I really have no quarrel with the way I live.
I am a day-job dreamer and a weekender, meaning I define my relationship to travel and the outdoors by breaks in a five-day workweek and amid limited vacation time. I live for the weekend, you might say. It’s time spent with my wife in middle America when we’re not tending to chores or maintaining animals. I work in agriculture and am a volunteer firefighter and EMT, so probably, like many reading this, travel time is relegated as work allows.
Like a puzzle, the plotting and planning connect the pieces to ensure fond memories are made as my family grows. My children will one day grow older and venture on their own, but until then, it’s my duty to educate and immerse them in the world and her experiences. Preparation and execution are key, and the best way to execute a family weekend with children is to plan early, keep highlights organized, and allow for spontaneity and flexibility.
Bitten by the Travel Bug Early
I began experiencing the joys of travel at an early age. My parents taught at a local junior college. Their love for culture and travel sparked a fire within me to seek similar satisfaction through visiting new places and learning about new cultures. When I was a teenager, we traveled across the US and North America—Los Angeles, Chicago, Santa Fe, Dallas, Toronto, and Charleston, to name a few. Before I was even licensed to drive, I had traveled outside of the US twice, shared meals with locals in rural eastern Germany, visited famed art galleries in the Southwest US, and walked the Magnificent Mile in Chicago. It wasn’t how most of my Midwestern peers spent their summers.
This early appreciation for travel drove me to find ways to fit more adventure into my family life, which at the moment is made of my wife and me and our two-year-old son. We’re expecting a girl soon. I want to raise our children with the same early opportunities I was blessed with, giving them a greater appreciation for all people.
Planning a Family Trip With a Full-time Job
My wife and I follow a few families who travel full-time and post their adventures on media sources like YouTube and Instagram. Expedition Portal and Overland Bound communities offer unique perspectives on travel and valuable insights on methods, gear, and current traveling conditions for various regions. Although I don’t have a long commute to and from work, I fill it with podcasts aimed at travel, adventure, people, and thoughtful conversations. We surround ourselves with family and friends who find like-minded joys in travel and new experiences. All of this works together to help us draw inspiration on where and when we would like to travel next.
Mapping Software
There is one travel planning tool I use more than anything else, Gaia GPS. My method involves countless hours of scanning the incredible map layers available on this platform, marking interesting waypoints, and organizing them all by National Forest Systems and states. I often find myself using lunch breaks or time between meetings to seek out and mark waypoints of interest. For now, I am focused on traveling within the US and hyper-focused on states close to home. I locate waterfalls, natural hot springs, cave dwellings, petroglyphs, and areas with unique features and mark them in the Gaia app.
When browsing YouTube or online forums, I’ll often discover someone sharing an epic place to visit. When this happens, I locate it on Gaia, mark the location, and file it in the corresponding folder. I plot tentative routes connecting the waypoints of interest, and I store my recorded tracks in folders dated and titled with corresponding national forests or regions in the event we want to return for further exploration. In some cases, I note the condition of forest service roads we traveled when abnormally poor and flag alternate routes we did not try. I mark my insights as public information to help others in the Gaia community.
After coming up with a collection of things to see in an area, I figure the time we can allocate to the trip, determine where we can enter National Forest Systems, and assess what roads are open, along with their limitations, using the motor vehicle use map (MVUM) layer on Gaia in conjunction with the US Forest Service website. It is important to cross-reference the MVUM layer and the general region you will be traveling through with special bulletins posted by the US Forest Service that cover naturally occurring events such as flooding, landslides, and forest fires that may cause roads or other areas to temporarily close. By this point, I am also looking for other areas of interest along our planned route. Sometimes this is an iconic or historic town, a local brewery, a vineyard, or a place of cultural importance.
I wish I could say we will be ground camping on our next trip, but with a two-year-old and a pregnant wife who is relatively new to adventure traveling, an Airbnb is where we’ll be laying our heads. That’s perfectly okay for now if that’s what it takes to get my family traveling.
Safety
Emergency services is a subject that can easily go overlooked, but it should be at the forefront of thought when traveling with kiddos. Prior to leaving for a trip, I make a point to locate nearby hospitals and visit their websites to see what type of treatment facilities and staff are present. During our next trip, my wife will be in her third trimester of pregnancy. Should she need medical attention, it is vitally important to know where the nearest emergency facility is and what they are capable of treating. Most of what you would expect to occur on a trip can be treated with first aid equipment, so I keep a first-aid kit on hand for treating everything from minor scrapes and discomfort to trauma and severe bleeding.
Traveling to remote regions with limited communication capabilities significantly emphasizes the importance of first-aid treatment.
Pre- and post-trip inspections and checklists are created on Overland Bound as a starting point and are tweaked to suit our travel situation. I tend to forget items frequently, and this helps me keep stock of what we used and didn’t use or won’t need the next time around. I like to keep the itinerary pretty sparse to allow for spontaneity. The rest is up to wherever we want to go once we get out there and the adventures we find along the way. This time around, we will be traveling to Pagosa Springs, Colorado. On the map for things to see are a handful of waterfalls, historic cabins, mining ruins, pristine mountain lakes and streams, breweries, and a primitive hot spring hidden within the National Forest System where we will hike.
Trip Highlights: San Juan Mountain Range
I have read that the namesake for Colorado is of Spanish origin and pertains to the color red. Perhaps this is because of the red hue of the Colorado River or the red granite bedrock that can be seen in many upheavals throughout the Rocky Mountains. Or maybe just the effect of the sun setting on the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. In the San Juan Mountains of southern Colorado, the color red has a significant presence on the landscape. The golden foliage of aspen trees holds a commanding presence, too, if you time your arrival just right. The aspens of Golden, Colorado, were in full color as we traveled north along the Highway of Legends near Cuchara.
This magnificent foliage was a welcome sight after many hours of travel along the front range.
Nearing Cuchara, the west slope of West Spanish Peak towers along the horizon.
The weather conditions in the fall in southern Colorado can be difficult to plan for and are likely to change abruptly. When at a significant elevation, you may run into snow and then it immediately turns into a blue-bird day.
Nothing quite sums up my understanding of Colorado’s namesake than the Piedra River near Castle Rock. Casting a fly line, you may find yourself surrounded by deep, red foliage along the riverbank as the sun’s warmth takes the edge off the cool breeze sweeping down the valley.
Within 100 yards, you may find yourself in a colorful canopy of foliage speckled with shadows as you move upstream to find a new pool to cast into.
The opportunities for travel and, more importantly, to bond with family and friends are nearly endless.
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