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.
Climbing to the top of the Sydney Harbour Bridge clearly isn’t just for the rich and famous. On the contrary, For Australian kids, I’m told, it’s become a kind of rite of passage. (You have to be at least 10 to climb.) Hundreds of couples have gotten engaged on the climb. A group of New York City firefighters and police officers climbed the bridge after 9/11, flying an American flag at the top….
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….
I’m so tired of hotels and resorts touting kids-eat-free programs limited to traditional kids menus. Do we want to encourage children to eat a steady diet of mac and cheese, chicken fingers, hot dogs and fries? Do kids, once they are in kindergarten, even want that? Not the kids I know who love sushi and steak. Not their parents either. …
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….
Zip it! A Family zipline adventure. Eileen’s guest blog on Montana’s Big Sky Resort Live Big
I look out and try to imagine thousands of teepees and 30,000 ponies on a scorching June day in 1876, just before the nation’s centennial. Above all the tribal leaders from the different tribes was Sitting Bull, dedicated to the traditional Indian ways and opposed to relationships with the white people after being pushed out of the Black Hills when gold was discovered.
One thing I had learned. Like all of those other big parenting moments, it won’t go exactly the way we hope. Parents who expect one picture-perfect memorable moment after another will invariably be disappointed — just like the time when the kids whined at Disney World, or it rained in Hawaii. I just hope for a minimum of histrionics.
The kids are sorry our adventure is over. So are their parents. Mike Sitzman, Hannah and Ethan’s dad, has had a real vacation—not often the case when kids are part of the equation– because, “The guides facilitated 100 per cent of the experience. I didn’t have to worry about where to park or having water… They even brought our suitcases to the rooms and got us checked in.” That’s not counting how much knowledge they shared.
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.
Welcome to perhaps America’s greatest natural zoo— Yellowstone National Park with 67 species of mammals, 322 species of birds, 6 species of reptiles, 4 species of amphibians where the kids—my nine-year-old cousin Ethan Sitzman and his six- year-old sister Hannah have been naming the wild life as we go…Betty and Bobby Eagle…Oscar Osprey…Brett Bison…. And today we spot bear!
We were camping in a wilderness site on Yellowstone Lake in Yellowstone National Park and had spent the morning kayaking, stopping in a meadow full of wildflowers to fish, fly a kite and catch frogs. The wildflowers were gorgeous– purple (lupine), blue (columbine), yellow (buttercups), red (Indian Paint Brush) and white (Elk Thistle. And the kite was certainly fun, brought along by our intrepid Austin Lehman Adventure guides Matty Kirkland and Katie Gugliotta, who also brought a football to toss and gave Ethan and six-year-old Hannah some lessons in rock-skipping.
Certainly we could tour Yellowstone on our own but Austin Lehman has been guiding families in the vast park for 25 years and this is an opportunity to get away from the hordes of tourists (up more than 10 per cent last year from 2009 with 3.6 million visitors) and experience the park with those who know it well. Sadly, the majority of visitors don’t get more than a quarter of a mile from the road when there are thousands of hiking trails in the park.
Ten seconds of sheer terror or the most fun you’ve ever had. It’s all a matter of perspective. We’re at Big Sky Mountain Resort in Big Sky Montana at the edge of the first Zip line of the morning. Did I mention I’m supposed to fly across 425 feet—60 feet above the mountain tops at 25 miles per hour? No sweat says my young cousins nine-year-old Ethan Sitzman and his six-year-old sister Hannah, who are geared up, like I am, with safety harness, helmet and carabineers that will attach us to the cables. I’m told they are so strong they could hold the weight of a small car but I’m still nervous.
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?
This is the first morning of our guided trip to Montana and Yellowstone, arranged by Montana-based Austin Lehman Adventures, which has been guiding visitors to Yellowstone and beyond for more than two decades—several hundred families a year. The company sends adventurous families around the world but Yellowstone remains their signature trip and the Museum of the Rockies is a great place to start.
Watch this video on Foxnews.com of Eileen being interviewed about her recent trip to the Arctic with Lindblad Expeditions on the National Geographic Explorer.
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. …
A polar bear sighting (we’ll see 16 before the week is out), a whale (two enormous blue whales swam and played right by the ship), sea birds (imagine thousands nesting on high cliffs) or walrus (60 of the huge creatures weighing a ton or more lolling right in front of us on a beach) are all reason enough jump out of bed, bolt from lunch, forgo a shower or get off the ship’s treadmill. It’s why the 145 guests have paid thousands of dollars and traveled thousands of miles to cruise through ice.
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.
Maine is ideal for an old-fashioned family vacation with plenty of modern touches. Indulge your young foodies at Portland restaurants ( www.visitportland.com) or shop till you drop in Freeport, home of L.L. Bean and more than 200 retail outlets. Eat blueberry pancakes (the season starts in mid-July). Head out on an old-fashioned schooner for a few days, like we did one summer aboard the Isaac H. Evans, where we ate our fill of fresh lobster on a deserted island, or explore Acadia National Park and hike some of the famous Appalachian Trail.