Today’s travel concern: “I have kids.”

Some people pack a bag and pick up for a weekend getaway. Others plan grandiose around-the-world travels that keep them on the road for weeks or months at a time. Still others take extended boating, biking, hiking or road trips that require dedication, skill, patience and flexibility.

This all sounds great for those who can pick up and go, devote hours on the road or are able to embark on a more adventurous trip. For some reason, though, people with children often find the idea of taking even a “normal” week-long summer vacation quite daunting.

Traveling with kids doesn’t have to be a major ordeal, and, in fact, those who travel frequently with children often say that it is among the most rewarding things they do as a family. The bottom line? Having children doesn’t have to stop you from traveling. In fact, I’ve encountered several families who do so and can’t imagine not traveling with their children.

This is not to say that traveling with children—as a single parent, with a spouse or in a larger group—is going to mirror that backpacking trip you took through Asia as a college student or will be as elegant and luxurious as the honeymoon you took in the Caribbean. Traveling with kids requires a different kind of mindset, one that encompasses flexibility, patience, a slower pace, adaptability, trust, creativity and an open mind, but parents who have taken their kids on the road will be quick to say that it’s completely worth it.

So … why travel with kids?

The easy answer is because YOU CAN. More specifically:

• Children adapt easily. They don’t see language differences or skin color as a barrier. Kids of all walks of life will inevitably find something in common, regardless of where in the world they are.
• They learn responsibility. By putting children in charge of tracking mileage on a road trip or their own small carry-on bag on an airplane ride, they feel important and learn to rely on their ability to make decisions.
• Learning languages at a young age is easier. Children are better able to pick up a foreign language without laboring over the subject agreement and verb conjugation. In our ever-growing global world, immersing kids in a foreign language at a young age is not only easier for them, it’s the smart thing to do.
• Travel builds self-confidence, open mindedness and understanding. It is easy for children to become isolated in a comfortable world that revolves around their friends and school. Introducing kids to different living conditions, lifestyles and traditions helps expand their worldview to include something beyond their backyard.
• It provides context and is educational. Perusing children’s versions of Homer or The Iliad while wondering among Greek ruins and checking out the English countryside while reading Harry Potter means a lot more than reading them in a closed-up bedroom. Learning about volcanoes or traditional Native American practices will leave a lasting impression if combined with a hike on a volcano or visit to a Native American village.
• Action is better than sedentary living. Too many children grow up with the television and their video games. When they travel, they live in a three-dimensional world and they stay active.

Here is the secret to traveling with kids: Traveling with kids requires a different travel style. Again, flexibility, patience and a go-with-the-flow attitude will greatly enhance any travel experiences you have with kids. To get you in that mindset, here are a handful of tips for traveling with children:

• Don’t jam your schedule with activities. Kids need down time, nap time and playtime, so make sure you carve out some schedule-free hours to accommodate those needs. Find a balance for both your travel desires and their desires by visiting a museum or a site in the morning, then spending the afternoon at a pool, playground or park.
• Pack new toys, books or movies. In addition to some classic favorites, it doesn’t hurt to buy a few new dollar store toys that can be pulled out at a moment’s notice for those last few hours of a long flight or as rewards to good behavior.
• Take breaks. On long road trips, take time to stop for lunch, bathroom breaks and to stretch and run around. A couple minutes of fresh air can go a long way for a couple hours of peaceful driving.
• Maintain a familiar routine. Even though you’re in an unfamiliar environment, maintain some routine practices such as reading a book before bed and turning off the lights at a normal time.
• Eat breakfast in. Kids are hungry in the morning, so even if you’d like to go out for breakfast, make sure you have some bagels or dry cereal and juice boxes on hand to tide over any morning whining.
• Maintain health. Germs are bound to be abundant wherever you travel, so make sure everyone in the family washes their hands frequently. Carry ample supplies of children’s Tylenol, a thermometer and any other medications your child may need, and address illnesses as they arise.
• Involve them in decision making. Your kids can take part in planning the trip, especially if they’re aware of what you’re doing and where you’re going. Read books and watch movies about your intended destination before you leave, and ask them what they’d like to see once you arrive. If you’re traveling as a large family, make sure everyone gets to do at least one thing they’d like to do on the trip.

If you’re beginning to think that traveling with your small ones may actually be an option then now is the time to start planning your next trip because it’s never too early to expose your children to the world beyond their front door. There are a lot of details to be considered when getting ready to hit the road with your kids, but the good news is that someone else has already done all the things you want to do.

Check out the extensive list of resources noted below, all of which are written and maintained by traveling parents. Among these sites you will find product and place reviews, how-to tips, best-of suggestions, packing lists, information on where to find family travel deals and much more.

Resources for traveling with kids:

• Have Baby Will Travel — Corinne McDermott provides an online guide for traveling with children, including tips and information, trip reviews, packing lists and family travel deals.
• Location Independent Parents — Managed and written by three enterprising mothers, this site provides information for parents who not only want to travel with their children but work from anywhere on the planet.
• Travel Mamas — A community of men and women who not only want to survive travel with their kids but also want to love exploring the world with their families.
• Delicious Baby — A frequent traveler with three young children, Debbie shares news and information that impacts traveling families.
• Ciao Bambino! — This site provides trusted and reliable accommodation recommendations written by and for parents.
• WhyGo Family — Comprehensive guide on where to stay, eat and play as well as recommendations on travel gear, guides and insurance.
• trekaroo — Reviews of kid-friendly hotels, activities, and travel tips for family fun.
• Kickass Adventuring with Kids — Part lifestyle blog, part travel blog, part inner dialogue, this site chronicles AJ and Mickie’s experience of raising three boys, sometimes doing things the hard way and most of the time loving the payoff.
• Traveling Mamas — Created by several mothers, this site provides tips on great and not-so-hot places to visit and information on how to plan the best family vacation.
• Wandermom — This site provides resources for independent family travel.
• SoulTravelers3 — Two parents and their child left for an epic odyssey in 2006, which they say is an open-ended, years-long slow trip around the world as a family adventure, unschool, spiritual journey and lifestyle. This is their story.

If you’ve traveled with children in the past, what suggestions do you have for other parents who would like to do so? What other resources do you use when planning family trips? Please share your thoughts in the comments below.

If you liked this post, you might also enjoy:

• 6 Questions with a Traveling Family
• Why People Don’t Travel, Part 1: Fear of Going Solo
• Why People Don’t Travel, Part 2: Lack of Money

Photos courtesy of woodleywonderworks, clappstar and paulhami.

Why People Don’t Travel, Part 3: Kids | Kaleidoscopic Wandering

And then Chloe came along.

But that didn’t stop Mark and Brooke. Now the adventurous duo has become the traveling trio, though hitting the road these days is a little slower and more thought out with an eye on the wallet. Here’s what they have to say about their new travel lifestyle, including their tips on family travel and hitting the road with kids. Make sure you check out their travel blog, Adventure Parents, as well.

Tell us a little bit about your family’s travel style:

Mark:
Since becoming a family of three, we stick to road trips — a funky collective of similar minded travelers refers to our type of travel as overlanding; vehicle-dependent, ecologically sound, back road travel. It’s a great system for us. Primarily, we’re self-contained with a mid-size Nissan  four-wheel-drive pickup that we’ve set up similar to an RV; a comfortable bed, organized storage, and even running water for showering. We live fairly close to Mexico and manage a couple trips a year to a few beach villages that aren’t on the tourist radar. Having a vehicle that’s rugged, reliable and (oddly) home-like opens of new places on the map where other modes don’t go — like buses, trains, and taxis — and where there are no hotels.

In general, we use this as a way to open our daughter’s life, and our own, to culture, history, and the natural world that we wouldn’t be exposed to otherwise. But we still travel to common destinations like the National Parks at times. What makes our style unique is how we seek out back roads and unusual routes to destinations, and we do it with a little furry-headed blue-eyed girl singing to Barney music in the backseat. It’s quite the combination.

How does having a child change the way you travel?

Mark:
In general, far less dirt-bagging. You know, like riding a Mexican chicken truck in the middle of night and sleeping in bus stations are things of the past. The journey along the road becomes the destination, as sometimes we might only cover 20 miles in one day. For instance, Brooke has family 1,400 miles from our home. Rather than booking a flight, we’ll take more time and embark on a zig-zagging road adventure and spend a few days, say, cruising around the San Juan Mountains of Colorado. Having a child along for the ride dictates that we do everything we can to make every moment enjoyable and relaxed. There was a time in our lives when we’d take a shoestring flight to Peru that had a number of stops or layovers because it only cost a couple hundred bucks, but you’re asking for trouble doing that with a toddler. I guess you could say our threshold for pain has … evolved.

Before we had Chloe, our daughter, Brooke and I traveled quite a bit and decided that exploring the world, near and far, is how we’d take on the responsibility of teaching our kids about life. Consider these statistics from National Geographic: 48% of Americans between 18 and 24 years old can’t find Mississippi on a U.S. map. 60% can’t locate Iraq on a world map, and that’s been one of the most talked about countries in mainstream news for the last eight years; it’s nuts that so many don’t have any idea where it is. Having a child changed the way we travel because we happen to believe travel is fun, educational, and well-rounding. We needed to make travel more comfortable while seeing the non-developed or under-commercialized parts of the country, or other countries. With our set-up, we could drive from our home through Central America and all the way to Tierra del Fuego and live out of the truck pretty comfortably. Chloe could learn Spanish by osmosis, or embrace history by visiting real 16th-century missions from Cortés’ colonization.

Brooke:
The biggest difference to me is the slower pace. Packing, planning, and the actual driving and roadside stops all take longer with a young child along. It’s hard to be as spontaneous about where we will sleep or what we’ll do once we arrive, since the comfort of Chloe is always on our minds.

But, despite the change in pacing and comfort, it wasn’t a question of whether we would keep traveling or not once we had our daughter. To us, as Mark said, it is part of her education. I think it’s important to get to instill a healthy sense of wonder in Chloe so that not only will she want to travel the world, but she’ll also develop respect for culture, art, and music. These things are rapidly deteriorating in education today.

According to your website, your family generally does a lot of self-contained and back country travel. What have been the challenges and opportunities of traveling like this with a small child?

Mark:
I definitely remember having high hopes in the summer of 2007 when we drove to Yellowstone National Park; I’d been romancing this idea of blue skies during the day and long bike rides in the evenings looking for moose. I have a friend who lives in Lander, Wyoming and he warned me, “Dude, you know it can still snow up here in July, right?” That’s exactly what happened when we arrived, a nasty snow flurry. Naturally we abandoned the plan when we got there and stayed with some friends in Montana. The weather plays a big role. Chloe never complains about the cold (or the summertime Arizona heat at home), but who wants to camp in a blizzard?

In a rural town in Mexico, we got a little special treatment when Chloe was eight weeks old. We stopped at a roadside market to stock up on food for the weekend, and there were a number of ladies shopping there as well. While the more reserved ladies would smile big and then lean over to sneak a kiss onto Chloe’s feet, the other women stopped Brooke and held out their arms. Kind of like, “You’re not going anywhere until I hold that baby and sing her a song right here next to the onions and bread.” I’ll admit that it was startling — so un-American, you know? — but mostly sweet because it showed us, once again, how hospitable and kind the Mexican culture is. We didn’t read about it that hospitality in a book, but experienced it for ourselves.

You’ve noted that your family likes to check out unusual, not-well-known destinations. Can you give a few examples of these destinations? Do you seek them out or do you happen upon them?

Mark:
When we’re home, I enjoy sitting down with my piles of maps and just looking for things to go see and routes to take. One time we were passing through Sonora, Mexico and saw a sign that read, “Desemboque.” I asked Brooke to look at the map to see where it was.

“It’s on the coast actually,” she told me.  “Let’s go to the beach.”

What we found was a small village that hadn’t seen massive tourist development like Puerto Peñasco, a nearby town on the coast. We set up camp on the beach, walking distance from the town, and enjoyed a clean beach and fresh seafood for the weekend. Good trips like that remind us to seek out the small dots on the map, although it doesn’t always pan out the way we expect.

We’ve also explored much of the Sonoran Desert National Monument, which virtually nobody goes to because it’s nothing but dirt roads among volcanic rock and cactus, and it’s on the way to nowhere. The writings of Charles Bowden and the photos of Jack Dykinga introduced me to this place.

But you’d be surprised at the number of quiet, beautiful places you can find by just looking at a map and following a dirt road.

What other adventures do you have planned for the near future?

Brooke:
Well, I really want to plan a trip to New Zealand.  Maybe rent a four-wheel drive truck or camper and do some exploring, hiking, and kayaking. Everything I read about it sounds incredible. But that’s not officially in the books with a date or anything. Mark and I want to do some more trips with Chloe in Baja, including riding the ferry across the Sea of Cortés. Chloe would like that, and there are beautiful beaches all over the peninsula.

Also, Mark and I honeymooned in Yosemite National Park seven years ago this May, and I think it’s time to go back to explore some new terrain there. Arizona is such a great launching point for our trips, especially if we head South or West.  We just have to pick a spot on the map, find the time and save the money, and hit the road.

What advice do you have for other parents who would like to travel on a budget beyond the confines of mainstream attractions?

Brooke:
I think it’s important to know that camping doesn’t have to mean sleeping in a boyscout tent and eating beans from a can. Some people might think we’re soft or “not really camping” because of our set-up, but we go more often and stay out of hotels more than most of those naysayers. I’m lucky that Mark has designed such a comfortable, reliable truck set-up for our family vacation ride, but there are a hundred other ways you can make your camping more comfortable for your entire family. As you go on more trips, you will find out what works best for you.

Mark:
The hardest part is getting out the door of your home. But that’s also true for going to the grocery store. Anyway, of all our road trips the lasting bit of advice that I have to tell myself is: more time at fewer places, rather than less time at more places. Abandon the “how much can I see in the least amount of time” ideology and embrace “let’s just have some fun wherever we are.”

All photos are courtesy of Mark and Brooke Stephens of Adventure Parents.

If you liked this post, you might also enjoy:

• Why People Don’t Travel, Part 3: Kids
• 7 Questions with a Backyard Explorer
• How to Pack a Car Trunk for a Road Trip

6 Questions with a Traveling Family | Kaleidoscopic Wandering