Inception: Where Our Family Travels Began
Beyond the sci-fi film of the same name, Merriam-Webster defines inception as “an act, process or instance of beginning.” Having our own blog gives us the freedom to write about anything, and today we want to go back to the very start of travels with children — to the years before we had children at all.
My wife Rose and I met while working at UCLA Medical Center. We discovered early that we loved travelling together, and we did plenty of it. Our first trip together marked my Bachelor’s degree from UCLA and took us through London, Paris, Switzerland and Amsterdam. Our honeymoon combined a short cruise to the Bahamas with an extensive luxury tour of Spanish Colonial haciendas and ancient Mayan architecture across the Yucatan peninsula. On another occasion we used frequent flyer miles to reach Peru. Later we met my Father in Atlanta and boarded a flight to Denmark with him, because Dad was dying of lung cancer at a relatively young age and had always longed to see that side of our family’s homeland. That trip cost me an ear — literally my right one — but that is a story for another time. Many other trips stateside filled the years along the way.
After roughly half a dozen years together we decided to have children. We had enjoyed travelling so much that we resolved children would not slow us down — or at least not for long. There is a saying that on the sea of life the first child drops your sail and the second drops the anchor. Travels with children certainly demands a higher level of organization, and we spend far more time on the basics of mobility, yet Rose and I chose not to change our travel style.
Our Travel Style: Fast, Mobile and Always Moving
Our approach is rapid and highly mobile: see what needs to be seen and move on, with very little lingering. You will not find many pictures of us lounging on a beach or camping in one spot for a week — in fact, there are very few photos of us camping at all. That simply is not our style; if it were, the blog might be called “camping with children.” This pace carries us to the point of exhaustion, but we see more. How much time does one really need to imprint the image of the Grand Canyon, the Taj Mahal, or the Mona Lisa on the brain? Some sights ask for more than others, of course, and this love of non-stop vacationing is something Rose and I share.
Why We Take So Many Photographs
One more factor shapes this page: for Rose, if we didn’t take a photograph, it didn’t happen. Repeatedly pausing what we are doing to gather for every shot can feel tedious, yet I value the beauty of remembering details later — and of building this page. Looking both backward and forward, I can advise taking more photos than you think you should. Make the extra time to weave photographs into your trip. It is easy to be cynical about carving time out of your journey for pictures, but the process itself can be fun when you take care to frame a nice shot and begin viewing the world partly as frames for photos. The rewards when you look back will make it all worthwhile.
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