30 knots” which translates to about 30 mph.  I also notice he looks a bit surprised but keeps his cool when he realizes that four of his eight clients appear under 5 feet tall and younger than 12.

Pretty soon a supervisor — a bronzed woman with muscled arms, an over-sized straw visor and a squawking walkie-talkie — comes to us with a big smile but a serious message. “So here’s the thing,” she says, “your children are much, much littler than we expected.” Carolyn reminds her that she informed the kayak company that the youngest are 8 and 9, and we got the go-ahead. “Yes, but …” the woman says, “ordinarily we would not take children this size out on the kayaks.”

Clearly there has been some confusion, but it’s not clear why or what we should do. Chee tells us later that they book family groups with teenagers but have never had kids this young go out, especially not for a multi-day trip. The woman just wants us to be clear about the risks and aware that Chee may determine that it’s not safe enough for us to be on the water, which we’d have to respect. Of course, we say. We figure that if worse comes to worst with the ocean conditions, then we’d stick to hiking and get a ride back with a water taxi.

With that sobering message and clouds gathering overhead, we proceed to pack all the gear we’ll need into dry bags and load the kayaks to go to the water taxi station. As I try to budge one of these kayaks, which I guess are 15 feet long and take four strong adults to lift when loaded with gear, I get an inkling of why it may be a problem to have a novice adult and child navigating it. Imagine a beginner cyclist and child on a tandem bike fully loaded with panniers, then put them on a rough coastal route with headwinds and tell them to bike for several hours straight for three days. The child realizes he or she doesn’t need to pedal if Mom or Dad is doing most of the work. Mom and Dad realize they’re in for quite a ride.

Morgan, Colly, Kyle and I are packed and ready to head up the coast to start the three-day trip.

Chee makes his first call: No way we’re going on the water in these conditions. We’ll set up camp, hike and attempt to kayak tomorrow. Sounds good to us.

A slice of the Abel Tasman coast as seen from the Coast Track.

We squeeze into a water taxi with our kayaks stacked high and piles of gear at our feet. “First day on the job!” announces the skipper, and I’m not sure if he’s boasting or warning us. He zooms northward into the ocean and brings the coastline into view.

The Abel Tasman park (named after the mid-17th-century explorer who was the first European to site New Zealand) crowns the top of the South Island with lush green mountainsides that sprout tree ferns everywhere. Its coastline curves out and in around points and bays, protruding like gnarled knuckles on a fist, and several islands with seal colonies rise up in tree- and rock-covered humps.

I only catch glimpses, however, because I’m gripping the speedboat’s side as it cuts through waves, rising up and slamming down with a force that sprays water over the sides and compresses every disc in my spine. About a half hour later, the boat finally slows and pulls into Onetahuti Beach, where the kids hop out and begin exploring caves and tidal pools. We set up camp quickly to pitch the four two-person tents before rain hits, and Chee makes a roof over the picnic table by suspending a large tarp with ropes and two upright paddles.

Then it’s time for a hike along a couple of miles of the Abel Tasman Coast Track, and Chee, who’s of Maori descent, describes natural history and Maori legends along the way. The kids tramp along, genuinely impressed by the aquamarine color of the water and rope-like black vines that hang and tangle around the shafts of giant ferns called mamaku.

We hike through intense green ...

... and meet a seal too.

We stop at a beach along the way where a fat seal scratches himself, indifferent to his visitors, and the kids explore more caves carved by waves. No one minds that we’re on the land rather than kayaking at sea.

The kids keep going butts-up to dig whenever we hit sand.

The wind is gusting and rain starts to sprinkle by the time we get back to camp. We’re all hungry and eager to help Chee cook dinner, but first he asks us to gather around for an announcement.

“I’ve made a bit of a boo-boo,” he says. It seems he didn’t notice that the cooking gas was not packed, so we’ll be having dinner a bit late. But he has a plan: radio the water taxi to catch a ride to another camp about 15K (9 to 10 miles) down the coast, where a canister of gas is stored in case of such emergency. The water taxi, done for the day, will not return him to our camp, but no worries, he says — he’ll run back on the trail (in Keen sandals, his only shoes).

Morgan, who hasn’t run in a couple of days, eagerly volunteers to go with him. It’s about 5:30 when they depart, and we estimate they should be back before 7:30. We huddle over the picnic table with little to do but play cards and eat snacks. Carolyn and I, ever so slightly tense about the weather and the unexpected turn of events, decide it’s time for wine.  Doug sticks to beer, and soon “remember when” stories from the mid-1980s start to flow too.

Two hours, one bottle of wine, one bag of corn chips and a couple of cans of beer later, we’re looking at our watches and speculating about where Morgan and Chee might be. The rain goes from steady drizzle to sideways-blown downpour, and we grip the upright paddles that hold up the tarp each time a gust hits. Damp clothing and towels we hung on a tree branch to dry are fully soaked, as are most of the supplies piled on the ground.

The kids manage to entertain themselves no matter what the weather.

I’m amazed that the four kids, fully bundled, don’t seem to mind the circumstances much — they’re happy enough sitting around, talking and eating — so I take inspiration from them and act like everything’s fine. Carolyn and I let off nervous laughter as we swap stories about the crazy things our parents did when we were growing up together. I try not to dwell on the distinct possibility that Morgan and Chee discovered the gas isn’t there and are stuck struggling to come up with a Plan B (or would that be Plan C?), or that one of them fell while running back on the slick trail. And what if they fell while clutching gas canisters? Ka-boom!

Chee and Morgan make it back from their epic rainy run.

Finally, around 7:45, Chee and Morgan burst out of the forest panting and drenched, as wild-eyed and triumphant as hunters returning with fresh kill. I guessed right: There was no gas canister waiting for them; they somehow borrowed a couple of small ones from somewhere else, but those lacked the attachment valves they needed, so they had to borrow the other parts from who-knows-where. (None of this ever made any sense to me.) Late hitting the trail, they ran the hilly 15K as fast as they could.

Morgan is high on adrenaline and endorphins, and Chee casually admits it’s the farthest he has ever run. This calls for a drink! We open another while the rain starts coming down in sheets. Chee fires up the stove burners and whips up some chicken and vegetables over rice. We don’t have much appetite after all the snacking and drinking, but the hot food tastes good and we eat quickly so we can get the kids and ourselves into sleeping bags and pass out as soon as possible.

The photos get increasingly blury as the crazy rainy night wears on ...

Day Two: “Turn back!”

Our campsite dries out in the early morning of Day Two.

I wake to the sound of birds, not rain, and peak out at sunshine. Everything around me is damp and fresh, but I’m dehydrated and heavy headed. I grope around for clothes to run in, force my feet into wet shoes and sneak out of the tent around 6, before Morgan and the kids wake up. I run for over an hour along the Coast Track while the sun rises. I’m dazzled by the water’s color, the varied shades of green in the forest and the waterfall that gushes over moss-covered rocks at the turn-around point.

Another bend in a remote stretch of the Abel Tasman Coast Track.

It’s all business back at camp as we pack everything up and load the boats. Chee gives us a quick lesson in kayaking essentials: how to paddle, how to put the rudder down and use the foot pedals to work it, how to attach the spray skirt to form a tight lid between our waists and the boat’s opening, and — most important — how to detach the skirt if we capsize so we can swim free. We should remember to face waves head on, not sideways, and if a wave hits the kayak parallel instead of perpendicular, then lean into it.

I hop in a kayak with Kyle, and Morgan sets off with Colly. All the grownups sit in the back of the two-person boats so we can work the pedals that control the rudder. (Chee is in a one-person kayak, darting between us and showing us the way.)

Kyle and I launch our kayak for the first time.

Morgan and Colly make a good team.

We all get the hang of it pretty quickly. Kyle looks so cute sitting in front of me, his body dwarfed by a big floppy hat and life vest, his little hands clutching a big paddle that barely skims the water. It doesn’t take him long to figure out the kayak will keep going whether he paddles or not.

Twenty minutes into it, I realize that this is a workout — I’m putting muscle into every stroke — but we keep at it and get into a rhythm until arriving at a beach about an hour and a half later called Bark Bay. We’re all relieved to have that first leg behind us, so we enjoy a feast of a picnic and try not to worry as the wind picks up.

Colin and Doug cruise through the calm waters of a lagoon near the lunch break.

Chee gathers us around for another announcement, map in hand. We’ll need to get around a couple of windy points to reach our campsite at a beach called Anchorage. The wind itself isn’t a problem as much as its direction. A pressure system has cooked up an atypical swath of south-westerlies, which means wind will hit us head on and blow us away from the coast. Stay near the coast, he warns us — but watch out for rocky reefs. Suddenly the lunch in my stomach doesn’t feel so good.

We say goodbye to Bark Bay and paddle through a lagoon that in just a couple of hours will be completely empty because of the dramatic ebb and flow of the tides. Morgan and I switch kids, so now I have Colly seated in front of me.

Colly paddling up front (seen here on the glassy waters of a lagoon. The sea was never this smooth).

Having her as a partner makes my job easier, since she paddles more than Kyle and her heavier weight balances the boat better. (Later — belatedly — we realize we need to store heavy gear at Kyle’s feet so his boat is properly balanced.) Out we go, heading south to get around the next point, when slam! the wind hits our face with a blast that makes us feel as though we’re paddling upriver.

“Colly, I’m gonna need you,” I tell her, and she gamely starts paddling as hard as she can. The waves pick up, too, so we’re bouncing up and down as much as gliding forward. The swerving up-down rocking motion reminds me of the time I rode a mechanical bucking bull at the county fair. I focus on a point in the distance and muscle forward as best I can, trying to use the rudder to keep our nose pointed into waves, which are looking big enough to body surf. I don’t want to lose my concentration by looking around, but I’m concerned that our group has spread out. I shout at Colly so she can hear me over the wind, “Honey, please look back and tell me where your dad is.”

“He’s way far back!”

I look over my shoulder and catch site of both Morgan and Kyle paddling rapidly while their kayak’s nose points upward and starts to spin like a weather vane. A wave hits them on the side and tilts them to a 45-degree angle. But I can’t keep watching because I’m feeling our kayak turn beneath us, too. I step on the rudder’s right pedal and paddle only with my left to get it back around clockwise, facing the direction we need to go in. “Colly, paddle right!” I yell, meaning left, but my right foot is on the pedal so I have my directions mixed up. She starts to paddle on the right side and I scream, “No, other side!” She doesn’t know what to do and pretty soon I’m yelling at her to lean right, lean into the waves, and just when I wonder what else could go wrong, my hat blows off and the strap strangles my neck.

“Turn back!” I hear someone call over the wind. Morgan can’t turn his boat around and neither can I; we’re pointed back toward the bay where we had lunch. “Morgan, paddle!” Chee suddenly calls out, raising his voice to a commanding tone we haven’t heard yet, and we realize that a good-sized wave is cresting over the back of Morgan’s boat. He paddles ahead just enough so the wave doesn’t break over his body.

A classic line from Scooby-Doo comes to me and I shout it out loud: “Yikes, let’s get out of here!”

We all paddle away from the point and back toward Bark Bay, our job now easier with the wind on our backs but the ride still rollicking from all the waves. I finally catch up to Morgan and Kyle, who have caught their breath and are reassuring each other that everything’s fine, everything’s fine, good job, good job. I don’t know what to say to them or Carolyn and Doug, except for, “I think Bark Bay sounds like a great place to camp tonight!”

Liam and Carolyn take a breather near Bark Bay. We're relieved to spend the second night there even though it's a fairly long way away from the intended destination.

Chee agrees, “Yes, that’s what we’ll do.” We’re not getting around that point in these conditions.

Bark Bay is a beautiful, peaceful place to spend the afternoon and evening, even with the wind. It feels luxurious to set up camp in dry weather, to play by the beach and to eat burritos. The kids hole up in a tent and play Uno for two hours. We go to bed early, warned by Chee that we have to wake early to beat the wind and paddle extra long to make up for today’s shorter leg.

Plus, to make it home tomorrow, we have to get through the roughest stretch of coastline: the Mad Mile.

Day Three: “We’re making great time”

A British twentysomething camper near our group feels the need to chop wood at 5:30 a.m. and in so doing wakes us all up. My back, shoulders and arms ache, and my hands look puffy and sport blisters at the base of each thumb. Thankfully, Chee is up already and has coffee made for us. The kids get moving and help break down tents and pack dry bags, their experience and helpfulness seemingly doubled in a day.

We’re all spooked by the wind and eager to paddle past the point that got the better of us yesterday. But our departure is slightly delayed by low tide; we have to heave all the really heavy kayaks at least a hundred meters to where the water starts. Then we’re in and begin paddling at 8:50 a.m.

The sea has a sunnier personality today and welcomes us to and through the windy point, but I keep my guard up because the Mad Mile — the stretch we heard other campers comment on being so rough — looms ahead. Chee directs us toward an island on the way so we can admire the seals, but while the others ooh and ahh, I’m thinking seals, schmeals — I just want to keep moving forward.

The Mad Mile gets its reputation for risk from wind patterns, ocean currents and a lack of beaches at which to seek safe haven. But there’s nothing mad about it this morning. I keep expecting waves and wind, but I begin to feel cautiously optimistic that this mile is downright mild. It seems we got lucky for once and paddled through during an hour of optimal conditions. I let myself look around and absorb details of the sculpted rock formations protruding from the coast. The landscape’s beauty has so much depth and mystery, with so many crevices carved by the elements and colors that change with the light.

Carolyn, Doug and I linger over our break, not wanting the trip to end too soon.

“We’re making great time,” Chee calls out — so much so that we need to pace ourselves or else we’ll get back too early. We stop for a snack and time to play on the beach, followed by lunch not long after. The home base of Marahau comes into view and we linger at lunch across the bay, surprised to be done sooner and easier than expected and not wanting the trip to end. The kids play an impromptu game of cricket with some other kids on the beach, and pretty soon the guys join in.

A couple of hours later at the kayak company’s base, after we’re finally done unloading and saying good-bye to Chee — our superb guide who now feels like a friend — we all head to a funky backpackers’ campground and hostel called The Barn for one last night together.

Our box of a cabin at The Barn.

I feel more beat up and worn out than after any long-distance running race or camping trip I can recall. My hands ache if I try to form a fist, my calves and ankles feel on fire from the itch of some twenty sand fly bites, and my entire upper body feels stiff and out of whack. I watch the four kids amble along together and feel the comfortable, tired silence that Morgan, Doug, Carolyn and I share, and I look at the tip of the Abel Tasman coastline and marvel at how far we came.

Was it worth it? Definitely.

We did it! And we'd gladly do it again.

p.s. Morgan has additional landscape photos of Abel Tasman and I shot footage for a mini movie. We’ll try to post them in a few days when we have better online access. We’re headed to the West Coast for the coming week.

Related posts:

1. Tips for Touring Abel Tasman National Park
2. Playing Around Rotorua
3. Christmas in a Manger at Nelson, New Zealand

The view of Nelson from Harris Hill (click to enlarge).

Sarah writes: We just wrapped up our most unusual and special Christmas ever, which we celebrated at a rental cottage in Nelson, New Zealand. Ending the year here and being on this journey together is the ultimate “gift that keeps on giving.” Since my 8-year-old son Kyle spent part of his homeschooling week writing about this place, and Morgan took terrific photos, I decided to hand this blog post over to them. I hope you enjoy Kyle’s very own blog post and movie!

Mom and me homeschooling on our deck.

Right now I’m at Harris Hill. It is in Nelson, N.Z., which is at the top part of the South Island. It is at a farm with animals like a hairy pig, goats, sheep, calves/cows/bulls, dogs, ponies, horses, llamas and chickens. It has a view of the blue bay, and since we’re near the ocean, it’s windy! The wind makes the grass look like waves.

When we’re inside we hear the sheep and listen to the birds cheep. We’re staying in a cozy cabin. The best part of it is we get our own rooms! We’ve had to share our rooms the last four months.

The farm is like a petting zoo to me. I love the animals. The one I love the most is the hairy pig. We call him Hairy Porker. We feed him food like fruit, vegetables and leftover meals.

Hairy Porker begging for food.

Me with the pesky goats.

We're at a giant hill overlooking the sea.

The weird thing is, we have fruit like strawberries and cherries in December because we’re near the summer solstice. Christmas is weird because it’s cold where we usually live and warm in New Zealand. It’s also different because we made decorations, and I made a popcorn string for the tree. My grandparents also sent me a lot of yarn to make decorations with.

We decorated a small pine tree that is still growing.

Today we had Christmas with our small pine tree. We woke up with our shoes as stockings and found candy in them. (That’s what they do in Holland, and Santa puts candy in there. We didn’t have stockings so we put our shoes by the front door.) I woke up my family to see the presents. My favorite was my IPod Touch! I also got three books that I’m excited to read, and I got two decks of cards from my grandparents. They also gave me instructions on how to play poker because they think it’s time for me to learn how. Then Colly opened her box. It was a computer (laptop)! It was a special Christmas for our family because we’ve never had a Christmas like this.

My dad made this card for our family and friends.

Harris Hill makes me feel like I’m at home. It will feel great to end the year here.

Here is my video of Harris Hill.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Related posts:

1. Cheerio, New Zealand
2. Meals with Eels and Other Nelson Must-Do’s
3. Playing Around Rotorua

Click here to view the embedded video.

The Rotorua Tourism Board will probably be upset to hear me say these activities generally seem overrated and overpriced. Our best times around Rotorua involved spending free time for free. We rented a low-cost cabin outside of town at one of the best “holiday parks” we’ve come across yet (a glorified RV park and campground), on the edge of Blue Lake by a vast forest preserve, and passed the time reading, homeschooling, running, researching, cooking and playing with the kids. Morgan and I took turns doing long solo runs through the Whakarewarewa forest, aka The Redwoods, which seemed like a fairy-tale hybrid of Hawaii and California because it had the ferns, dampness and fragrance of an island rain forest amidst groves of century-old redwoods.

Then we experienced Kiwi hospitality firsthand when a mutual friend of some Northern California runners, Paul Charteris, invited us to his hometown of Kawerau near Rotorua and took us on a hike to Tarawera falls.

Tarawera Falls near Rotorua, where we hiked and picnicked.

The double-barreled waterfall shoots out of the middle of the volcanic mountain, from a fissure created by lava, rather than cascading over a cliff. The kids didn’t mind hiking uphill for an hour because the reward was so great: first the falls, then a sky-blue swimming hole with rope swings.

Colly and Kyle couldn't get enough of this rope swing at the Tarawera swimming hole.

Paul then hooked us up with his friends, Mike and Sarah van der Boom and their two school-age girls, in the beautiful Bay of Plenty beach town of Whakatane. Their family hosted us for a couple of nights, gave us a barbecue and took us trail running. Believe what you hear: New Zealanders really are that nice!

At our hosts' house, the kids just played and played.

Morgan and me on a run above Whakatane in the Bay of Plenty with Sarah van der Boom, who took this picture.

All of this — not just our time in New Zealand, but the ways in which our lives have changed through travel –  has made me think more about the subject of play and the choices we make about how to spend time and money, particularly as a parent. Forgive me as I digress and risk sounding simplistic or superficial as I try to condense a big topic into a blog post.

We’ve been away from home for four months now, and I’ve noticed that Colly and Kyle are playing more than they have since preschool, which has been a profound and unforeseen benefit of this long-term travel. By “play” I mean filling their time imaginatively and physically, making use of whatever is around them. After we’re done schooling or sightseeing, they still have hours of unscheduled free time to fill up, and TV or the Internet are limited because of our circumstances (few TV channels, shared computers and limited WiFi). So they wander outside, often to a play structure or trampoline, but they don’t just swing or bounce. They make up a game or start playing characters. They get in arguments, work it out or forget about it, and then start something new on their own, or they might meet other kids from other countries and start talking to them. And they constantly are together, so much so that they joked they’re developing twin telepathy.

The kids keep exploring and trying new things together.

I really didn’t appreciate how much our family life has changed until the other day when I opened my calendar from seven months ago and literally shuddered when I saw the lines and lines of daily scheduled activities and obligations, much of which involved the kids. Well-intentioned parents (like me) sign children up for sports and recreational programs because we don’t want them to “miss out.” We want them to have fun and develop their hobbies (and to be honest, we want them to stand out as stars on the stage or on the field), and we want someone to watch them and keep them safe while we go about our lives during the day. We also are susceptible to the marketing of many extracurricular “enrichment programs,” believing our kids need the help of tutors and other professionals so they can reach their potential. Ironically, all this scheduling and transporting kids to programs often makes families more stressed, more financially stretched and less available to spend time together.

Kids become so accustomed to being told what to do, and when and how to do it, that they complain about being bored if they suddenly find themselves with free time. Parents admit to looking forward to summer or winter holidays ending so they can get their kids back on a schedule and in those programs.

That was how our family was before this year away — and it may be us again when we get back. I hope not, because we were not a terribly happy bunch back then, but those real-world dynamics of our community and demographic are incredibly hard to resist. Of course we’ll plug back in to it all on some level, but I’m already trying to envision a middle ground that will preserve the kind of play and togetherness we’re rediscovering.

Before this trip, I was familiar with  studies touting the importance of play and warning about the downside of kids’ over-scheduled, over-hurried lifestyles — but it took a genuine change of circumstances and simplifying of our lives (what travel blogger Christine Gilbert has called a lifestyle redesign) to make me fully appreciate the importance of free time and family time.

This is us on an impromptu roadside hike.

I watch Colly in particular as she revels in being a kid. Yesterday she spent most of the afternoon with Kyle doing nothing more important than digging in beach sand to build castles, and when we went inside she became absorbed in a book. Her sixth-grade friends back home, meanwhile, are managing a mountain of homework and other responsibilities while preoccupied about their appearance, friendships and who’s dating whom.

What a gift, I realize with gratitude, that this year away has extended her childhood by a year, and given us more time to enjoy her — and really get to know her — as a goofy girl who’s content to play with her little brother. It may be we’re just delaying the inevitable and that she’ll turn into a teen overnight as soon as she’s sucked into the vortex of seventh grade. I hope, however, she’ll be better equipped to navigate the pressure of adolescence fortified by this year — a year of living more simply and becoming more self-reliant while seeing how people in other parts of the world make do with less; a year of  just being herself and being incredibly close to her family.

The same could be said for all four of us: I sincerely hope we will re-enter life back home permanently changed and fortified by this year.

Sometimes you just gotta let go and go for it.

Related posts:

1. When It Rains…
2. Happy Campers Touring North NZ by RV
3. Our 3-Day Kayak Adventure Around NZ’s Abel Tasman Park

Arriving at our cabaña, we discovered that "los gnomos" are part of its charm.

Our arrival to Villa La Angostura, about an hour north of Bariloche, set the tone for a wacky week. Driving the windy road on the shores of Lago Nahuel Huapi thrilled us with views of snow-capped Patagonian peaks but made poor Kyle throw up all over himself in the car. When we eventually reached our cabaña complex, called Guardianes del Bayo, we probably looked as bad as we smelled because an icy rain and wind left us bedraggled and shivering.

The living room decor includes antlers and this little gnome.

As we unloaded our belongings and cleaned up the mess, my eyes took in a babbling brook that cut through a well-kept lawn and a cluster of wood cabins, flowing past a play structure and under several arched footbridges. Then my ears caught a tune from long ago that was piped in from speakers somewhere — The Carpenters’ “Top of the World.” Karen Carpenter’s saccharine voice singing “I’m on the top of the world, lookin’ down on creation …” floated through the breeze and became a tape loop in my brain.

Then I began to notice pointy red hats on little bearded figurines inside and outside our cabaña. And then the sign with our cabaña’s name: Los Gnomos.

With a mix of shock and awe — uh-oh and oh, wow! — we realized we had booked ourselves into some kind of fairy-tale lodge where everything seems a little bit off.

It’s not just our cabaña — these wooden creatures are everywhere. Just as varnished burl bear carvings decorate the landscape in the backwoods of Northern California, so do fanciful carvings of mythical spirits on these roadways.

I met this elf on the main road into Villa La Angostura.

Morgan did "I'm a Little Teapot" by this wood carving.

This part of Patagonia has a distinctive, Disneyland-esque style of mountain architecture that I hereby dub Gnome Home. We got our first hint of it in Bariloche, at a restaurant called Tarquino that we nicknamed the Hobbit Hole, which has an exterior that belies a surprisingly sophisticated menu.

Tarquino restaurant in Bariloche is a prime example of "Gnome Home" style.

But Gnome Home truly flourishes in this smaller, quainter tourist hamlet of Villa La Angostura. Large, heavily lacquered logs, all gnarled and knotted, frame every door and window, and over-sized, lumpy-looking rocks form the foundations and chimneys. Some of the dimensions of doorways and furniture seem designed for trolls — low and wide — while other doorways and stairways seem unnaturally narrow.

The kids are enchanted by the place and seem more elfin with each passing day. All they want to do is read, play make-believe and run around. They’re probably inspired in part because Morgan is reading The Hobbit to Kyle and helping both kids draw hobbit-like creatures. Another book we’re reading together, Lois Lowry’s classic The Giver, motivated them to spend hours creating a fictional community. They seem to have moved past their homesickness — at least for the time being — and Morgan observed the other day that it’s been weeks since we’ve heard either of them complain, “I’m bored.”

The kids are having fun just being kids, especially when playing outside this kid-friendly cabaña complex.

But just as every fairy tale has something frightening, so too did our week. We had to cope with a dental emergency when a crown on one of Morgan’s molars popped off, leaving the tooth underneath painfully exposed. We had no choice but to seek treatment — and very limited options. Hence we found ourselves two days in a row in a small office that specializes in cosmetic dentistry for the tourist trade. It had a waiting room decked out as though designed to appeal to twentysomethings from West LA. The kids and I spent a few hours sitting there on an oddly curved couch with faux fur trimmings, surrounded by neon accent lights and multiple video screens that played MTV videos from twenty years ago. We had noticed in Buenos Aires that American pop from the ’80s and early ’90s is big, playing on radios and in stores everywhere, but this dentist office showcased retro flashbacks as much as any late-night VHI marathon.

Video screens playing hits from the 1980s helped Morgan take his mind off his tooth pain and made the trip to the dentist slightly surreal.

Morgan, meanwhile, seemed to be disassociating while watching four music video screens that surrounded the dental chair. When the dentist (a fashionable and relatively young woman) prepped Morgan’s tooth, he discovered that she skimps on Novocain, and he later described the process as excruciating. The good news is that after back-to-back appointments, everything seems fine.

Perhaps you’re wondering, after all this, why we’re here as opposed to somewhere warmer and not quite so weird, such as Mendoza (where we’re headed next week). We came to Villa La Angostura, which has a population of around 7,000, for this weekend’s Salomon K42 trail marathon that traverses the town’s main peak, Cerro Bayo. Some 2000 runners and their families have arrived for the 42K and 15K races, so the town’s three-block center permeates an athletic vibe. We’re two of only three participants from the United States registered for it, but the event draws runners from all over South America.

To my dismay, I saw more fresh snow outside our window a few mornings ago (not what we need in advance of the trail marathon). The gnome on the windowsill seemed to mock me.

Earlier this week it seemed the weather would play a trick on us all, as fresh snow coated the ground and deepened the frigid knee-high river that runners have to cross, but the sun came out yesterday and everyone is cautiously optimistic it’ll hold. Nonetheless, I’m admittedly nervous about this event. But Morgan is game for it, and so am I. If I find myself plagued by doubt, exhaustion or hypothermia, I’ll just keep singing that Carpenters’ tune that’s been stuck in my head all week: I’m on the top of the world …

The shores of Lago Espejo by Villa La Angostura will be the starting area of Saturday's Salomon K42 trail marathon. I am dazzled each time I discover more peaks and lakes like this!

The marathon goes up and over this peak, called Cerro Bayo. We probably really will feel "on top of the world."

Related posts:

1. Welcome to Patagonia, Where Paradise Packs a Punch
2. When It Rains…
3. Branching Out on Lago Nahuel Huapi

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.

Related posts:

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

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.

Related posts:

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

Subtle graffiti on this sign on the way into Telluride ("pricy" conditions may exist) signals locals' ambivalence toward the town's growth and gentrification.

This weekend, Sept. 4 – 7, Telluride’s annual film festival will transform the town. Its population of about 2200 will triple and its main street, Colorado Avenue, will be packed with visitors. I’ve never actually been to Film Fest but hear the scene is undeniably cool, and my family got a kick out of spotting Ken Burns outside of our favorite burrito place (La Cocina de Luz) the other night.

As a quasi-local lifelong lover of Telluride, I can’t help feel some reverse snobbery and sadness that a lot of these festival-goers — like a lot of skiers who briefly visit in winter — miss out on some of the more authentic, historic and out-of-the-way treasures that make Telluride what it is. For them, I offer this alternative weekend guide to Telluride, with apologies to The New York Times Travel Section for copping its “36 Hours” format. (The Times published its own “36 Hours in Telluride” in January of 2005, which was geared toward winter activities and dining and shopping downtown.)

Friday afternoon: Arrive in Telluride. Got that? TELLURIDE, not Mountain Village. I have heard dear misinformed friends say, “Oh, I love Telluride!” and then reveal that they spent a week in Mountain Village over Christmas break, as though the two towns were synonymous. They are not. Mountain Village is an oversized, overpriced and soulless master-planned golf and ski village-with-no-sense-of-community carved into the mountain above Telluride in 1987 and connected to town by a gondola. Its collection of hotel-sized homes, high-density condos and massive lodges senselessly thrown up around ski runs and fairways follows a disastrous design aesthetic that mixes Swiss Chalet, Italianate, Rocky Mountain Logs on Steroids and Disneyland California Craftsman. Most of these dwellings are vacation retreats and consequently sit empty, contributing to a spooky emptiness and “For Rent” signs on many Mountain Village storefronts. The weirdness of the place inspired the utterly brilliant mockumentary Lost People of Mountain Village, a must-see for any Telluride Film Festival-goer.

(In case you’re wondering why I dislike the place so much: I remember how that mountainside looked in its natural state because I took care of a horse there in the summer of ’86 and loved riding where the golf course now sits, and every time I drive to town on Last Dollar Road, the exquisite view of Telluride is marred by the The Peaks Resort dominating the landscape. ‘Nuff said.)

So, back to Telluride midday on a Friday. Start on the corner of Oak and Colorado Ave., in between two famous historic buildings: the San Miguel County Courthouse and the Sheridan Opera House. Buy a crepe or falafel from one of the food carts if you’re hungry, and cross the street to soak in the scene at a grassy square called Elks Park. There, mounted on some boulders in the park’s garden and at other points around town, are plaques describing Telluride’s past. Reading about these milestone moments — involving the mines, the railroad, and the flip of a switch that lit up the town and successfully demonstrated alternating current for the first time — gives visitors an appreciation for the town’s colorful history, which has been shaped by forward-thinkers, risk-takers and boom-and-bust cycles.

Hungry for more info on the region, walk down the block to Between the Covers bookstore and cafe, a beloved local institution since 1974. Be sure to buy a copy of The Telluride Story: A Tale of Two Towns by David S. Lavender (shameless plug — it’s written by my grandfather, with an update by my dad). Then, walk one more block down to Fir, hang a left, and up two more to the Telluride Historical Museum.

My kids in front of the Telluride Historical Museum.

I simply love this place. It’s in the town’s old hospital, built in 1896, and takes an hour or less to tour. My favorite room there replicates the house and lifestyle of Harriet Fish Backus, author of the memoir Tomboy Bride, about living in the Tomboy Mines community above Telluride at the turn of the century.

Stretch your legs in the afternoon with an easy walk to and around Town Park (follow either Colorado or Pacific avenues east to reach it) — a place our family visits nearly every day because the kids love the fishing pond, play structure, public pool and ice rink. Here, on the field that stretches out below Bear Creek Canyon, big-name bands rock the park under blue skies or stars, making an unforgettable concert experience.

Morgan's snapshot of The Grateful Dead playing Telluride Town Park in 1987.

(I still consider seeing the Grateful Dead there in ’87, on a weekend of trippy planetary alignment known as the Harmonic Convergence, a highlight of my college days.)

Where was I? The Dead, ’87 … oh yes, Town Park. From there, take an easy walk, just under 2 miles, east on the San Miguel River trail (toward the end of town) and you’ll be on a path toward Bridal Veil Falls called the Idarado Legacy Trail, basically a bike path but a beautiful place to stroll, with more plaques about the area’s history along the way. If you’re up for a real run, hike, bike or 4-wheel-drive excursion, keep going where the pavement ends at the old Pandora Mill and continue up, up, up 1,200 feet of switchbacks to Bridal Veil Falls, where a 105-year-old, fully restored hydroelectric powerhouse sits perched at the top of falls that tumble almost 400 feet. (“That looks like the house from Up!” my daughter exclaimed when she first glimpsed the powerhouse). It’s about a mile and a quarter from the end of the Idarado Legacy Trail to the bottom of Bridal Veil falls, with spectacular views of town along the way.

Life is sweet on Telluride's main street! Here our family -- including my parents, brother, and sister-in-law -- eats ice cream from The Sweet Life on Colorado Ave.

Friday dinner: Telluride’s copious dining choices are too diverse to detail here, so I’ll mention just one favorite: Hongas Lotus Petal, an eclectic menu with a great atmosphere (upscale but relaxed) that bills itself as Pan Asian and mostly organic. I love being able to get inventive salads, Thai curries and high-quality sushi all in one sitting, and they have an appealing kids’ menu. Afterward, indulge in ice cream at The Sweet Life on Colorado Avenue near the corner of Pine.

Saturday morning: Get an early start because two of the best runs or hikes from town — Tomboy Mine and Bear Creek Falls — can get relatively crowded with weekend trekkers. Fuel up on bagels at Baked In Telluride on Fir Street, the best local bakery.

Morgan and the kids stop by Baked In Telluride for bagels and muffins.

Then choose either Tomboy or Bear Creek for a morning-long outing.

Tomboy: harder (5 miles one way and 2650 elevation gain), glorious views of town and the mountains, and you’re rewarded by arriving at the ghost town of the old mining camp (read about some Tomboy history and my experience running up there on an earlier blog post). You can go two miles farther up to reach the 13,114-foot Imogene Pass. The downside is you’ll encounter Jeeps and dirtbikes on this road since it’s open to 4-wheel-drive high-clearance vehicles. The trailhead is at the north end of Oak Street.

Bear Creek: easier than Tomboy (just under 2.5 miles, 1040 feet elevation gain and less rocky of a road) and in some ways nicer than Tomboy because the road is closed to vehicles and winds through a forest. You’re rewarded by reaching the gushing Bear Creek falls. The downside is you miss the view of town that Tomboy offers, but the view from the top of this canyon offers more than enough payoff to make the hike worth it. The trailhead is at the end of South Pine Street.

Saturday lunch: If you’re famished from several hours of high-altitude exercise, I’d recommend the Floradora Saloon on main street near the corner of Pine. The Floradora used to be a funkier local’s spot — a Western saloon version of Cheers — back in the day when a gregarious New York transplant named Howie ran it and my oldest sister’s friend’s stained-glass creations hung from all the walls.  Like the town, the Floradora’s vibe and menu have changed — it’s as much Californian as Coloradan, with cosmopolitan twists (e.g. chipolte aioli and roasted veggies) on burger-and-fries standards — but being a Californian in Colorado, I can’t say I don’t like it.

Saturday afternoon: Carve out a couple of hours to read and browse at the fabulous Wilkinson Public Library, a 20,000-square-foot brick building at the corner of Pine and Pacific, which opened in 2000 after a referendum that passed by only two votes. With a calendar full of free movies and events, the place feels as much like a community center as a library. My kids spend hours in the children’s room there, reading in a treehouse-type structure or playing on the computer terminals. The upstairs Telluride Room is dedicated to regional history.

If you consider shopping a recreational activity and feel the need to spend money on Colorado Ave., then spend it at two venerable shops: Telluride Trappings & Toggery, and Zia Sun. The Toggery has been around forever (or at least 30-plus years) and still has the best selection of clothing and jewelry for women, men and kids — truly wearable, long-lasting, good-looking stuff. Zia Sun has a distinctive collection of toys, knick-knacks and cards and has always been more practical than touristy.

Whenever you’re shopping downtown Telluride, stop by and pay homage to The Free Box, an iconic institution at the corner of North Pine and Colorado. The “box” is actually a collection of cubbies full of free clothing and household items that people swap. Its proudly grassroots, good-karma tradition was tarnished in recent years when the corner became a dumping ground for unsightly bulky items like rotting sofas and broken appliances, but local leaders enacted some regulation to restore the balance and The Free Box lives on. (Read a lovely article about it by fiction writer Antonya Nelson, a Telluride native, in this month’s Smithsonian.)

Saturday night: As mentioned above, the fine-dining and bar-hopping options are plentiful, but after such a full day I’m ready to turn in early.  A night at home with a take-and-bake from Brown Dog Pizza (110 W Colorado Ave.) and a six-pack of my favorite regional brew, Dale’s Pale Ale, bought across the street at Telluride Liquors, suits me just fine.

Bonus content if you have an extra half-day to spend. (Leave it to me to write the section below before realizing that would add up to approx 48 hours, not 36. Oh, well!)

Sunday morning: Drive down Highway 145 to explore the area known as Down Valley. The red-rock-rimmed canyon carved by the San Miguel River travels through the homey communities of Sawpit and Placerville. Stop at the Sawpit Store, 12 miles west of Telluride, for essential fishing and picnic supplies. Then, if you have kids, go a bit farther down the highway until just before you reach the town of Placerville, and on the left by the river sits Down Valley Park. A fishing pond, play structure, river trail and sports field satisfy everyone’s desires for outdoor fun.

Morgan helps Colly and Kyle catch and release a trout from Down Valley Park near Placerville.

Finally, a trip to Telluride wouldn’t feel complete to me without a picnic at Woods Lake, about a 9-mile drive from Highway 145 up Fall Creek Road. It’s hard to say what makes this lake so special — our family’s tradition of camping there no doubt influences my recommendation — but virtualy anyone would appreciate the serenity of the glassy water ringed by mountains among the aspen groves.

(Thanks to my parents, David G. and Val Lavender, who used to live in Telluride; and my brother and sister-in-law, David W. and Karen Lavender, who currently live in Telluride and teach at the local high school, for their input.)

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3. Boulder For Real

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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