“Family” Vacations

I need some feedback.  And a serious dose of reality.  Because I think when it comes to planning a trip that includes our kids, my husband and I are misguided.

I would love to hear from you, my readers, your opinions on traveling with kids and how to work the tough yet inevitable situations where one of the children is super-unhappy.

Or if all of them are double super-unhappy.

Because we just returned from a weekend away in Moab, Utah.  Hearing about the spectacular beauty of Arches National Park and the less-heard-of Dead Horse Canyon and that kids love the natural playground that these areas make, my husband and I just knew our active kids (who had also studied some geology in science class), were going to have a great time.  We thought we were heading into an amazing adventure complete with wonder, physical exertion and, knowing the kids can’t take a whole day of desert sun and sandstone, time to play in the park and swim in the pool.  It was to be a trip balanced with relaxation and geology lessons and scrambles up the sandstone terrain for photo-ops under the arches.

And Moab was great.  The parks were every bit as amazing as our expectations led us to believe.

However, to put in mildly, the kids were less than impressed.  They were unhappy about the hike up to Delicate Arch…which ended up being a little farther and definitely steeper than we thought.  Then when we got to our destination,  a shearing, deafening wind escalated their bad moods.  The grit sandpapering their teeth, coupled with an aggressive ground squirrel scampering about, really put the icing on a rock-solid cake.  Which was too bad…the view of Delicate Arch was even more breathtaking than the wind that made it difficult to take pictures.   And did I mention plummeting blood sugars?  I had two kids suffering from that along with their sore legs, and chronic cases of, dare I say, endless whining.

To date it was my husband’s and my toughest hike and we have hiked through a four-hour downpour.

It was a discouraging morning of events.  So disappointed we were we began to seriously reconsider our summer vacation with the kids.  If one day, our first day, on a weekend trip was going this badly, how would two weeks of togetherness, punctuated by time in the car and sightseeing, go?

Admittedly, we made several foolish mistakes.  The first being we should have researched the duration and difficulty of the hike we took.  The second being the “treat” of miniature boxes of cereal for breakfast which were not a sensible choice for an active day (or any day for that matter).  Even though the kids tore through every bit of the sugary stuff, no amount of calories could counter the tanked blood sugars a half mile into our trek.  Lastly we forgot (selectively?) how the kids need a day to settle into a new environment, especially one where their togetherness is imposed (riding in the car for several hours, sharing a room and a bed in a hotel) and makes them especially punchy.  Lots of wrong moves and lack of preparedness made for a disastrous day.

The only thing we did right?  Preparing the kids the night before how the day was planned and that it did include the afternoon to play at the pool and  park near our condo.  But my kids couldn’t see that for anything in the shearing wind atop a pile of sandstone, hungry and tired. They were just mad at my husband and me for making them go on vacation in the first place.

Which hurt, in more ways than I will mention here.  We tried to plan a cool family trip and it blew (up) in our faces.  How discouraging it was that we may not be able to enjoy the many destinations within driving distance of our home because our kids would rather go to Disney World, LegoLand and blow off steam in the hotel pool.  Don’t get me wrong, those trips are a blast and we have had many, but there is an amazing world of natural and historical wonders we want to share with our kids.  Places any brochure will point out are “kid-friendly.”  What can we do to make these kinds of trips as memorable as riding Space Mountain and going to Cinderella’s Castle?

I would really love your feedback and suggestions.  Your experiences, good or bad, traveling with kids.  What you have learned.  What you regret.  What you can’t wait to do again.  How you handle the kids’ grumbles.  Summer fun is rapidly approaching and it pays for all of us to be a bit better prepared for memorable vacations with our kids.

Thanks to you all!

Delicate Arch. We were blown away (figuratively and almost literally!)

Balanced Rock. The kids did think this was pretty cool.