Bethany Vana
Family Travel Advice
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I’m Bethany, mom of two little girls. My husband and I have made traveling with our kids a priority because a) we love to travel, b) my husband needs to travel often for work and we like to be together and c) we think it’s good for kids to travel even when they’re very young. Our toddler has been on countless flights and road trips and we just took our infant on her first cross-country flight. Each age comes with its own challenges, but we feel confident and comfortable now when we set out on trips.
Before my first long-haul flight with our first baby, I scoured the internet looking for reliable sources for family travel advice and was surprised by the somewhat meager offering from the web. Where were all my mommy bloggers when I needed them most? I did come across articles written for parenting magazines that made me want to scream/laugh… “buy a seat for your infant” (we’re not made of money), “consider only taking cruises…etc.” I didn’t come across many resources that resonated with me, my family’s financial situation, or the kind of travel we want to do with our kids. Eventually, as with everything in parenthood, we figured things out on our own and after many trips my husband and I have become comfortable traveling with kids. I don’t claim to be an expert traveler and I am not a seasoned parent by anyone’s definition. But we’ve traveled a lot with our babies, have planned and researched quite a bit for each trip, and we hope our experiences can help those planning to travel with their own children.
Friends often ask us for family travel advice; hopefully this space will impart the wisdom we’ve accumulated via trial and error and to hopefully add sage advice from other traveling families who have even more experience. Traveling with kids can be challenging, but for us it has always been worth it!
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This park features beautiful views of Samish Bay and the San Juan Islands and there’s just a short hike down to a pebble beach (a favorite picnic spot of ours). There is a parking lot on Chuckanut Drive across from Fragrance Lake Road (and the sign for the trail is across the street from the parking lot). Lummi is a tiny, bucolic island, and you can do a lovely seven mile loop from the ferry dock, which is a quick and easy way to see the beauty of the island with kids in tow. There are lots of animals to stop and see, there is a public beach accessible behind the Congregational Church (as well as at the ferry dock), and during the summer and early fall nearly the entire island is covered in wild blackberries.
For Mother’s Day my husband gifted me the thing I never knew I needed for my quarantine sanity: a canoe. (…my husband grew up on a lake and knows what he’s doing, thankfully), but I watched a few YouTube videos about paddling and as long as I’m at the bow and not expected to help steer, we do just fine. It got better, especially after figuring out what we needed to bring to keep the kids happy and comfortable, what length of time was best, and what time of day was optimal for their schedules. We like hats that cover the backs of the neck (like these), and we put the girls in full-length rashguards/clown suits so that we can use less sunscreen.
Tucson is a family-friendly city and just a fun city in general (…just watch out for Gila monsters, rattlesnakes, scorpions, Africanized bees, coral snakes, tarantulas, brown recluse spiders, black widow spiders, blister beetles, desert toads, and all those prickly cacti…) Here are my favorite things to do with toddlers in the area (and at the end of this list I’ve included some activities that would be fun for older kids). There are a ton of activities for kids and the new Packrat Playhouse is one of the coolest indoor play areas I’ve seen (and is a great respite from the sun). Our kids are young, but there are many more wonderful activities for families with kids who are a bit older: Old Tucson, Kartchner Cavern State Park, Sabino Canyon, Pima Air and Space Museum, Flandrau Science Center and Planetarium, Biosphere 2, and Saguaro National Park.
I really think renting baby gear is the answer to so many of our “travel with kids” conundrums: “How to pack and check a car seat? So when you leave most of your baby gear at home for travels, you’re immediately giving up part of the comfort and routine of life at home. Most baby gear rental companies will deliver items to you, wherever you may be: airport, rental car company, hotel, or in our case on this last trip, my parents’ house. We sometimes borrow car seats from rental car companies (if we’re renting a car) but we’ve had experience with the company providing very worn, dirty, car seats.