Everything Happened | vol. 234

"Let's get out of this bottle episode" or "vacationing with kids"

When was the first time you realized travel was kind of embarrassing? For me it was, where else?, during my semester abroad in college. Picture it: I’m a midwestern American from a Big 10 school in France, getting shitcanned on 0.75€ wine and puking operatically out of the enormous single-pane European window of my dorm.

Probably not in that moment of retching, but adjacent to it, I realized that everything about my being there was extractive: it was all for me to gain, and there was nothing for me to offer. I was there to take the language, take the visuals, and take the experience and metabolize it as proof of being interesting. I was there, apparently, to unleash an arc of ink-colored vomit onto the landscaping from the second story.

But it’s actually not interesting to be twenty years old and binge-drinking in a dorm room! Most of us have heard that one before! So I never left my zip code again.

Jk, as a certified terrainhead, I HAVE TO to get my eyeballs on new terrain sometimes. I just no longer believe it’s somehow virtuous to do so. I may not have a literal moon phases tattoo, but I do have a spiritual moon phases tattoo, meaning that I definitely envisioned my young family traveling a lot. Then I traveled with my first kid a few times and realized that I was having what might charitably be called an expensive bad time.

I was trying to take up my old life on Bambi-ass legs, and any destination was a week of getting edged by the experience we could have had, that we could see with our own eyes but not touch!, had we not brought the kid. And it wasn’t his fault! He didn’t ask to get carted around by us when he would have been just as happy eating the dirt from our own yard instead.

watch out for that first step, it’s a doozy

We took Desi to the Azores with us when he was 2, and I remember my best friend, who then had a 4- and 2-year-old, expressing admiration for the effort while also declaring that her family was on domestic beach vacations within a drivable distance until her kids were older. The beach, and the pool at the airbnb, provided limitless entertainment for her kids and including grandparents meant breaks, maybe a night out, maybe the opportunity to sleep past 6.

I was not yet ready to embrace that level of pragmatism because I wasn’t yet smart enough. Helpfully, for my education, we ran out of money, had more children, and got blitzed by COVID all in short order. This kept our family grounded as hell.

We had some good trips in the interim: seeing family, staying with my friend in Vermont on her farm, and one transcendent day last summer at the U.S.’s ONLY construction-themed amusement park.

What do we think the diesel budget is at Diggerland USA 😬

Also, we live 20 minutes from a half dozen free public beaches! These kids were not wanting for leisure.

But a terrainhead is a terrainhead, and I was psyched to plan our first vacation as a family of five to Puerto Rico last year. I had seen about enough of the mid-Atlantic and our ancestral homeland of Ohio, thanks very much. Let’s get out of this bottle episode.

It feels like much of the information about traveling with kids is oriented towards gear for kids younger than 6. If you just buy the right stuff, bad vibes will ricochet off of you. Bed tents, beach sleeping pods, portable blackout curtains, travel noise machines, inflatable booster seats, suitcases they can ride on, a nylon contraption that makes any chair into a high chair, toddler air mattresses, cribs that fold up into nothing but still weigh 40 lbs?, strollers that fit in the overhead compartment, hiking pack (in addition to regular carrier), inflatable bed rails?, and four different kinds of drink cups. It’s a real firewalk, and while you skitter across the hot coals you’re also carrying a three-year-old who has forgotten how to walk and you’re dragging behind you the $100 ride-on suitcase that they have no interest in riding. And also? You’re in the Newark airport.

Even though Polly is only 2, it feels like the age of the oldest sets the tone for perspective and approach, which means that the sun has mostly set on the gear phase of family life for us. I miss having fat babies in arms but I do not miss the emotional firewalk through the Newark airport of the soul. In this post-gear era, it becomes more about how to make a group vacation work for people with varying interests. Like a destination bachelorette party? No, that can’t be right.

Ok, here are some things that worked specifically for the four people I live with, and thus may not be replicable in their success:

Staying in a hotel by the airport the night before
We don’t live close to an airport and I knew we wanted to take an early flight to avoid losing too much vacation time to flight delays. The hotel was disgusting and did not have the continental breakfast it advertised but it was still worth it. We parked there for free during our trip and took the hotel shuttle directly to the terminal. We would have paid nearly as much in airport parking costs and we would have had to wake up at 3 am or whatever.

Not staying in an airbnb!
Since we last did anything like this, our trip to the Azores with Desi in 2018, we now had an eight-year-old, a four-year-old, and a toddler. Paradoxically?? I no longer felt that airbnb was the only way to travel with kids. Airbnb with kids can feel like a busman’s holiday. Why am I doing dishes in paradise?

When I only had a 2-year-old, it was essential that Nick and I had a separate room to sleep in. Now I was willing to put up with sharing a bedtime if it meant I wasn’t on the hook for chores. I wanted to be in bed by 9 anyway! Genuinely fond memories of us all falling asleep together in the dark hotel room while The Office or King of the Hill played on cable.

There was a Starbucks on the ground floor of the hotel and Desi got to feel very cool taking my credit card down there in the morning and getting me a coffee and getting pastries for himself and the girls while I lounged in bed watching, idk, probably more King of the Hill.

One activity per day
That’s it, and you do it in the morning. Lunch can unspool into naps for people of all ages, or chill time at the hotel (with screens even!) and then an afternoon of low-key pool and beach hangs. We ate dinner at one of the restaurants on the hotel property one time and my kids could not stop clattering their silverware against the chic stone table and we did Uber Eats cheaply to the room every other night. At night, Nick and I took turns taking Desi out for a little big 1:1 time. He and Nick caught Pokemon on their phones all along the property while the coqui frogs sang. He and I played giant chess out by the pool. These were the moments where I realized that I was having real, actual fun. Not type II fun, not “fun for a trip with kids,” but unqualified fun.

Souvenir allowance
We gave Desi and Jane each $30 for souvenirs. They both complained about this the whole time. I didn’t care because I didn’t have to negotiate with them and with myself about what I was willing to buy them. In return, we didn’t police their souvenir choices. Jane wanted to buy a Pokemon squishmallow at the CVS we had ducked into to buy water and snacks, and you know what? That will always be the Pokemon she bought in Puerto Rico. Who cares.

One happy terrainhead

Our next trip is to a cabin in Maine where I will be washing dishes like an absolute clown. There’s no TV, so I’m not sure how I will access Mike Judge comedy products. I guess there’s always the terrain.

yr mate,
Evie
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