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Mother's Day: YMCA Summer Camp

A friend of mine just suggested a great and affordable family vacation for this summer:  YMCA summer camp.  Check out www.ymca.net/find-ymca-camps to locate a camp in the state in which you are interested. 

One camp that comes particularly recommended is Trout Lodge & Camp Lakewood on Missouri's Lake of the Ozarks (just 90 minutes south of St. Louis).  The per person rate includes three buffet-style meals a day, and you can choose from loft suites in the Trout Lodge or family cabins.  (Note that the rooms do not have phones or TV's, so you will REALLY be getting back to nature.  Wonder if TJ could survive without watching at least 10 minutes of Sesame Street a day??) 

The accommadations are reasonable - suites (which have two roll away beds on an upper level and two queen beds on a lower level) start at a base rate in the summer of $169 (that is for one adult - each extra adult is $59, ages 6-17 $49, and ages 5 & under free).  The family cabin includes two bedrooms (each with a full bed and two bunk beds), two roll-away beds, and a crib and the base rate is $299. Most activities are free of charge, (although a few of the more exotic ones are a nominal cost like $5 per person) and include things like archery, boat rides, cave exploration, fishing trips, swimming, mini golf, nature hikes, sand volleyball, and ping pong.  Arts and crafts are also provided. 

Hiatus

You've probably noticed that there haven't been any postings this entire week.  That's because we've been immersed in a less fun kind of trip-- the journey of selling one's home and buying a new one.  Let's just say we're halfway there, which is pretty good, except for that whole being homeless thing that results if we can't work the other half out.  On the bright side, it may leave us with several new first-hand hotel tips. 

New home or not, hopefully we'll be back posting regularly next week. 

The Family Travel Handbook

Thumbing through my May 2008 issue of the great Budget Travel magazine, I was very pleased to find a special pullout section offering tips on traveling with children, called "The Family Travel Handbook."  (also available online here)  The handbook contains approximately fifty tips relating to several family travel categories, like planning, flying, driving, hotels, food, and activities.  Well many of them won't exactly surprise you (like the advice to change diapers before boarding your plane), you're bound to find a few good tips you haven't thought of before.  A few of my favorites were:

• Organize items by parent.  Have one parent carry the essentials(diapers, wipes, etc.) and the other carry the fun stuff, like books, toys, games, and snacks.  This system saves you from digging through one jam-packed, bottomless, bag to find exactly what you need.
• Whenever you can, try to get a hotel room with a patio or balcony so you don't feel like a prisoner at nap or bedtime.  On our recent trip to Phoenix, I was happy to let TJ nap as long as he wanted, because I was sitting outside on our patio, reading a book and soaking in the 70-degree February sunshine.
• When on the road, chat up local parents at a grocery store or playground and ask them where in the area they like to take their kids for fun or what local restaurants their kids enjoy. 

So, check out (and print out) the Family Travel Handbook.  Hopefully it'll help your family travels go even more smoothly.

Mother's Day: Carpooling

Gas prices have recently gone through the roof.  This expense factors into any summer vacation planning, as well as everyday trips around town with your kids.  One way to combat the increasing gas prices, not to mention reduce greenhouse emissions, is to carpool.  Here are two websites to check out:

• eRideShare.com  is a free service for connecting commuters, or cross-country travelers, who are going the same way.  You register for free, place your listing, search to find potential matches, and then click on contact names to connect.  Criagslist shares their cross-country rideshare listings with eRideShare.com, so you have access to that great resource as well. 
• iCarpool - leave it to Google to come up with another super idea.  iCarpool is also a free online service that helps you find carpool parters.  It claims to use a "high precision trip matching to find the best carpool match" (and if Google claims it, I believe it), and it is also available on Facebook.

While I can't imagine subjecting some poor sole to TJ's taste in CD's during a cross-country trip (Elmo's Symphony, Johnny Cash, and Elvis), on the upside, maybe we could find someone to sit in the backseat with him, feed him pretzels, read him books, and generally keep him entertained and happy (yeah, right).

Five Ways to Cope with Longer Flight Times

How's this for progress?  A recent USA Today analysis finds that air travel is slower today than at any time in the past two decades. Due to gridlock both on the runways and in the airways, planes are moving slower at every phase of the trip.  In 2007, the average flight traveled at 342 mph (which includes time spent both flying and taxiing), 16 mph slower than the 1998 average of 358mph.  That might not sound like much when talking about traveling over 300mph, but consider that your average trip from Chicago to Phoenix will now take 20 minutes longer, 40 minutes round trip. 

And, if we're talking averages, you know that means there are also extremes.  For example, the average flight from San Jose to New York Kennedy now takes a whopping 2 hours and 52 minutes longer than it did in 1998.  I'd say that's pretty extreme. 

So, what are we to do with this information?  Unfortunately, there's not much we can do, other than realize it's going to take even longer to get from point A to point B, and plan accordingly.  With that in mind, here are some ideas on how to spend that extra "quality time" on board with your family:

• Eat, digest, get hungry again.  Repeat. 
• Turn the game "20 Questions" into "200 Questions." 
• Pack 4 more books, 3 more snacks, and 2 more toys.  And an extra set of patience.  Or earplugs.
• Watch longer movies on the portable DVD-- think Lord of the Rings Trilogy/ Godfather Trilogy double feature. 
• Airsick bag puppet show, anyone?