I love travel.

I love the excitement of seeing something new. I love the actual “travelling” part of travel – the flight, or the car ride, or the motion of a ship when on a cruise.

I love being in motion.

And I love experiencing the incredible beauty in the world with its magnificent colours and the ever changing landscapes.

Sampling foods is another enjoyable part of travel for me – not to the extremes, you won’t catch me eating live grubs or anything – but tasting the flavours of each location even in everyday foods is another part of travel that I enjoy (note: pizza is not the same the world over!).

And photography, I adore taking photos. There is so much natural beauty in this world that sometimes it’s hard to know when – or if – to stop trying to capture it through my lens! (Thank goodness for the age of digital cameras and memory cards!)

The adventure that comes with travel fills my senses with a tingle of excitement, from the cleanliness of a hotel room (sometimes quite the adventure) to the rugged wilderness trails, and everything in between…

I have a love of travel and it’s a feeling I want to share with my children.

Utah National Parks

Recently, I was fortunate enough to travel with my very good friends to Utah, staying in Cedar City and exploring two of the many incredible national parks (and one canyon stop).

We got to explore Bryce Canyon National Park, stop at Red Canyon in Dixie National Forest, and Zion National Park.

My only regret is that we had only three days to explore and needed more time, much more time, to see this breathtaking piece of the earth sufficiently.

While I took thousands of photos here is one from each park:

Bryce Canyon, Hoodoos

Red Canyon, Dixie National Forest

Zion National Park

Travelling with Kids

I imagined what it would be like to have my kids with me, to maybe share my love for photography by giving them a camera to capture what they saw as beautiful. I imagined hiking with them and seeing the awe on their faces at some of the sights we would see. I imagined them running around during our lunch break under the huge tree in Zion N.P. along with all of the other kids their age. I imagined them chasing squirrels and laughing at their antics.

I observed many families and wondered how I would cope travelling alone with my children and whether I was equipped as a parent to deal with two tired children at the end of a long day of exploration. Some of the families I observed were struggling at the end of the day with this very thing, and there were two adults in these families.

I thought about this at the airports also and I paid particular attention to the travelling families to try to pick up pointers from them or ask myself “how would I handle that situation?” And even just to acknowledge that likely the very next time I grace an airport I will be a mom, a single mom, with two children.

Right now, I want to say to all of the families out there – and especially to the single parents – who travel with their kids, you are amazing people and I hope that when I have my own children I will be as brave, strong, patient, and loving as you are. You are doing an incredible job and deserve to be recognised.

This trip also started me thinking about my own family growing up and all of the local travel we did. We never took a plane anywhere, even when we moved from one state to another, we drove the distance.

Our vacations included cabins on the river, or boats that were big enough to sleep a family of six. My parents made it look relatively easy. Or perhaps times were easier then.

The four of us kids were tight and we all played well together. There were never too many fights or arguments and I don’t remember my parents having any major conniptions when we were travelling.

In fact, the times on the river are some of my fondest memories of my childhood. We may have actually been the happiest when we were on vacation.

I want to provide my kids with the same kind of fondness for our family vacations in their future memories as an adult.

Where to go?

Disneyland is somewhere I would definitely like to take my children; it is so magical and so filled with imagination. The happiest place on earth! (right?) So it’s been on my list of places to visit with my children since before I even decided I was ready to have them.

However, visiting the national parks recently and seeing so much natural beauty made me feel that the National Parks with camping, photography, and the exploration of nature in its finest form, may equally inspire the imagination and will perhaps encourage them to be a little more kind to nature (including other humans) and to themselves as a part of nature.

My first vacation with them will be decided by my children. Their ages or their experiences may see them more closely aligned to an adventure in Disney. And as a big kid at heart, that will be absolutely fine with me. It may also be more aligned to an overnight camp in our back yard and that also will be absolutely fine with me!

But my hope is that over time I will show them enough of nature’s beauty that the idea of visiting a National Park will be as high on their list.

As we near the end of my adoption application process, and get closer to the selection and placement part of the process, I am starting to look at my world even more closely through the eyes of the mom I want to be.

And I want to be a mom who travels with her children, introducing them to new cultures, new sights, new flavours, new smells, and new natural wonders.

I do hope I am brave enough to take my kids on vacation as a single mom, because there is so much beauty to be seen, even here in my Province within driving distance, and I’d like my kids to grow up with a love of adventure and travel.

Do you travel with your kids? How do you find it? Any tips or tricks for a successful and enjoyable time?

Warm smiles and Love,

Ali Jayne 🙂