Starting the Big Family Trip

In some ways, it surprises me that it’s taken six weeks for me to sit down and write. And yet, when I really think about it, it shouldn’t be that surprising. The type of journey we are on is less pull-the-ripcord escapism and more take-our-life-on-the-road journeying. That means much of the day is spent navigating the logistics of daily life.

Do we have enough food for the five of us for at least the next 24 hours?

Do we know where we are parking our camper van for the night? 

When will we manage to squeeze in some school work? 

Do we have all the gear we need for the next part of our trip? 

Once those questions are addressed, others take over, at least in my mind. 

Do we have everything squared away back at home to be out here doing this? 

How will America recover from four years of President Trump? 

Will our kids fall behind in school? 

Why are we doing this trip anyway?

That last question might be a good one to focus on for this post. Why are we dealing with all the questions above in the first place? Why bother?

For the past few years, Alethea and I have talked about an international experience for our family. We’ve talked about living abroad for a year. We’ve talked about traveling as a family on Semester at Sea, the round-the-world university program where the two of us met. In the end, timing played a big role in deciding to travel now. 

Our eldest child just turned thirteen, our second is ten, and our youngest is six. Everyone can carry their own backpack. Everyone, for the most part, still likes spending time with Mom and Dad. Everyone was up for it when we floated the idea of traveling for ten months as a family. 

Next, we had to decide where to go. Each of us did our own research via travel blogs, Lonely Planet guides (old school/parents), and Instagram feeds (new school/kids). We ate lots of burritos and noodles to prepare.

Dinner conversations were often lively as we would each bring our ideas forward for discussion. 

In the end, some themes emerged as we put together our rough itinerary.

• Far flung. We choose places that we needed more time to get to from North America e.g. South Pacific and New Zealand. As much as we love Mexico, we will be coming and going from Mexico for the rest of our lives.
• Safe. We looked for places that felt relatively safe from a geopolitical standpoint. While we know that most of the world is safer than advertised, we didn’t want to worry or the kids to worry about our family’s safety. Not unexpectedly, the kids expressed reservations about going to the USA due to gun violence.
• French. We all wanted the opportunity to practice our French language skills, ranging from fully conversational to just one year of French Immersion to downright laughable due to an overriding Spanish pronunciation. It doesn’t hurt that most of the places influenced by the French also inherited an appreciation for pastry and cheese. 
• Family. We wanted to spend some extended time with our American family in California, New Mexico and Texas and in between see the national parks in the high desert of the Southwest USA.

So we cleared our professional obligations for a year, rented out our house furnished, and met with teachers and administrators at school to figure out what topics we needed to cover for each child during our time on the road. That last sentence took about half a year to complete. There were plenty of moments of doubt and anxiety as we made travel arrangements and packed up all the personal belongings inside our house. But we kept moving forward, day by day, until the first day of the trip arrived.

Now, we’re on the road. Five people together for ten months. Five for Ten - 
the name of this blog. Thanks for joining us.