Travel With Teens and Tweens

This is another in our semi-regular series of round-ups featuring recent articles by some of our favorite family travel writers who are exploring the world with teens and tweens in tow.  This time around we learned about some great museums sure to hold the attention of this crowd.  We also had the opportunity to read about some truly awesome once in a lifetime adventures and ponder jealously how we could line up one of those gigs.  Finally, we read with admiration about the doings of those traveling families who have taken the homeschool or unschooling route in order to show their teens and tweens the world.  We hope you enjoy these articles as well.

Great Museums for Teens and Tweens

Corning Musuem Tower Sculpture

Sandra Foyt of Albany Kid shared her experiences of visiting two museums with  teen and tween in her articles  Take the Kids to the Spy Museum in Washington, D.C and the Corning Glass Museum: The 90 Minute Tour in Corning NY.  At the Spy Museum they smuggled out photos of several “off limits” exhibits and learned how to blow glass at the Corning Museum.  Who knows, both skills may come in handy some day.

Sherri of Sherri May’s Traveling Classroom took her teen and tween on a Stray Boots cell phone guided half scavenger hunt and half walking tour of New York City in Discovering  Midtown Manhattan Clue by Clue.  They choose the Bryant Park and Grand Central: Movers, Shakers & Skyscrapers tour which included stops at Grand Central and the New York City Library and required them to do research like asking the price of a hamburger at one of New York’s most expensive restaurants.  Sounded like a fun way to learn about the city.

Traci from Go Big or Go Home made a visit to the World’s Largest Permanent Robotics Exhibit, Pittsburgh, PA at the Carnegie Science Center with her “geeky” husband and teenage son (her daughter got dragged along too).  The exhibit does homage to C3-PO and R2-D2 of Star Wars fame, but her boy was mostly intrigued by air hockeybot, which plays air hockey against a human.  Apparently it is possible to score on it!

The most exotic museum visit goes to Lainie and her tween son Miro of Raising Miro who learned about the elongated skulls of Paracas at the Paracas History Museum in Peru in their article The Elongated Skulls of Paracas.  Apparently these unusually shaped skulls are 2.5 times as large as the average human skull today.  Miro is pretty sure these ancient people were really aliens! They sure look like them.

Ultimate Getaways

Kara of The Vacation Gals recently shared the Best Private Snowcat Skiing in Colorado at Exclusive Three Forks Ranch with her husband and two tweens. This  ranch resort on more than 200,000 acres crossing the border of Wyoming and Colorado, north of Steamboat Springs offers a high end vacation for those who really want to get away in the winter.  Instead of a ski lift, a snow cat takes small groups of no more than 8 skiers at a time to the top of a pristine ski hill — talk about privacy and powder!

Southernmost Point Marker in Key West

Dana Rebman writing on Ciao Bambino took the Ultimate Mother Daughter Road Trip Through the Florida Keys driving her 13 year old daughter around the Keys in a Chevy Volt.  They stopped at the the Big Cypress National Preserve in the Everglades, did a snorkeling tour amid a school of barracudas at the John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park, did an overnight and dolphin swim at the Cheeca Lodge & Spa and made it to Key West in time for one of its famed sunsets.  This road trip was sponsored by Chevy as a promotion for the new Volt – seems like it made an impression!

Sue, of Field Trips with Sue, and her teen son got rid of their winter blues with a visit to the Southern Cross Guest Ranch: A Horseback Trail Riding Retreat in Georgia.  At Southern Cross, guests are involved in the entire process of riding from selecting their ride from the more than 200 horses on the property, to brushing the horse, putting on the saddle, following their guide for a ride around the ranch’s 200 acres and then reversing the process until the horse is taken back out to the pasture.  They had a great time.

Homeschool Family Travel Adventures

Pamela of the Escape is Possible blog took her homeschooled teens on a family field trip to Lassen Volcanic National Park to reinforce a science unit on volcanos.  The snow capped mountains and active geothermal sites made for a great day.

Australian Sea Lions

Amy of Livin on the Road, drove her family of tweens and younger siblings 30 kms down a pretty awful road to experience Sceale Bay’s Sea Lions,  the only mainland sea lion colony in South Australia.  They camped out and spent the next day marveling at the dozens of sea lions in residence.  Ten year old son  successfully lobbied to make the documentation of sea lion observations the focal point for that day’s homeschooling.

KJ, a 16 year old blogger traveling Southeast Asia and Australia with her family, shares her insights on her Dear Lunch Table blog.  At a birthday party for her mother in Vietnam she gained a lot of traveling insight from her mom’s friends which can be best summed up by a quote she shared – “A good friend bails you out of jail, but a best friend is sitting next to you saying, ‘damn, that was fun.”  Read her article Vietnam: The Top 10 Lessons I Learned From Traveling with My Parents’ Friends . . .to find out the rest of the lessons, and don’t forget Lesson #3: eat the crocodile!

World travelers Theodora and her 10 year old son of Travels With A Nine Year Old had the chance to roll, swim, and generally play in the sand dunes of Egypt’s Sinai desert in What Does a Kid Do for Four Days in the Desert?  They also got to meet camels, drink gallons of Bedouin tea, find quartz and fossils in river beds and hike through a canyon to a palm-fringed oasis.

Finally, Crazy Dad and his 9 year old son Tigger from 1 Dad 1 Kid shared their perspective on the nomad life as they prepared to end 8 months of living, snorkeling and scuba diving on the island of Utila in the  Honduras in Parting Thoughts from Utila.  Sounds like they had a pretty good experience there.

Where Have You Been Lately?

That is it for this round of our Travel with Teens and Tweens blog carnival.  Have a great link you want to share for the next time? Please leave a comment here or email the link to maryt <at> travel-with-teens <dot> com or DM us on Twitter @travelwithteens. We can’t wait to hear what you and your teens and tweens have been up to.

Corning Museum photo courtesy of Jordan Miller via Wikimedia

Southernmost Point photo courtesy of Stefan Kokemüller via Wikimedia

Sea Lions courtesy of Cody Pope via Wikimedia