A friend with a young family has written and asked me to go beyond the “what we did today” level given in this series about our family’s vacation. Initially I was resistant but he helped by suggesting five questions. That moves it from the general to the specific and makes the task more appealing.
I should preface these remarks by declaring plainly that I feel very weak in nearly every area to be discussed below. There are places where I feel right at home (like on a bus in Benjamin), but being a father and family vacation leader is not one of them.
1. What were your goals for the trip?
A primary goal was to give our family time to be together. If we are at home, we ‘re busy doing other things (even if we ‘re all present in the house together). Going away gives us concentrated time together. We could have done this in a variety of ways (a week at the beach or in a mountain cabin), and while I personally would have preferred a rest like that, we felt it would be better this time to see more of the country. We were motivated to go to the East Coast because of our expectation that we ‘ll never be closer than we are now. We also thought (incorrectly, it turns out) that this year the boys would be studying American history and seeing these sites would give them a jump on the subject. A “study trip” of this nature does not conflict with the family aspect but can (and indeed did) enhance it. I could say more about the goal with regards to our family—it was certainly more than a desire to “be” together—but I ‘ll touch on that in a question below.
In addition to learning American history, we were looking for some experiences and exposure that they do not often get elsewhere. Things that fit in this category include riding the subway, visiting a farm, hiking in the mountains, enjoying a fish feast, and seeing some amazing parts of God’s creation. Besides the enjoyment and learning that comes from this, we are intentional about wanting to “make memories.” I ‘ll say a bit more about some ways we try to do that below.
In the years we ‘ve lived in Dallas we ‘ve taken several road trips to states east of the Mississippi. When we realized that our intended destinations would take us to every state we had not yet visited except South Carolina, we chose an alternate route so that we would drive through a portion of that state. Thus visiting every state also became one of our “goals.”
Another personal goal was to take the children to the place where I asked Kelli to marry me. That was a secret goal.
2. How did you prepare for the trip?
The hardest and most important component was the decision to go. When we arrived home after last summer’s trip to Niagara Falls, we were seriously questioning our desire to do this East Coast trip. For one thing, we spent a couple of days in Chicago last summer and that really had me considering whether I was willing to fight and pay for more big cities this year. We were also looking at having one more (very young) passenger and the impact that would have on space in the vehicle, feeding schedules, and more. We struggled with whether we were up to the challenge. Ultimately it came down to just deciding we were going and moving forward.
On my end a major part of the preparation is constructing an itinerary. This was more difficult on this trip than others because I had not been to many of these areas before. (Thus my question on this blog about sites in New England.) Google Maps was quite helpful in figuring out how long it would take to get from one spot to another but it did not tell me how long we needed to stay at each place. Then there was the hotel challenge. With a large family, there are not many hotels in which everyone can fit in a single room. Especially with young children, we really prefer not to be split into two. So that determines itinerary somewhat. (Tip for large families: the SixSuitcaseTravel website helps, but since most of the hotels it recommends are more expensive, I ultimately have learned to just search the Comfort Suites website. I have found that a room at CS is usually about 2x the cost of one room at Motel 6, but it’s better for us to be in one room and you get a free breakfast that is very good.) I would prefer to have freedom on a trip like this, so that we can decide to spend more time at one place if we like, but the hotel situation for us demands that we make advance reservations and thus our itinerary is nearly fixed in stone before we leave.
If you asked our kids how we prepared for the trip, they would tell you about the reading and research we did in advance. I’m not going to try right now to recall everything we did, but I can list some categories:
- Reading U.S. history books to the family. The History of US series is fantastic and worth purchasing. (Friends of ours found it for us at a local used book store; you might check there before buying from Amazon.)
- The kids read books that we selected for them. We would usually have a short book a day (checked out from the library) and a long book that they would read over the week (e.g., Johnny Tremain, My Brother Sam Is Dead, Across Five Aprils and George Washington, Spymaster). We found these by looking through the shelves at the city library as well as getting recommendations from the back pages of A History of US, Amazon, and friends.
- Requiring research every day before the trip. This won’t work very well if your trip is early in the summer, and this is one reason we prefer to time our vacations for later in the summer. Sometimes all the kids researched the same place and sometimes we had them split up and then present their findings to the family. Research was primarily centered around a site: Jamestown, Yorktown, the Capitol building, Gettysburg, Statue of Liberty. Usually the first day or two would be devoted to fact-finding. Then they would spend a day or two preparing their work either as an essay, a talk, or a PowerPoint presentation.
- Watching videos. This included a few documentaries from the library as well as the 40-part series on the Revolutionary War entitled “Liberty’s Kids.” This is an excellent series that helped the kids to tie together what they were learning elsewhere.
Another part of preparation concerns food, clothing, and other items to bring. I can’t tell you much about that, but Kelli told me the other night that she would recommend starting earlier. (And I think she was working on it at least six weeks in advance.)
This post is too long already so I am going to save the last three questions for a separate post tomorrow night. Kelli has agreed to supply a photo for each of the posts.
3. How did you try to blend family, friends, fun, education, and shepherding?
4. What would you do the same / differently?
5. How can fathers prepare for family vacations?
Resting in Washington, DC
That looks like it may be the hat that has been all over Israel, is it?
I left that hat in Israel, for me to use when I return. I bought this hat a couple of days earlier, at Jamestown. Same good style, regardless of how it looks.