Travel advice and reports for families considering a “volunteer vacation” or other form of public service
America may lack royalty, but Mount Vernon, the regal estate of our first president, is a must for families taking in the history of our nation’s capital.
My nieces from Arkansas recently visited Boston and New York with on a two week road trip with their parents. The girls used CityPASSes to visit top attractions and museums in New York and Boston.
In 2007, The Fresh Air Fund decided to team up with the Department of Tourism of the Cayman Islands and go international with children ages 7-12. Massou Traore was one of 10 lucky few to come on this trip.
I’m a real fan of sleep away camp. I went as a child and all three of my kids went for many years—my son to Camp Nebagamon in Wisconsin and my daughters to Camp Kamaji in Minnesota. My girls worked as counselors there as well, teaching sailing and leading wilderness trips.
We asked Mrs. Obama how she encourages her family to eat healthier when they travel and what tips she might have for the rest of us…
TurtleTrek is home to adult and juvenile sea turtles, including hawksbill, Kemp’s Ridley, loggerhead and green sea turtles — all of whom, like Grandma, have been deemed nonreleasable by the Florida government.
The real point here is to encourage youngsters and their parents to “journey to new depths of discovery.” That includes a 4-D theater where SpongeBob SquarePants takes you and your kids on an undersea adventure, complete with mist and bubbles
Since we’re here on a girl’s getaway, we find it amusing that at the height of the mining boom in the 1900 census, there were 22 seamstresses in Park City but only two sewing machines.
Welcome to Park City Mountain Resort’s new Ladies’ Club, offered certain days of the week. Women who hadn’t skied in a while, said Martell, “didn’t want a high powered clinic. They just wanted an opportunity to get back on the mountain in a non-threatening way.”
We’re talking about Lower Manhattan — specifically the area south of Chambers Street that’s surrounded by water on three sides. In 2011, a record 9.8 million tourists visited Lower Manhattan — 800,000 more than the previous year.
Incredible! Just in the past two years Snowmass Mountain in Colorado, famous for its ski slopes, has become the site of one of the largest finds of Ice Age animals on the planet.
Every one of our boys parents are immigrants—from Africa, Mexico, Jamaica and Trinidad, from other places. They learned that had they been immigrants in the 1870s living here, they would have worked 10 hours a day rather than go to school…
Some of my friends thought I was nuts. When I won a weekend stay at the Hilton New York’s five-bedroom penthouse, I invited along seven teenagers to share the fun at New York’s largest hotel.
A winter foray to Boston — whether you are touring colleges (there are more than 100 campuses in Massachusetts) or just looking for a winter getaway — is a good place to start, especially with the reopening this past December after a multimillion-dollar restoration of The African Meeting House.
Whether the kids were mine or someone else’s, I realized — sometimes belatedly — that the best times were had when we took our cue from the kids and let their passions-of-the-moment dictate.
Leave the crackers and chips at home; ditto for the carbonated drinks and smelly cheese. No, we’re not talking about what grub not to pack for your next road trip or flight. We’re talking about foods that are banned in outer space.
Meet Park City Mountain Resort’s new crop of Snowmamas, chosen from applicants by Park City Mountain resort officials from around the country. The website has become the go-to place in the industry to help moms make trips to the snow easier and more fun.
As we commemorate the 70th anniversary of the attack, the question is one of many in the updated and first-rate Junior Ranger Program for the World War II Valor in the Pacific National Monument that helps children make meaningful connections during a visit here.
Wolde Kristos is a man with a mission—and a vision. He hopes to bring the sleepy Jamaican town of Bluefields Bay into the 21st century—tourist wise.
It is pitch black and we are kayaking through red mangroves, trying to dodge the roots, on our way to the Bioluminescent Bay Laguana Grande at Las Croabas, Fajardo in Puerto Rico—one of three on the island, I learn from our guide Joel from GSI Adventures.
Welcome to an excellent exhibit at the Nobel Peace Center in Oslo, Norway, where an amazing interactive exhibit for children about refugees– Nansen and I– has recently opened. At the same time, the Center is showcasing Transit, a terrific photo exhibit about Nobel Peace Prize laureate and Norwegian Fridtjof Nansen and refugees of today…. (more)
We’ve opted to tour Ancient Rome –the center of the Empire for some 500 years–with a guide both to maximize our time and to avoid the lines where we’d have to wait at least 45 minutes to get in. We start at the Pantheon with its giant hole in the middle (and drains in the floor for rain)..
Aldo Valerio greets us with kisses, like friends he hasn’t seen in a long while. In reality, we’ve never met except through email. Valerio runs a tour company called ww.secretitalia.com and also works with a Canadian based company ww.toursbylocals.com that puts together guides with travelers—especially those who are cruising and don’t want to be limited to ship excursions.
The facility serves as the best marine mammal rescue and rehabilitation center in the Bahamas—the sea lions here were also rescued. Corbett shows us the lab which she proudly says is one of the most medically advanced in the Bahamas — for creatures or people, she jokes — complete with ultra sounds equipment, digital x-rays, anesthesia machines and more. Experts here have the ability via the internet to consult with experts around the world.
Over the past 50 years, the Baisch family has found more than 1,000 dinosaur bones and fossils on their sprawling cattle ranch in the small town of Glendive. They’ve donated some to museums, sold others and welcome visitors like us to hunt for their own ($75 a half-day for an adult, free for kids under 12). While paleontologists might not approve, the Baisches allow visitors to keep most of what they find….
In the 50-plus years since, Baisch and her family have found more than a thousand dinosaur bones and fossils on their sprawling Eastern Montana ranch near the small town of Glendive. More dinosaur bones are found in Eastern Montana than anywhere else because of the rock formation, we learn….
The park is packed with families — especially around Old Faithful (just one of the park’s 300 geysers) and in the new children’s discovery area at the Old Faithful Visitor Center. The National Park Service says the vast majority of visitors don’t get more than a quarter-mile from the road though only about 3 percent of the vast park can be seen from that vantage point. That was why we opted to let Austin-Lehman lead the way.
It’s easy to see why Juno the Beluga is a star here at Mystic Aquarium as well as a YouTube sensation— “dancing” to a Mariachi Band. He’s a growing boy, just like Jason and Enesi, the two 12-year-old boys who have left New York’s inner city, courtesy of the Fresh Air Fund to spend a week with us. We wanted to show the boys a place they’d never been and somewhere quintessentially New England, since they are spending 10 days in Connecticut, and what better place than Mystic?
The next time you’re thinking about hiring a private soccer coach, more violin lessons or a new video game, take the kids for a walk in the woods instead. Inject a little nature on your next vacation too, even if you’re heading to New York City (how about a long walk through Central Park?) or Orlando (get up close and personal with the manatees, or go fishing). You’ll all be the better for it. …
So where can you see the guy with the 20-foot long nose? Here’s a hint: Conceived as a tourist gimmick and celebrating its 70th birthday, it’s recognized around the world as a symbol of the United States and democracy. The answer, of course, is Mount Rushmore, which literally will give the kids an in-your-face history lesson they won’t forget.