Kristin Spencer and her husband are on a mission, one dictated by a ‘higher power’. Wherever they go – so go the ‘sprouts’ (aka their 2 young children). In fact, they are missionaries who’s serves having them traveling the world and it’s a family endeavor. Enjoy the entries of their adventures and the tips on how to make to make it all work.

© Gretchen for TravelBlogs, 2011. | Sprouts en Route | One comment |
Post categories: Blogs
Post tags: cultural experiences, Europe, family travel, living abroad, Missionary work, parenting, tips and tricks, travel with kids

Anne-Sophie Redisch has been writing and traveling most of her life. She hasn’t always written about travel but she’s always been going somewhere – the more obscure, the better – but not always alone either. In her words, “I’ve travelled as a single mum for many years. In my experience, children and travel are easily combinable.” There are many who would agree wholeheartedly.

© Gretchen for TravelBlogs, 2011. | Sophie’s World | No comment |
Post categories: Blogs
Post tags: Asia, cultural experiences, Europe, female travellers, parenting, Single Parenting, travel with kids, travel writer, USA

Sometimes, you just have to follow your heart. This is exactly what Ann Hsu Kaufman did when her husband’s work took them from Washington D.C. to Kuala Lumpur. Her site invites you on a culinary journey around S.E. Asia, a view of their home life and the birth of their son (Gravy Baby). No, it’s not his real name. Now, back in Charleston, S. Carolina, her writings will continue to tantalize your taste buds.

© Gretchen for TravelBlogs, 2011. | Hop On The Gravy Train | 3 comments |
Post categories: Blogs
Post tags: Asia, couples, cultural experiences, food, living abroad, parenting, photography, United States

This site is brought to you by “Poo Vision, Inc.” – or so states the blog introduction. (Might just be true…) Jay is a British ex-pat living in Russia with his wife and young son. He is also a stay-at-home-dad. His entries are a mix of ex-pat tips, child-rearing “lessons learned” and “how tos” for creating a new life in Moscow – all with a humorous twist.

© Gretchen for TravelBlogs, 2010. | English Dad In Moscow | One comment |
Post categories: Blogs
Post tags: cultural experiences, expat life, living abroad, Moscow, parenting, Russia, Stay At Home Dad

It’s been a year since Lainie and her son, Miro (then age 10), began their quest to live more simply on the road of life. Career burn-out, long hours, a failing economy and dwindling mother-son time aided in the decision to embark on this journey. Their website is a combination of blogs and podcasts that are truly inspirational.

© Gretchen for TravelBlogs, 2010. | Raising Miro on the Road of Life | One comment |
Post categories: Blogs
Post tags: activism, Central America, cultural experiences, expat life, family travel, long-term travel, parenting, South America, travel with kids

Taking a junk around Halong Bay, Vietnam.

Recently, I conducted interviews with Theodora Sutcliffe (Travels with a Nine Year Old) and her 9-year old son, Zac (The 9-year-old strikes back). Though Mom calls him Z, I asked his preference – it’s Zac. (Guess Moms get to call you by whatever name they choose. Comes with being a Mom.) Each was given a similar set of questions to answer. I hope you enjoy their replies.

Zac: In the blog (Travels with a Nine Year Old), your Mom has written: “…since he was small we’ve talked about taking a year out to travel the world when he is nine. Now we’re finally doing it.” Why did the two of you choose age nine for this journey?

Well, for starters, it was a 24-karat golden opportunity since Mum had the time.

Well, for starters, it was a 24-karat golden opportunity since Mum had the time. We always talked about it. We first started debating on it when I was seven. However, I didn’t want to do it then. I felt like I wasn’t ready to spend a year travelling round the world. So Mom said, “Alright then, maybe when you’re nine.”

A brand new backpack!

Theodora: From a mother’s perspective, why was this odyssey important at this time in Z’s life?

I think as a parent considering long-term travel with a child, or children, you are caught between two stools. You want them to be old enough to remember it and participate in it, and I certainly wanted Z to be able to actively participate in activities such as diving and trekking. So that gives you a minimum age. And I think for a teenager, or a child approaching that age, intense travel as a family might be absolute hell. At that age you really want to be finding your own space, forming your own relationships, and shaping yourself as a person removed from your family. So there’s a maximum. More immediately, the time was right in my life in January 2010. And he personally felt ready to do it, which he didn’t a couple of years ago.

Zac: If I’ve paid attention correctly, you’ve been traveling since mid-January (2010). Have you felt homesick for anything or just enjoying the adventure?

Indeed I have been feeling homesick at times. Most of the time it comes up when I’m bored or something just gets me thinking about home. I haven’t been bored that many times. But when Mom took a dive course and left me out of it I was a bit bored. I feel homesick for my best friend, Fred, and for England, because I do miss being back in England for some awkward reason, which I don’t even know.

Theodora: You write very lovingly about traveling with Z and the assorted adventures, mishaps, and such. Has anything been a true test of patience yet?

LOL! I’m surprised you didn’t ask him this!

In terms of travel per se there has been no unpleasantness which hasn’t been counter-balanced by the benefits, or actually quite funny at the time. Neither of us has been significantly ill. We haven’t been robbed. We haven’t been stranded anywhere hideous. So I’ve never had the “OMG what am I doing? I want to go hoooome!” moment, and nor, I think, has he.

The exchange that is seared into my memory is me saying, “Look. What exactly is your problem here?!” He took a deep breath and said, “The problem, Mom, is YOU,” and launched into a recital of everything I had done wrong EVER. Going back about five years…

We’ve also always got on very well. Since Z was a baby, he’s had a very chilled, calm temperament, a high pain threshold and low requirements for sleep. He’s always traveled well, been very articulate and found it easy to talk about his feelings. So as a travel companion, I knew it was going to work.

However…. We had a real humdinger of a row in Luang Prabang, Laos, which has been sitting in my drafts file for a while. I was trying to get him to write some postcards. When he wants to, he can be absolutely stubborn as a mule. He’ll change the subject, stonewall, ignore, ignore, ignore, ignore… He said writing postcards made him homesick. I said he was making up excuses because he didn’t like handwriting. We ended up sitting on a wall by the Mekong bickering, with passers-by looking pityingly at him and disapprovingly at me. The exchange that is seared into my memory is me saying, “Look. What exactly is your problem here?!” He took a deep breath and said, “The problem, Mom, is YOU,” and launched into a recital of everything I had done wrong EVER. Going back about five years…

Zac: I can’t help but ask – how is the “home schooling” coming along? (I read you were writing stories now. Bravo!) Is it easier or harder than sitting in a classroom?

Well… It’s harder than sitting in a classroom but it’s a hell of a lot more fun! You see, sitting in a classroom, you just have to sit down, do your learning and for me sometimes watch the clock awaiting a science lesson, an art lesson or any lesson you prefer over the one you’re currently doing. However, when you’re home schooling, you’ve got to seek cover from loud music, find a desk, a chair and a decent place where you can easily concentrate on whatever you’re doing.

Unschooling artwork: a scene from Artemis Fowl.

In normal school the lessons have a set order, a completely set order. The compass has motionless points. In home schooling you get to choose what you want to do and the order in which you do them. In unschooling you get to run your finger across pebbledash instead of being told how it feels. You get to take apart a phone and see how it works instead of being told about the mechanics of a Nokia.

You probably wouldn’t get a short lesson about gunboats and just go snorkeling to look at one when you’re at an average school! Plus, Mom downloaded some particle physics for me and I’ve hatched a new theory about the universe, that it’s just a computer programme designed by big, powerful, super-intelligent aliens.

However, when you’re doing home schooling, it’s just you, whoever’s teaching you and possibly a friend, cousin, brother or sister, and there’s no annoying classmate flicking Blu-tac at you or doing some idiotic stunt like sticking a clothes peg to their eyelash. Believe it or not our class clown Emre has done that.

Theodora: I asked Z for his opinion of the home-schooling thing. I’d like to hear your side as his teacher.

Obviously, world travel is a phenomenal context in which to discover history, RE, geography, the natural world… You learn things by exploring Angkor Wat, walking the Ho Chi Minh Trail, meeting Khmer Rouge survivors, snorkeling a World War II gunboat or diving a coral reef that would take aeons to learn in a classroom. I think the permutation of home-schooling we’re now trying works extremely well. We’re using a version of unschooling (I wrote about it here: Unschooling Rocks!), which means you allow children to learn what and when they want, rather than working with syllabuses and schedules.

No, Please, Not Maths Again.

Z was a year or two ahead of the grade point average when we left the UK, so I can afford to be relaxed and experimental. He used to hate writing. He is now creating blog posts and chapter books, writing stories, planning stories, and doing a lot of art work to go with them. He reads well and is now discovering Dickens, which is brilliant.

But there are challenges. He’s quite technically minded and scientific. I did a single science subject to sixteen, twenty years ago. So responding to his learning desires involves a lot of learning on my side. He wants to do animating, and has played around with his Dad’s Flash animation software. So we’re getting a copy of that, which means I’ll have to learn with him on it. He has been talking about the Theory of Relativity a lot, and his objections to the Big Bang theory, and we’ve been learning about particle physics because he wanted to know what a positron was and how the Large Hadron Collider worked. We’ve been lucky enough to meet a lot of scientists as we travel, so that’s really helped.

Recently, he sat through my Open Water dive course and absorbed a lot of stuff about gases and pressures and percentages and decimals and fractions. So he learnt a lot there, too. Now he’s plotting the anatomy of a dragon and has been asking about the properties of gases so he can work out how their insides operate, the relationship between inertness and toxicity, and so on. So, I guess that’s my next challenge.

He’s also been teaching himself some French off Google Translate, coming out with random phrases from time to time. I’m trying to build on that when it comes up.

He is really into art, which presents another challenge. I can’t really draw, fold or sculpt, and, while you can do amazing things with found materials, like seashells, as we’re backpacking, it’s pretty much pencil, pen, crayon and paper.

Physically, it’s amazing how fluent he is compared to when we left. He was clowning around on a diveboat and someone said, “Well, he’ll either be a sailor or a particle physicist…” And I like learning myself, which is good. The downside is the amount I’m having to learn. Because I could walk the fourth and fifth grade syllabus’, and go a lot higher in the arts… But particle physics? On a beach?!

Zac: Of the places you’ve visited so far, do you have a favorite? If so, why?

Yes, I do have a favorite. Finland! I prefer skiing down a mountain to tropical cities. It helps that I’m capable of overheating before you could wave a ten-gallon hat and shout Yeehaw! Metaphorically speaking, of course.

Of course, if you’re talking about all the places on our holiday, so far my favourite would have to be the Philippines. As well as having Manila, which is a very nice city, there is the island of Marinduque, which boasts some hot springs, which have been converted into swimming pools and it also boasts a tamarind orchard. In the tamarind orchard you can find sweet tamarind trees, sour tamarind trees and one ridiculously sour tamarind tree. There is also a very nice hotel in Puerto Princesa City, which has its own kitchen, free room wifi, a little snackshop and hugely cheap fan rooms with well-maintained shared bathrooms. And of course there is the island-hopping and last of all some very good dive resorts.

Zac: Of the places you will be visiting, is there one you want to see the most? Again, if so, why?

…my cousins Eliza and Monique have their own pet chicken, which once laid a blue egg! We have also kept an egg secret in the hope that it will be brooded for long enough to hatch. Perhaps now it has hatched!

Australia! You see, I have cousins, grandparents and the like all living happily in Australia. I even have an uncle there. What’s more, my dad is Australian, which is why he’s coming out to meet us there. Also I am looking forward to Halloween, Christmas and my birthday, which are all conveniently close together, also my cousins Eliza and Monique have their own pet chicken, which once laid a blue egg! We have also kept an egg secret in the hope that it will be brooded for long enough to hatch. Perhaps now it has hatched!

Zac: What have you learned from this trip so far (life lessons, new feelings, discovering new things, eating bugs, etc.)?

Well, for starters, I have learnt divers’ sign language and emergency diving procedures. I have also learnt that due to the recent modernization televisions have become all the rage and now even the Lao minority tribes have them. In some countries, mainly Buddhist countries, it is considered hugely rude to put your foot up at someone.

I have learned that even if it freaks you out sometimes you can eat it because, as you asked, yes, I have eaten bugs, fried crickets, to be precise, and the other night I ate a delectable dish called sisig which consists of sizzling pig cheeks, ears and – yes, I know it’s kind of disgusting but it does taste nice – pig brains! You see, Asian cuisine has a 60 km difference between European or American cuisine.

Not the Most Drinkable…

The problem is that almost everywhere you go you cannot escape from commercial foods and global stereotypes. You see, we went to an island, which had a tribal village in it. These people lived very simply. Their diet consisted mainly of coconut, papaya and clams, and – would you believe it? Packet foods. I even found a sachet of Sunsilk conditioner! True story.

I have had some new feelings. One of the new feelings is the feeling where you feel like you’re a complete idiot. I first discovered this feeling when we were in a posh hotel in Thailand where each hotel room had a combination safe, four digit, and I cheekily locked my mom’s cigarettes in it.;-) I then attempted to write down the combination, realized I didn’t have a pen and started looking for one. While I was looking for one, however, I completely forgot the code!

The number one stereotype I hate is the stereotype that if you’re a kid your favourite sweet flavour is strawberry. Complete tripe. (Speaking of tripe, did you know tripe is Britain’s most hated food in the modern era?) Actually, I prefer sucking the juice out of lemons to eating that trash they call strawberry flavoured sweets.

Theodora: I also asked Z what he has learned from the trip so far. To date, what have you learned? Anything unexpected?

First and foremost, mooching… The joys of just wandering around, appreciating somewhere, sitting on the dock of the bay, and so on… It’s not something I’ve been good at historically, and I’ve learnt that through travel and my son. That’s a big discovery for me.

A close second? The wonders of diving. I don’t think I have a particular talent for it, but I do love it, and I’m contemplating qualifying as a scuba instructor.

Thirdly. How great are people?! I’ve never really doubted that the vast majority of people are good and kind. But our experiences on this trip, running from megalopolises to tribal villages and tiny islands, have really reinforced my belief in human nature.

Theodora: Now that you are 4+ months into this adventure, what advice do you have for parents (single or not) considering a similar travel experience?

Zac does not approve of his mother’s taste in shorts.

1: First and foremost: go for it. You will regret it if you don’t, because your kids are only children once.
2: When things go wrong, which they will, see the funny side.
3: Try not to fly too much. You get a lot more sense of a place by travelling slowly than you do by whizzing between airports. Plus it’s kinder to the environment.
4: Don’t over-schedule. If you’re planning an itinerary, leave plenty of days spare in it for just hanging out, enjoying stuff, staying a few extra days somewhere nice, going somewhere you’d never have heard of, etc. Adding a week to each month you plot off a map is a good rule of thumb.
5: Teach your kids to manage risk and strategies for dealing with environmental dangers.
6: Plan by the seasons but don’t plan exclusively for dry. Wet and cold can be interesting too.
7: Get decent backpacks for your kids. They are few and far between in the West and impossible to source in Asia.
8: Take more than one laptop to avoid turf wars. And stash movies on the children’s.
9: Sarongs are a godsend. They’re beach towels, bath towels, cover-ups, sheets, kiddie sleeping bags, and they weigh nothing and take up no space.
10: Zip-off trousers are two outfits for the weight of one.

Theodora: What is one thing you left at home (purposefully or by mistake) that you could really, really use right now?

Hmmmm… I am kicking myself for not buying, bringing and using a bona fide Drybag: they’re great as beach bags, too. I lost a camera to damp on the Mekong, plus two snorkel sets and a pair of Raybans off Koh Chang. Which means I am also missing the other pair of shades I didn’t bring!

Other than that? I would like to have family photos and old photos on my laptop now. Most of them are print, but I’m annoyed not to have transferred the digital ones. But, to be honest, in cities like Manila, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, you can buy almost everything. I’m currently looking for a really robust camera. I’ve been through two in four months and just want something impossible to kill that’s good for scuba too.

Zac & Theodora: Can I check in with you again in a few months to see how it’s going?

Yes! (Zac)
I look forward to it! (Theodora)

You can follow Theodora and Zac at Travels with a Nine Year Old.

You can also follow Zac’s own blog at The 9-year-old strikes back.

Editor’s notes: All photographs courtesy of Theodora and Zac.

© Gretchen for TravelBlogs, 2010. | Un-Schooling And Other Neat Stuff: An Interview With Theodora and Zac | One comment |
Post categories: Interviews
Post tags: cultural experiences, family travel, long-term travel, parenting, Round the world, travel with kids

Travels with a Nine Year Old is the work of Theodora Sutcliffe. Together with her son, Z, they are on a year-long sojourn of discovery, learning life’s lessons and simply sharing time together – something Theodora felt was long overdue.

© Gretchen for TravelBlogs, 2010. | Travels with a Nine Year Old | One comment |
Post categories: Blogs
Post tags: cultural experiences, family travel, long-term travel, parenting, Round the world, travel with kids

Valaparaiso on Horseback

You and your partner are finally taking your dream vacation. The only thing is, by the time you got around to taking that dream vacation it’s no longer just you and your partner; it’s you, your partner and the kids. It’s not the end of the world. Traveling with kids doesn’t have to be drudgery, but it will require some attitude adjustments, some negotiating and a lot of planning and open communication.

You’ll be best off if, from the beginning, you accept the fact that this is not the same trip you would be having if it were just adults. Not better, not worse, just different. Expectations are premeditated disappointments; so adjust those expectations from the start and you’re more likely to enjoy the experience you’re having instead of longing for the one you’re not.

Remember when you were teaching your children about sharing? You had a bag of M&M’s, poured it out on the table and doled it out; one for you, one for me, one for you, one for me.

Remember when you were teaching your children about sharing? You had a bag of M&M’s, poured it out on the table and doled it out; one for you, one for me, one for you, one for me. Well, it’s time for sharing 202, this time with activities and/or sights. Explain to the kids that this is everyone’s vacation, not just theirs; therefore, everyone gets to choose activities they want to do. When it’s time for the adult activities, they don’t have to love them or for that matter, even like them, but they do have to go along with them and do it without complaining. You, of course, in return, will promise to do the same when it comes time for the activities that they want to do.

Getting kids involved in the planning from the beginning will help create “buy in” for the trip that is being created. If you’re not wedded to a particular vacation site, give them a choice of two or three places that are in the running. If they are older, have them review guidebooks to pick out places of interest they would like to visit. If they are younger, check your local library for videos on the location of choice so that they can watch it and get excited about your upcoming trip.

Biking Anyone?

Assign them specific days that they are in charge of planning: what to do, how to get there, where to eat, etc. Most kids will enjoy the authority that you have placed in their hands and you’ll be the beneficiary of their creativity.

When traveling with kids you will want to do more planning than you might have done were it just you and your partner. Kids like to feel secure in their surroundings and the easiest way to offer that security is to feel secure and confident yourself. With advanced planning you can offer that to them. When you arrive in a city with reservations in place and the knowledge of how to get to that accommodation, the kids don’t have to worry about where they are going to be sleeping that night or if they’ll be lost in transit. They will soon come to trust that Mom and Dad “know what they’re doing” and that they need not fear the unknown.

Also keep in mind that while kids appear to be high energy, they burn out more quickly than adults, as they don’t feel the same drive we might have to “see the sights.”

Also keep in mind that while kids appear to be high energy, they burn out more quickly than adults, as they don’t feel the same drive we might have to “see the sights.” They want to move at a slower pace, see less in a given day and have more down time to play and to relax. If they’re really young, time to nap. Don’t fight their pace but instead embrace it! You may discover that traveling is a lot more relaxing and enjoyable when you’re not pushing yourselves to cover as much territory. You won’t see everything the city has to offer but chances are, even if you push yourself, you still won’t.

Flight of the Gibbon

While there are things you surely won’t get to do while traveling with your kids, there might just be some incredible things that, had you not been traveling with your kids, you wouldn’t experience. A horse trek through the dunes in Chile or flying hundreds of feet above the rain forest on zip lines in Thailand would never have been on my list “A” list of activities. But, because of the kids’ interests, those were just a few of our activities on our year long trip around the world and what amazing adventures they turned out to be.

Editor’s Notes: All photos are courtesy of the author: lisa Shusterman. (Yes, lisa spells her first name with a lower case “L”. Honest. Not a repeated typo.)

(Oh, and the “Flight of the Gibbon” photo is a bit blurry because they were ‘in flight’. Have to take lisa’s word on that one.)

© Gretchen for TravelBlogs, 2010. | A Different Type Of Travel – With Kids | 15 comments |
Post categories: Articles
Post tags: Creativity, family travel, parenting, Self-discovery, Travel challenges, travel with kids

In his 2007 interview, Wade was described as a “modern-day nomad” and “travel was his lifestyle”. Not much has changed since that discussion. He’s still the “modern-day nomad” and “travel is still his lifestyle” but these days… That lifestyle includes a family. Wade met Chaya in 2008. They married and then gave birth to their daughter, Petra, in 2009. If you think parenthood overrides seeing the world – think again!

Wade and Petra

A lot changed in your life last year. You got married. You became a dad. How has this changed your perspective on travel?

Finding myself with wife and child has just strengthened my resolve as a traveler, and that traveling is the best way that I know of to cultivate a family. If I can travel with a family and raise a child on the road it would show that this is a sustainable lifestyle, it is a way of life that can be passed down through generations.

In my experience, the traveling life offers far more to savor, to learn, to figure out, to question, to answer than just about other way of living that I have been exposed to. When traveling, challenges occur daily which force you to use all of the resources at your disposal — this builds character, intelligence, and wisdom. If I had to choose a life for my daughter to lead — if I wanted to prepare her for anything life may toss her way — then I would want to raise her while traveling around the world.

This is what we are doing.

Raising a child while traveling is no longer an ideological rant that I use to have over beers with other travelers, but is something that is now real, raw, in my face, and in my hands.

Raising a child while traveling is no longer an ideological rant that I use to have over beers with other travelers, but is something that is now real, raw, in my face, and in my hands. I am not sure how well this will work further down the road — I do not yet know where to tell you to place your bets — but we have already traveled the USA from end to end as a family and are now in the Dominican Republic. We are living day for day, but if tomorrow is anything like today was, then I am quite sure that we can keep traveling on for at least these first phases of Petra’s development.

Marriage and parenthood aren’t usually considered to be compatible with full-time travel. What are your thoughts on that?

I would have to say that it is my impression that not much in the sedentary frame of existence seems to be compatible with full time travel. Whether you are talking about a career, health insurance, a retirement fund, a home, loans, mortgages, or having a wife and child, if you have the outlook of being secure and sedentary than none of it will mesh very well with traveling. I am just as free to travel now as I ever have been, because I intentionally set my life up in a way that would allow me to live like this.

I did not become a traveler by accident, I chose to live this way and made sure that my parameters were set up to allow for continuous travel. If I was burdened with many of the above stated responsibilities or values, then having a wife and baby would further nail down my tether. But I don’t. I set up a frame of living for myself a long time ago that took traveling to be at its center. Where many people prepare for a career or buying a home, I worked on cultivating skills that would allow me to live a full life moving from one part of the world to another.

Chaya and Petra

Travel is not an escape from my life, but it is my life. Having a wife and child has so far blended itself in well with this frame of living. If any of you read the Vagabond Journey Travelogue you will see that I do not go hungry, I am seldom cold or without shelter, I think I live like a king on $10 a day. But I am only able to do this because I had to sacrifice other ways of living — other value sets — to enable myself to live like this.

There are sacrifices to any lifestyle. There are tons of parameters, drawbacks, and sacrifices in the typical life of a doctor, a lawyer, a truck driver, a construction worker, and the same goes for being a traveler. Petra may not have all of the amenities of life that a doctor’s child would have, or the wholesome security of that of a skilled trades man, but these people’s children will not have the experiences, the thrills, the knowledge, the education, and exposure that Petra will have. Any lifestyle is a trade off: you trade certain values and parameters for others.

Petra has her mom and dad with her almost 24 hours a day, her days are generally relaxed, we are rarely every stressed out. We wake up in the morning, I publish a travelogue entry, and then we go to the beach and swim, meet people, and check things out. How many children can claim to have this?

There is one thing that babies are, and that is curious. There is no better way to satiate and encourage curiosity than traveling. Long term travelers tend to just be big children anyway, so it would be an easy move to induct a real child amongst our ranks.

It is my impression that most people who would like to travel long term — even those without children — find reasons and excuses to stay home. They say that they can’t travel because they have children — and maybe they can’t, what do I know? — but we have a child, we are traveling, for us, traveling full time and having a family is working out well. I think the challenge was found more in initially structuring my life around traveling than with traveling with a child. I traveled for a little over 10 years before I became a father — I had my plot well set — and my daughter, Petra, and wife, Chaya, have fit in nicely with this plot.

How has having a baby changed your travel habits at a practical level?

It is true that we have had to alter our strategies for traveling with a baby. We now travel more slowly, staying in places for a month or two rather than weeks. We had to get use to having a little person telling us what to do all the time. We now need to spend less money, so we rent apartments rather than hotel rooms or hostel bunks. We now need to make more money, so I find myself sometimes working in archaeology again and staying up late into the night trying to squeeze more money out of our website, VagabondJourney.com.

My wife and baby are two more traveling companions, and their desires must be fully taken into account. I found that if I treat my baby with as much respect as I would another adult traveling companion, then everything seems to works out alright. It is difficult adding another adult companion to your group, so the extra parameters that we give to Petra are similar to what we would need to give any traveling companion. The only difference is that Petra’s needs are baby needs. If Petra wants to stop somewhere, we stop; if she is hungry, we make space for her to eat; if she gets sick of walking around, we go back to our room.

It is challenging traveling with a baby, I admit it, but adding another traveling companion — of any age — to your group is challenging no matter what. In my experience, the frustrations of traveling with a baby are nowhere near the frustrations of trying to maneuver through the streets with a group of adult travelers: “Where do you want to eat? I don’t know, where do you want to eat? I can’t eat there, they don’t have a vegetarian option. Well I can’t eat there because I don’t like how they handled the food. That creepy guy is looking at me creepy. I want to go shopping. I need to go to an ATM. How much money is that it in dollars? Where do you want to eat? I don’t know.” ARRRGGH!

At least Petra just cries when she doesn’t like doing something.

What about being married? Has that had a big impact on how you travel?

Yeah, I no longer need to move about the world chasing tail anymore. It is amazing how much energy a person can save by not searching for romance all the time. I can now sit back read a book, grow a great big beard, smoke my pipe, wear aviator sunglasses and funny hats. Marriage is pretty good.

I say this in sort of a tongue in cheek way, but I am serious: it is also good to have a solid companion when traveling. Where I falter I can depend on my wife to pick up the pieces and where she stumbles she can depend on me to clear a path.

Where I falter I can depend on my wife to pick up the pieces and where she stumbles she can depend on me to clear a path.

We now have a baby together and we run the website as a family business, so we are now on the same team in more ways than one. I have no complaints, but, then again, my wife also plays the game of travel very well.

My wife, Chaya, was traveling for five years through Africa, Central and South America, India, and Asia before we paired up, so this is nothing new for her. She had her own plot in place as well before we made Petra — and our lifestyles blended in smoothly together. She also has a university degree in international education, TEFL certificates, and has a sleek, clean, USA sitcom sort of look to her, so she is fully prepared for working on the road and finds jobs easily.

Petra in the Dominican Republic

Where are you, Chaya and Petra planning to travel to this year?

We are in the Dominican Republic right now. The plan is to stay here for the next month and then move on to El Salvador via Mexico, Belize, and Guatemala, and then at some point go to Colombia. I really want to go to East Africa. Maybe I will try to pick up some archaeology fieldwork over that way and maybe Chaya will find work teaching. But if we boot the cost for the flights to East Africa this year, we are going to have to do a lot of work at something to make up for it.

Editor’s notes: Follow Wade, Chaya and Petra on Vagabond Journey. You can also follow their journey through Travels with Petra. All photos courtesy of Wade Shepard.

© Gretchen for TravelBlogs, 2010. | And Baby Makes Three: An Interview with Wade Shepard | 6 comments |
Post categories: Interviews
Post tags: family travel, living on the road, parenting, Perpetual Travel, travel with kids, working on the road

© Gretchen Wilson-Kalav for TravelBlogs, 2009. | The Mother of All Trips | No comment |
Post categories: Blogs
Post tags: parenting, travel with kids