What ot see on Vancouver Island British Columbia
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There is such a “wow” factor about Vancouver Island.
There are big vistas, like the one atop Mount Washington. There are impressive mountain ranges, like the jagged Mackenzie Range. With more than 2,100 miles of coastline, there are choices of water views, such as the wide expanse of the Pacific Ocean or the island-studded Johnstone Strait.
But visitors can find plenty of hidden gems on this island of more than 12,400 square miles, the largest island on North America’s west coast. My family and I discovered some great places, despite the limited size. And if young children are among the travelers, an hour or two at these locales are well spent. Here are some worth including on a family vacation itinerary.
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Websites to plan your Family Road Trip
If you’re like millions of other Americans, this summer you and your family are likely to buckle up the kids in the back seat, strap luggage to the roof and set out for a vacation driving the nation’s roadways. And if you do, there is one thing as certain as your kids getting antsy here and there: The trip will be more expensive this year than it was last year.
In light of rising costs of fuel, food and hotel accommodations, the American Automobile Association advises that you do your research before getting behind the wheel.
Fortunately, the Internet is an excellent resource for the budget-conscious traveler, with web sites offering everything from helpful tools such as fuel calculators to ideas about innovative and affordable lodging opportunities such as house-sitting.
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Tips to travelling with the kids
Found this list from Cosavoo.com and wanted to share. As we all know there are a lot of things to think about when we travel with our very young children and here are some tips that make it that much easier for everyone.
Ask the hotel about child facilities
Some resorts are built for couples, with lots of spas and romantic nooks. Kids will hate this. You need a resort with plenty of indoor recreational facilities, where they can play safely, and happily. Some hotels will even offer babysitting or child care services, so you can do some shopping or sight seeing on your own, without someone tugging at your knee and saying, “Mommy, can we go now?”
Don’t overload the itinerary
Kids get tired more easily, or can rapidly become overstimulated and cranky. Make sure that the itinerary leaves lots of room for resting, snacks, or (if you’re taking toddlers) even naps. commercial carpet cleaners you should only cover two major destinations in one day (one in the morning, another in the afternoon). If you want to see more sights, make arrangements to leave your child to rest in the hotel (see tip number one) and do it on your own.
Bring a “child care pack”
This includes lots of water (kids get dehydrated more easily), an extra change of clothes, and small toys to amuse them at restaurants.
If you are going to a warm place (like a beach or a tropical country) remember that kids are more vulnerable to sunstroke and sunburn. Bring sunblock, a handheld battery-operated fan, and sports drinks (which will help them retain water). Avoid bringing them out in the hottest times of the day.
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High tech tools for a road trip
I have just seen a great list of tools that you can use on your computer to plan and have your next road trip.
The site Mashable is all about the cutting edge of high tech but today there is this article that list 20 tools that Mashable thinks are the great online tools for your family vacation.
Most of the article is including sites to book hotels, cars and other stuff as well as journalling your vacation experiences online.
The first tech stuff I used on a vacation was back in 1999 when I brought a laptop along on a long 16 day road trip. I used the program Map Point that is really the old version of Microsoft Streets and Trips and was able to map our vacation as well as get myself out of trouble whenever we got lost.
The newer versions of streets and trips actually come with a GPS unit that you can plug into your laptop so that you can find out where you are when you get lost…out of town this is really easy to do espcially in big cities.
Top 10 Family Vacations
Here is a great list that I just ran across of great vacations for families. I am not sure how accurate the list is but these certainly look like great places to check out with the wife and kids.
1. Fly fishing, Scotland
If your kids love to fish this is the ideal location where you can fish for salmon or trout. Fly fishing is great for older kids but the young ones would struggle a bit with the coordination. There are great places to fly fish all over the world.
2. Dude ranch stay
Give your kids an authentic taste of the old West and take a step out of your hectic family life. Where I live in Alberta Canada there is a lot of this as well as in Montana and Idaho.
3. Cappadocia, Turkey
Kids will love this region of underground cities where they can explore the subterranean levels and the labyrinth of tunnels.
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Winnipeg Four Points Sheraton Hotel
Winnipeg is the capital city of Manitoba in canada and is a nice place to visit as a family. There are a lot of attractions including the famous “Coldest Street Corner” in Canada at Portage and Main and the Forks which is where a lot of the winnipeg festivals are held.
I was in Winnipeg last week for work and purposely stayed at the Winnipeg Four Points Sheraton. The Winnipeg Four Points Sheraton is a great Airport hotel that is situated right acoess the street from the Winnipeg Airport which is great for travelling quickly overnight but if you are staying in Winnipeg for vacation it is not so good. The sheraton Four Points hotel and the Winnipeg Airport are about a 45 minute bus or 30 minute drive from downtown Winnipeg.
In staying at the Winnipeg Four Points Sheraton I had a chance to check out the amenities and dealt with the staff. First of all for some reason my room card failed to work in the morning at the hotel so I needed to get it reactivated and the staff did this really quickly, because they were a little short staffed they switched the card and then advised me that if it did not work that they would go ahead and send someone up.
The girl at the front desk knew exactly where my room number was on the floor and told me that there is a courtesy phone on a desk right behind me if I need to call them from outside my room.
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The greatest camping checklist
I just ran into the greatest camping checklist. This is soemthing that I have looked for for a while as every time that I go camping I forget some stuff, overpack, take things that I thought would matter but don’t and of course I worry about getting cold so I take as many blankets as the car will hold.
Bookmark the camping checklist and use it the next couple of times out camping and see if you start to pack better as well.
Happy Camping
Multigenerational Travel
We really have to come up with a better name for this but in essence multigenerational travel is when parents bring their kids and their parents on vacation together. Here is what Dorothy Brown from the Philidelphia Inquirer described it as:
Some call it “multigenerational travel.” Others call it “grand tripping.” But the idea of grandparents swooping up children and grandchildren is one of the fastest-growing segments of the travel industry, according to the Travel Industry Association.
While the Web and guidebooks are full of tips on what makes for a successful three-generation trip, my husband, Larry, and I didn’t read any of that before going.
We didn’t even give a moment’s thought to rerouting to a kid-friendly spot such as Disney World. We were in love with the villa-in-Tuscany idea, no matter how arduous the logistics. And the Bryn Mawr agency that helped us book our villa, Doorways Ltd., assured us we were not pioneers.
About half of its bookings (about 3,100 people last year) are for grandparents taking their entire families, a share that’s been growing since 1994 when Kit Burns launched her villa rental business.
“When we first started, the renters were mostly couples and some families. Now it’s caught on with three-generation families,” she says.
The grandparents “can stay home one day or baby-sit while others go out. Also, it’s a different way for teenagers to experience their grandparents.”
Have you tried a holiday like this? I am sure that it is much more common than we really tend to notice. If you want to make multigenerational travel work well for you then it is best to make sure that everyone gets their space, kids, parents, and grandparents because having so many people together in a foreign place could be very stressful.
This though is the perfect opportunity to have a great vacation that no one could forget.
The Golden Age of Amercian Family Vacations
Susan Sessions Rugh has written a great book about the history of the family camping or at least car driving adventure. The book is called The Golden Age of American Family Vacations and in it she captures some of what I grew up with in the 70’s the travelling of the family to the campground and prts unknown, the excitement of family vacations.
Americans have been making fun of family vacations from the time they came into style after World War II. The emergent medium of television captured some of the travails of the traveling family in late-night variety shows. Morey Amsterdam opened his show one evening in 1949 with a monologue reporting that he was just back from a vacation to Florida with his family: “I steered, my mother-in-law drove.” He commented on the expense of the vacation: “It cost us $400—a day.” It was “ten dollars for an aspirin.” He suffered the usual fate of the New York tourist in Florida when he admitted he went out on the beach and “walked away one big beautiful blister.” Morey Amsterdam’s jokes made television viewers feel better about spending the money and putting up with their families on vacation because they could laugh at themselves. Perhaps at least they recognized they weren’t alone in their stupidity!
In their comedy show on NBC television in 1952, Bob and Ray satirized the summer vacation by offering for sale a summer vacation kit “for people who want to be uncomfortable without leaving home.” It included a dozen items, among them “a bathing suit that makes you look kind of silly” and “a hard table so you feel like you have slept in a camp cot.” It came complete with a beach umbrella, along with a “handsome lifeguard to divert your wife’s attention while you are setting up the umbrella.” Finally, the sound effects man added the sounds of a day in the country: bullfrogs, owls hooting, crickets chirping, waves pounding on the beach, moose calling, the horn of a passing train sounding. Summer vacations were a lot of trouble and not really much of a vacation, but the men were caught up in this travel ritual for the sake of the family.
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Great way to see DisneyWorld Online
My family is yet to go to Disney World in Florida but a friend of mine has and just also showed me a great way to use Google Earth to see Video, pics and flybys of the DisneyWorld resort.
Walt Disney Parks and Resorts is harnessing the power of Google Earth to build an interactive, three-dimensional tour of Walt Disney World Resort that brings you one step closer to a true park experience. With direct links to Disney’s online travel-planning tools, Walt Disney World Resort in 3D will re-invent how people plan and book vacations.
Beginning today, Disney guests can use Google Earth, a program which offers a 3D digital model of the world, to virtually tour Walt Disney World’s four theme parks, as well as its 22 hotels and resorts. An overview of Walt Disney World Resort in 3D, along with instructions on how to get started, can be found at www.disneyworld.com/3dparks. Existing Google Earth 4.3 users can see Walt Disney World Resort in 3D by enabling the “Gallery” folder within Google Earth, or by selecting any of the 3D buildings within the resort.
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