Adventure Starts Here.
Every journey brings you closer to new places, to people you love, to family, and to yourself. Let’s make your next escape unforgettable.
Need a saddle blanket? Not to keep warm, to eat. In cowboy parlance, a saddle blanket is a pancake; belly wash is coffee and Pecos strawberries are beans. Welcome to Fort Worth, Texas, which prides itself on being known as the City of Cowboys.
But then we all gather around the table and, as is our tradition, we tell each other what we’re thankful for this year. “Thank you for being such wonderful kids and such terrific, responsible adults. We can’t imagine our lives without you!” Eileen says.
It’s worth the effort, I promise, to take the kids and grandkids. For a few hours you can forget the baking, the shopping and the wrapping and just enjoy the holidays and each other.
Let’s play the what-if game. What if Mother Nature derails your holiday travel plans — as it did for so many people I know earlier this month during Hurricane Sandy and during the Christmas blizzard that crippled the East Coast two years ago?
It’s not just about getting a great price on a tablet, TV or the kids’ must-have toy or video game. These days, Black Friday or Cyber Monday can also be about snaring a bargain on a vacation.
Eileen interviewed on Foxnews.com about CyberMonday travel deals — good ones and bad ones.
I couldn’t help but smile as I looked out at the room filled with family travel writers and bloggers, some with their kids beside them, busily learning how to become better travel communicators.
Our first day on the mountain my daughter’s instructor got her set up with a bi-ski and we all headed out onto the lift. It was a short run and I’m not sure if I breathed the whole way down, anxiously wondering how she was doing. We got to the bottom of the run and I was greeted by a wide smile. Game o!.
Inevitably, we’ll reminisce about less-than-perfect Thanksgiving gatherings, like the time we arrived back home at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago to discover our car battery was dead, or the time in Connecticut our dog devoured the homemade pate a cousin brought to Thanksgiving dinner before anyone had a bite.
The view of Lake Michigan from my windows changed my perspective of the great lake and forced me to concede in the everlasting debate I had held with my native Chicagoan friends – that the shores of Lake Michigan are worthy of the title “beach.”
Download a PDF file of Eileen’s presentation to the 2nd Family Travel Conference in Dallas on November 9-11, 2012. The Family Travel Conference brings together media and industry leaders in family travel and gives them the practical training, latest tools, and best practices they need to navigate this leading travel segment.
The Hall of North American Mammals, with its famous mammal dioramas, includes several that recreate scenes from national parks and monuments that Theodore Roosevelt helped preserve and protect.
Ten-year-old Charlie Baker writes: When Hurricane Sandy hit, we didn’t have any power in my New Jersey town. A lot of the families left and went to grandma’s house, but my grandma lives in Manhattan and we couldn’t get there because there was a lot of traffic and a giant crane was hanging nearby. So we had to figure out where else to go. My mom ended up surprising us with a trip to the Great Wolf Lodge.
The Disney resorts have just announced Limited Time Magic for all of 2013 –52 weeks of what they promise will be magical experiences that appear, then disappear as the next special surprise debuts.
it’s worth checking out a bike tour wherever you are visiting with the kids. You can bike along the new beach promenade in Clearwater, Fla., or sample Portland’s famous local eats on a Bites by Bike tour that claims it is the best in the country for cyclists, offering an extensive network of trails.
Foxnews.com: Eileen’s blog on Hurricane Sandy messing up travel plans.
UPDATE (Wednesday, Oct 31) — It’s Halloween, but the really scary thing is now bad the damage from SuperStorm Sandy is all over the Northeast. We still have power at our house so we are one of the few lucky ones. But we lost cable, which means almost all forms of communication for us these days. I’m updating this blog from our Town Hall where they have electricity and free public wi-fi. It’s impressive the way people are pulling together and helping each other out. Just this morning my husband helped a neighbor jump-start his car. His battery had run down after he and his son tried to recharge too many electronic devices. Meanwhile… if you trying to travel, or get home, during the storm’s aftermath, check out www.johnnyjet.com for some great tips!
You don’t need a gourmet meal to enjoy snowshoeing. It’s fun to take a sandwich and hot cider with you in your backpack; it’s fun just to get out and enjoy the back-country landscape away from the hustle and bustle of a snow sports resort. I try to take a day off from skiing each trip just for the experience.
National Cruise Vacation week is Oct 21-27, the cruise industry’s largest sale with savings on more than 200 cruise ships—everything from significant on-ship credits to free airfare and two-for-one pricing.
Thirty-seven percent of leisure travelers say they’ve traveled with grandkids just this past year. Twenty-two percent report they are even leaving their children behind and just inviting the grandkids along….