Adventure Family Vacations

Family vacations should be full of adventure. What does family adventure mean to you? Well, for some of us, it's an adventure just to get everyone dressed and out the door on school days! But that's not the kind of adventure this site is about.

This site is all about family adventure vacations, from day trips to weekend excursions to year-long or more adventures.

If you have a family that LOVES the outdoors (or if you'd like them to LEARN to love the outdoors,) then this site is for you! It's not all outdoor pursuits either! There's adventure in learning about history or another culture too.

Adventure is NOT only for those in perfect physical shape! While it's certainly easier to take super active vacations, full of sports and althetic pursuits, when you and your kids are healthy and in good shape, we share fun vacation ideas for ALL skill levels. In fact, we share fun indoor and outdoor adventure travel ideas for all tastes, all ages, and all wallets too.

Adventure does NOT have to be dangerous or difficult! Family Adventure Vacations come in all shapes and sizes... from mountain climbing to safaris to walking history tours. You can bring plenty of adventure to your family without being into extreme sports.

Even family resorts and all-inclusive family vacations can offer quite a bit of adventure. You CAN have active, adventurous days, and still be pampered at night. We'll share the best family ski resorts, tips for choosing all inclusive family resorts, and even how you can take a cruise or a luxury vacation and still fit in lots of adventure.

Your family vacations can also be more like full-on adventure travel... with kids. Spend your days kayaking or trekking and your nights camping, rent a sailboat and sail the Greek islands, bicycle through Tuscany, or hike into a jungle lodge. You may be amazed at how many exciting adventure vacations can be easily done with kids! As with most things in life, with children, you just need to adjust your plan a bit.

Just get out there!

Adventure to us means getting outdoors (or out of your own country) and doing something out of the ordinary... something that your kids will remember for years and that will impact them forever!

Did you love to travel before you had kids? Did you stop or slow down after? Or did you always want to travel and just never found the time?

What's the best age to start traveling with kids again? NOW. No, I don't know how old your kids are or how many you have… Whatever their age(s), they'll grow up soon. The absolute best way to bond with your kids, teach them life lessons, and make incredible family memories is to travel... any where, any time, the longer and farther away from home, the better.

Think about it.. when you think about the best times your family has had, where were you? Maybe being home for the holidays have made for some precious memories, but I'll bet at least one, if not all, of your top family memories involved travel.

You can start many family adventures while you have babies. In fact, many family vacations are cheaper while your kids are in those first few years of life. Of course, the older your kids get, the easier it will be to find terrific active vacation ideas. But don't wait! Start NOW! This site compiles tons of great ideas by activity, by location, AND by child age range to help you find great vacation ideas for YOUR family.

Have WE been to ALL of the places we discuss on this site? Of course not... but we hope to eventually! That's why we've made this cooperative site. We want to learn about where you've been and share with you our own best family vacations.

If you have only 2 weeks to spend in Europe, you probably want to make sure you're hitting the best spots for YOUR family. By hearing from other families with kids of similar ages, you can weed out the time-and-money-wasters and spend your efforts on the things that sound like the most fun.

Family vacations are not one-size-fits all! You can read every book there is on a particular location and/or you can read all of those "travel with kids" books and STILL not have the information you need to plan your family's vacation well.

We LOVE reading those books so let us summarize all of that info for you! PLUS (and even more important,) on this site, you can read real-life stories from other families who have been on family adventure vacations to your desired destination. Maybe some will even have kids the exact same age(s) and gender(s) as your own!

Other visitors to this site, just like you, have shared their own travel stories – the ones that turn out perfectly as well as the ones that could be turned into movies... hopefully more comedy than tragedy!

Here's a funny thing we've learned: Sometimes the family vacations with the most misadventures end up being the most memorable for the family. Kids LOVE saying "Remember when..." especially when the story ends with Mom or Dad being terribly embarrassed! Those memories really bring a family together and keep a family feeling like a family unit rather than just individuals who share a house.

Our kids also LOVE telling our adventure (and especially our misadventure) stories to their friends, teachers, or anyone else who will listen. That's why we've built this site with the kids in mind.

Kids' Perspective

Each location we write about will have the kids' perspective too. As we ALL know, our kids' opinions about ANYTHING don't always match with ours!

So, for instance, if you're planning to travel to China with your kids this year, you'll not only hear from other Moms and Dads who have been to China recently, but you'll ALSO hear the kids' perspective. Let your kids read (or read to them if they're too young) reviews from other kids and they'll become active planners of your family vacations. They might even try that nasty-looking food because another kid told them it was really good!

Go Before They Grow!

Even if your kids are too young to remember the details of your family vacations, they'll love hearing the stories and seeing the photos for the rest of their lives.

If you have kids who are older than toddlers, whether they remember your journeys or not, your kids will be changed after a family adventure. Traveling together as a family and getting away from the usual distractions of home, allows your family to really BE together. Spending time together, having more (and deeper) conversations, working through glitches that inevitably arise from time to time, and, of course, making fun or funny memories all help give your children a real sense of family.

Your kids are likely to feel a closer connection to their siblings for the rest of their lives. They'll get to know a different side of their parents, they'll gain confidence in their own abilities,... the benefits of having adventure family vacations are endless.