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. “Back to School” Becomes “Leave to Learn”
2. The Sappy Departure
3. One Year Later: The Time-Capsule Travel Letters and the ‘Eat Pray Love’ Backlash

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Related posts:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Colly takes the plunge.

Kyle slides into the frigid waters at Slide Rock Park.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Related posts:

1. Glimpsing the Grand Canyon
2. 83 Places, 5 Continents, 10 Months
3. Boulder For Real

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!

Related posts:

1. Eat, Run, Love
2. What A Long, Strange Homecoming It’s Been
3. 83 Places, 5 Continents, 10 Months

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.

Related posts:

1. Two Months To Go
2. A New Season, A New Way
3. “Home”schooling So Far

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Related posts:

1. Essential Gear For Long-Term Travel
2. The Sappy Departure
3. So Long, Sedona and SoCal