Volcanoes National Park in Hawaii

If you’ve heard of the book 500 Places to Take Your Kids Before They Grow Up, or if you have children and it sounds like a topic you’d be interested in, then you might enjoy this recent Yahoo/Frommers article that reviews 10 of those 500 destinations. The book covers travel spots around the globe, while this smaller piece focuses just on the United States. In any case, there is no shortage of ideas for attractions that would be popular with both children and adults, from volcanoes in Hawaii to mountain drives in Colorado, and from a natural history museum to a sports hall of fame. Here is an excerpt from the story:

Volcanoes National Park, Hawaii- Hawaii Volcanoes National Park beats out all the other U.S. national parks on two scores: It has the only tropical rainforest, and it has the only active volcano. Since 1983, the Big Island’s Kilauea volcano has been erupting regularly, although these are “quiet” eruptions, with gas escaping slowly instead of exploding violently. Its slow-moving red lava oozes over the landscape, sometimes even over the park roads. The kids may wish they could see volcanic fireworks, but once they’re here, feeling the soles of their sneakers getting gummy from the heat below, they’ll realize this is spectacular enough.

San Juan Skyway, Colorado – Close to the Four Corners, where Colorado, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico meet at right angles, this 256-mile loop of highway is one of the country’s most spectacular drives, taking in the whole panorama of the Southwest — from ancient Native American cliff dwellings to Wild West towns to smart ski resorts, all against an incredible backdrop of 10,000-foot-high Rocky Mountain passes, canyons, waterfalls, and alpine meadows.

Baseball Hall of Fame, New York - The Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown sets the gold standard for sports museums. The very word Cooperstown has become synonymous with baseball history, for legend (now discredited) claims that Abner Doubleday invented baseball here. Opened in 1939, the Hall of Fame has been around long enough to amass an unparalleled collection of sports memorabilia. You don’t have to be a statistic-spouting baseball fanatic to feel moved by this homage to America’s pastime.

For seven more such destination ideas, check out the entire story. Or better yet, read the book.

Photo credit: Public domain image via Wikimedia Commons.

We have, then, failed in our original goal of a minimum of two hours’ schoolwork a day. On the other hand, every day has brought lessons in geography, culture, religion and communication skills. Asger and Emil have travelled through Indian history: the full spiritual-profane gamut. They’ve seen the bullet holes in Amritsar; the cremation site of Mahatma Gandhi; witnessed a Hindu temple ceremony that happens only once every 150 years; and sat on a maharaja’s lavatory (though there remains a slight confusion between Mogul and muggles in Emil’s mind). They’ve fallen asleep to the roar of traffic and honking horns; to chants from Hindu temples; the Muslim call to prayer; and the whoop and screech of jungle birds. And their discipline is military when it comes to packing and the use of antibacterial hand gel.

They’ve experienced, too, some of the great social polarities of con­temporary India — training their toy binoculars on the multibillion-rupee waterfront home of the Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan, from the window of our hotel in Mumbai, then swinging a few degrees right to see a sprawling, rotting slum. We’ve visited chilly, glittering malls, then sat in traffic and watched a man wash himself from head to toe from a bucket, whipping off his pants from beneath his loincloth to give them a good scrub on the pavement outside his hut. They’ve played Ben 10 with the children of India’s middle classes, and bought an ice cream from a Krishna Ice Cream cart pushed by a boy of 14, just one of India’s many millions of child labourers. Yesterday, Asger, irritated by a fly, lashed out at it. “No, don’t kill it,” Emil admonished him. “Remember, in India it might be a person.”

If you’re interested in family travel, check out the full story of the Booths’ three-month adventure in India.

Photo credit: Bob Riel

You get to see the world through their eyes – Kids see things differently. They have a whole different angle on things, and it’s not just because they’re shorter and therefore closer to the ground, although that can help sometimes too. Kids see the wonder in a new place, new activities, new animals and new food…As an adult it can be hard to feel the true sense of wonder you probably should at seeing your first real live kangaroo, orangutan, or giant bird-eating spider, and you might miss that giant earth worm or strange looking lizard completely because you’re just too high up. Kids will draw your attention to all that and more…Traveling with kids means you get involved in activities you might have missed out on. Would you have taken that miniature train ride, visited that wildlife rescue center or talked to that snake charmer if your kids hadn’t insisted on it. Maybe not, and often your travel experience is richer for having done these things.

You have the pleasure of seeing your kids grow and learn in a way that just isn’t possible back home – Traveling is an education. An altogether different, more challenging and more pleasurable education than your kids will ever get in school. You’ll get to see your kids learning a few words of a foreign language, how to make and break camp, how to hike through wilderness areas without impacting the natural environment, and how to read a map. You’ll see them gaining a knowledge and understanding of other cultures, and witness the sense of connection they feel as world geography and history starts to make sense to them, based on their own experiences and observations.

You become closer as a family – In a world where many families don’t even have time to eat dinner together on a regular basis, imagine a few weeks, months or even years spent traveling together, eating, sleeping, learning and adventuring together. Imagine building a foundation of shared experience and memories to draw on as your kids grow up and away and start families of their own. Traveling together gives family members one of the few things money can’t buy – the time and opportunity to grow closer as a family. Doesn’t every kid, and parent, deserve that chance?

What do you think, does she make a case for some of the wonders of traveling with children? Check out the entire story to see some of her other reasons.

When I told friends that my husband and I planned to travel to Vietnam with our two young children, I received many surprised looks. They couldn’t understand why we’d want to visit a tropical country in the height of summer – a place where you’re cautioned to brush your teeth with bottled water…

But we remained undeterred about our trip. Sure, we had concerns about the flights, the food, and even fatigue, but leaving Nathan, 10, and Zoë, 7, at home never entered our minds. Overall, we found Vietnam to be incredibly child-friendly…

Despite our planned itinerary, Nathan and Zoë had their best cultural connections when we weren’t following a strict agenda – such as when Zoë got up close and personal with a villager’s python in the Mekong Delta, or when Nathan carried an elderly woman’s wares in the Hoi An market. More than any museum or palace, these moments linked our children to this land and its people.

As we were told, few travel here with young children, but if you do, it will be well worth it. Even though Zoë began to yearn for soft-serve ice cream like that found at home, she also relished the memory of eating an incredibly tender elephant fish wrapped in rice paper in the Mekong Delta.

Have you ever wanted to go to Indonesia? Would you go there with your two-year-old son? With your nine-year-old son? Lisa Reed did both – traveling there with her two-year-old son in 2001 and returning this year with the same child, now nine. She recounts the two trips in a story for the NY Times.

My husband, John, and I had spent three months in Indonesia in 2001 with our son, who was then 2, and I was curious about how deep an imprint the culture had left on him. His enthusiasm for Indonesia back then — his wide-eyed delight at the lizards, called cicaks, that lived in the house in Jakarta; at holding the reins of a pony cart in Lombok; and at the sunset performance of a fire dance on an oceanside cliff in a monkey forest in Bali — made me think that the soul of the country had seeped into him. He was thrilled by the drama and magic of the country’s arts and folk tales.

And if he had loved Indonesia, it had loved him right back — Indonesians being famously kind and affectionate to children. He was fussed over, played with and indulged everywhere we went.

At 9, he is no longer such an enthusiast; the prospect of our sunrise trip to Borobudur tomorrow is not exciting to him in the least. But I want him to see it again, now that he’ll remember it…

The alarm goes off at 3:45 a.m. and we are on the road by 4, my son asleep again in the dark, quiet comfort of the car, his head in my lap. Lonely trucks pass us on empty streets. The road is lined with warungs, wooden food stalls, which are still closed but cheerfully lighted with strings of bulbs…

My son sleepwalks across the lawn as I point out features of the temple, trying to gin up interest. We climb to the top with the others and jockey for the prime location facing Merapi and the reddening sky. Monks in saffron robes meditate facing inward to the stupa, perhaps trying to resist the distractions of a beautiful sunrise or an erupting volcano.

Bringing my mother to India had seemed an inspired idea. I’d wanted to give her something spectacular for her 75th birthday: an eight-day tour around northern India’s signature sites — Delhi, the palaces of Rajasthan, the Taj Mahal — and of the country that had so profoundly altered my own worldview.

My misgivings were equally broad. Not only was this my mother’s first trip to Asia, but she and I had also never traveled together. And although she had been to Israel and Europe, including Russia, India was something else entirely.

Because India, truly, is like nowhere else on Earth. It is not a destination you visit like Paris or Beijing or Barcelona. It’s a place you must surrender to, dissolve into. No matter where one touches down, first contact with it is overwhelming.

How did Mom do in India?

Our last evening in Delhi, as I rode with my mother to the airport, I asked what she’d liked most and least about India. Topping the list was the Taj and Udaipur. For the low points, her answer surprised me.

“I didn’t like taking my shoes off,” she said, “and walking barefoot on those dirty temple floors.”

But India transforms everyone it touches. The axiom was reaffirmed two months after our trip, when I asked my mother how the journey had affected her.

“It’s not for everyone,” she said. “You have to be ready, physically and emotionally, because it impacts every sense. Sight, sound, smell, taste — even the sense of touch, because you have to take off your shoes, and be in contact with the ground.”

“What about the culture?”

“It was like being in another world — but I loved it. I felt very comfortable. And I realized that no matter where I go, what clothing people wear or what traditions they practice, we’re all human beings. We all want the same things: to enjoy our lives, live in peace and be allowed to practice what we believe in.

“There’s no doubt that India changed me. It wasn’t a vacation,” she said with a laugh. “It was an experience.”

Last spring, I invited my eldest child to go on a trip with me. Indigo had just turned 9, and I had panicked. One, because she was halfway through her time of living at home, and worse, she was mere years away from thinking of me as a source of tedium and embarrassment. One-on-one time with her was becoming a precious commodity. I had to seize the moment.

“Really,” I said. “Your choice of destination: Washington, D.C., for the Lincoln Memorial? Los Angeles for the Getty? New York to shop?”

She considered these and replied, “India, please.”

I winced. Her choice was clearly my fault. Not long before, I had told her the story of how a five-day camel trek in Rajasthan 20 years earlier had transformed me from a dissatisfied fashion magazine employee into a freelance adventure travel writer.

“I want to go there, Mama,” Indigo said. “I want to ride camels, shop in a bazaar, get henna and slide down sand dunes.”

And so in February, we traveled to Rajasthan, a western state, home to the Great Indian Desert and camels and sand dunes.

Mother and daughter had a variety of experiences in India, but one of the highlights of their trip was the Jaisalmer Desert Festival.

The final part of the festival was late in the evening in the desert, a 40-minute drive outside Jaisalmer. The wind-rippled dunes were beginning to glow from the sunset as camels and their hopeful village jockeys lined up for a race of about a mile. People came streaming over the dunes, on foot, on camel and in open trucks straining under the weight of their load: villagers standing in their finest dress. The dunes were ablaze with colorful saris and tinkled with the sound of ankle bracelets…

The harmonium (a hand-pumped reed instrument that sounds like a lazy accordion); the wailing women; and the female dancers in their tribal costumes with mirrored skirts, heavy, twirling and luxurious, were intoxicating. Smoke from a large bonfire soared into the night sky, silhouetting the camels and the turbaned men.

At one point during the evening, Indigo hugged me, saying: “Thank you for bringing me here, Mama.”

I knew then that she had the heart of an adventure traveler and that she would be back here someday. She may have to stay in a hovel and lug a backpack, but no matter. She has seen the riches that lie in far-flung places, and she now knows that their wealth lies in more than 400-thread-count sheets.

“Why can’t we be like normal people and go to an all-inclusive?” These moans from our teens–Tess, 17, and Lucy, 14–are predictable when we announce we’re going on a three-week trip to India.

My husband, Terry, and I heard the same chorus of complaints prior to our trips to Thailand and Malaysia (2000), and Vietnam and Bali (2004). These are only token protestations for two reasons: 1) We foot the bill; 2) They know from past trips that they will be stretched to the limit, but lovely surprises await around the corner.

Truth be told, Terry and I admit to each other we’re not quite as pumped as we’re making out to be, going on to the girls about how it will be tough but wonderful. We have our own fears about the culture shock being even more than we’re up to. In one travel book introduction, the author says for many travelers India stands for: “I’ll Never Do India Again.” Remind me here–whose idea was this?

That’s the introduction to an amusing story written by Leslie Gavel for the travel section of the Chicago Tribune – about visiting India with her husband and two teenage daughters.  You can read the story here.