I’ve always been a traveler. Whether it’s roaming my local neighborhood, exploring the surrounding towns, cross country drives, or international travel. I sometimes become more versed in a new city’s landmarks than people who have lived there all their lives. I devour travel brochures and have been known to “overprepare” for a trip by reading up on everything I can. Before the ease of the internet, I bought travel books and went to consulate offices to pick up tourism guide books. Now with the internet, I can research not only before I go but while I’m there. I like to eat local cuisine and get to know the local culture through art and dance. And I love to take photos, lots and lots of photos.
Then I had kids.
When I only had the one, my daughter DJ, we still tried to travel. I remember taking her as a baby up San Francisco where we learned we could change a diaper on the back deck of our hatchback while stopped on a dirt road in wine country. In her first two years, we made several trips up north to San Mateo, Pacific Grove, Carmel and Monterey Bay. We have a great photo of her asleep in backpack carrier while A and I walked around the Monterey Bay Aquarium.
As a toddler, she flew to Arizona, Las Vegas, and New York City, each time for a wedding, and her second Halloween was spent in the Chicago suburbs not far from where we live now. She would make several trips to Chicago and Orlando to visit family before her brother born when she was three and a half. Traveling with one kid was relatively easy, then CT was born. That was a whole other ball of wax.
CT did get to go on a couple of flights to Chicago and Orlando, but not many. It was more expensive and more exhausting to fly with the two kids. We didn’t get to San Francisco until he was in grade school. Our travel with him was mostly local. Lots of trips to San Diego and day trips to museums and parks. We also didn’t know at the time that he had ADHD and anxiety, we just knew he was much harder to travel with than his sister. As KJ got older, we started to notice things were different about her. She was eventually diagnosed with Social Pragmatic Communication Disorder, something similar to Aspergers. She was easy to travel with but she had a hard time with verbal cues, reading body language, had a stilted way of speaking and could get caught up in routine that when broken might result in a meltdown. I learned to accommodate both of them in travel, but we stuck close to home. But I have a wanderlust that I can’t deny. Despite all that local travel, I longed for more.
Once they were both in elementary school, we figured out how to handle their non-neurotypical idiosyncrasies. We took a family trip to San Francisco where we stayed near Fisherman’s Wharf. The drive was a bit too long for CT but we made it with just a little parental frustration. We stopped at one of our favorite rest stops along the way, Casa De Fruta. It was fun walking along the Wharf and Lombard Street, exploring Pier 39 and Coit Tower, visiting Ghiradelli’s and enjoying some ice creams, and had tons of fun at the California Academy of Sciences, and the Exploratorium.
We returned a year later for KJ’s Girl Scout bridging ceremony. The drive up was managed a little better, although I miscalculated our rest stops on the way back which resulted in a CT meltdown of dramatic proportions. Lesson learned, don’t stop too early in the drive then find yourself without options along the way. At least KJ and I got to walk across the Golden State Bridge together. About a month later we would be on the road longer the 6 hours. We would be relocating to the Chicago suburbs and driving for three days.
The drive across the country and the closer proximity to family reminded me how much I missed traveling. A was also going to be working out of state all the time, hence the move to a central location near family, so we decided to visit him at his work location when the kids were off school. We spent a year finding places to explore in and around our northwest suburbs home and spent lots of time in the city. A year later we took on the biggest trip ever, on the road for 30 days.
Two trips that we planned to take separately got squished together due to CT’s baseball schedule. A was worried about taking them on the road that long. He remembered the San Fran return meltdown and how fidgety they were driving to Chicago but I had learned much on those trips. A charger for their 3DS really saved the day. They had a bin between them with coloring pages, mazes, find-a-word puzzles, new magazines and each had two new books to read. And snacks… lots of snacks.
This time, they were seasoned travelers handling many hours on the road. We drove to Atlanta in 14 hours, a bit longer than expected due to some intense thunderstorms along the way and lots of highway construction. Once we met that amazing milestone with hours of road trip time under our belts, all other trips were easy. We did 6 hours from Atlanta or Orlando, five hours from Atlanta to Winston-Salem, five hours from Winston-Salem to Virginia Beach, a short hop to Washing ton DC then another 11 hours from DC back home.
The last leg we learned not to try and stop outside of Cedar Point to rest for the night during the summer months. Hotels vacancies were hard to find. In the end, I calculated our trip was about 3200 miles in 32 days. We drove through 10 states on our journey. The kids were hooked. We talked about other road trips we could take, even started talking about writing a travel blog. The original plan was to write just about traveling on the road with the first blog names KDC Roadtrips. Then we realized that was too narrow. We wanted planes, trains, AND automobiles. That’s when we decided to start KDC Adventures.
Since then we’ve done that drive, minus VA and DC, again. We’ve been to Wisconsin a few times and Cedar Point in Ohio twice. We bought a house this year, so we had to cut back on our summer travel plans a bit, but we have ideas of new places to go starting after Christmas. I also want to try some train travel next year. We plan to share those stories with you, along with tips and recommendations along the way. We’re aiming for adventure!
