College-bound kid? Family travel plans change
Holly Hughes, author of Frommer’s “500 Places To Take Your Kids Before They Grow Up,” was in my situation last year, the summer before her eldest went off to college. With her husband and two younger kids, the family of five did a road trip.
“We rented a minivan and we did the drive across country for two and a-half weeks,” she said. But “it did not feel like a last hurrah,” she said, and in fact, it wasn’t. After finishing his freshman year, her son got a week off from his summer job this year and joined the rest of the family for a week on Martha’s Vineyard. One way she made the vacation enjoyable for all of them was to let the teenagers — 19, 17 and 15 — “make decisions about what they wanted to see and do,” whether it was picking the restaurants or the activities.
“There was less pushback against it that way,” she said.
I remember looking through Hughes’ book when it first came out in 2006, making my own list of places I wanted to take my kids. It was fun to dream: “500 Places To Take Your Kids” is both inspirational and aspirational. But it was also fun to prioritize and plan. There were places my husband and I had been that we wanted to take the boys while they were young, but there were also places we had never seen, that we hoped to experience together.
The short list of destinations we managed to get to includes places that have been classic family vacation spots for generations of Americans, like Mount Rushmore, Yellowstone and Yosemite. Some of our expeditions were a tiny closer to the East Coast, where we live: We escaped the cold weather one winter by driving to Myrtle Beach, S.C., spent a memorable Christmas vacation exploring Mammoth Cave, Ky., and had a magical spring break visiting wild ponies at the Chincoteague wildlife refuge in Virginia. But we also managed a few once-in-a-lifetime splurges for huge adventures in Alaska and Hawaii.
Looking back, I cannot state there is any place I feel sorry we did not get to, but I do hope we will be able to travel together again as a foursome in the future.
As for my son’s reluctance to join us this summer, Ogintz advised, “I would just smile and say, ‘Whatever you want to do, honey!’ and know that he will be back.”
As proof that family vacations do not end with college, Ogintz, whose daughters and son are now 26, 24 and 19, offered this: “The girls are very happy to be going to Hawaii with me later this summer, and my husband and son are going on a fishing trip they have been discussing for years.”
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Submited at Wednesday, August 4th, 2010 at 6:01 am on Family by sofia
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