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  We're Traveling Mamas sharing our adventures with the world. We offer tips on great (and not so great) places to visit with children and how to have the best family vacations -- but it's not all about the kids, of course! Romantic escapes, girlfriend getaways, and solo trips are also important to us. Plus, we cover industry news and review travel gear, and we love to give things away!

  
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The “Growing” Popularity of Babymoon Vacations

Used to be, when a woman got pregnant, she didn’t let her pregnancy slow her down. She couldn’t afford to, there were simply too many other things to attend to.

I’m descended from a long line of peasants and farm hands. In generations past, my ancestors would be working the fields in Hungary, growing…I don’t know, paprika. Maybe beets. Anyway, my foremothers were out there tending the crops, same as my forefathers, and a little pregnancy was no excuse to quit working, come inside, recline on a daybed, and ask pitifully for pudding. No, not that pudding! The kind with chocolate and vanilla swirled together! You’ll have to go back to the store.

Sound familiar? Apparently I wasn’t the only modern woman to view my pregnancy as the last great reason to relax and pamper myself. Witness the exponential growth in the travel industry’s packaging of baby moon vacations. Babymoons, or luxury pre-birth vacations for parents-to-be, have really caught on in the United States. The idea is to relax in a romantic setting, preferably with a luxury day spa nearby to tend to all the mother-to-be’s prenatal massage needs. Travel during the first- and second-trimester of pregnancy, after all, is no problem (check with your ob-gyn if you want to be extra sure).

Europe, Asia, the Caribbean, even the United Arab Emirates: Babymoon vacation packages are found in 5-star hotels and luxury resorts across the world. The list is expanding like a gravid belly (sorry). It’s too bad a website like this one didn’t exist when I was pregnant – this portal to the best luxury hotels offering babymoon packages would have been useful. As it was, I made do with guilting the poor father-to-be into late-night pudding runs. Women traveling during their second trimester are wonderful sights; romantic getaways and one-on-one time with the father-to-be are real examples of how far we’ve come.

Romantic weekend getaways are a far cry from tending the fields until the onset of labor. I have to think, however, that my Hungarian peasant ancestors would be proud of the progress that the women in my family have made. After all, what would you prefer to do during your second trimester of pregnancy – dig up beets, or enjoy a professional prenatal massage in Jamaica? Yeah, I thought so. Me too.

Snowshoeing on Aspen Mountain

This week I helped chaperone my daughter’s field trip to Aspen Mountain for some snowshoeing in the backcountry. It was so much fun! The weather was glorious–we had some low-hanging, wispy clouds in the morning, but the sky cleared to a beautiful robin’s-egg blue by lunchtime. It had snowed the night before, so the ground cover was all sparkly. And the kids and grownups were all happy to be playing hooky from school and work all day!

That’s not to say the kids didn’t learn. Knowledgeable staffers from the Aspen Center for Environmental Studies talked to the 7- and 8-year-olds about animal tracks and their winter habitats. A representative from the mountain’s ski patrol discussed skiing and avalanche safety. We all watched as a trained rescue dog sniffed out four kids hiding in snow caves in a giant snow pile. I was impressed!

Visitors to the Aspen area can go snowshoeing on the same off-piste trails we did through ACES’ Naturalist Snowshoe Tours. Two-hour tours take place daily through April 11 at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. Cost is $52 for adults, $41 for youth and seniors, $31 for children ages 7 to 12. The fee includes a gondola ride to the top of the mountain, snowshoe rental, snack and warm drink, and a knowledgeable guide. Learn about wildlife in winter, tracking, mountain ecology, history of Aspen, avalanches and winter habitats on this leisurely paced excursion over gentle terrain.

On the tour, if you’re blessed with the same weather we were, you’ll enjoy pretty scenes like these:

Winning Wednesday Audio Book Giveaway Results

Welcome to Winning Wednesday! This week, we’re excited to give away a complete audiobook of The Kite Runner, read by author Khaled Hosseini.

The Kite Runner didn’t win any awards at last Sunday’s Oscars, but we do have a Kite Runner winner here at TravelingMamas. Let’s all extend our congratulations to Mama Zen. Yay, Mama Zen! She wrote, “My husband makes me listen to geeky podcasts. Help!” Well, hopefully, this audiobook – with a hefty 12 hours running time – will give you a nice break from all that Star Wars fan fiction (or whatever the “geeky podcasts” are).

We’re not 100% positive, but it looks like this was the only response out of many to mention podcasts. Popular responses regarding audiobooks were clearly in the Stephen King and Harry Potter categories. For example, Sarah wrote “I listen to Stephen King in the car. Nothing like a little terror to keep you alert!” Indeed. And Susan wrote, “I’ve listened to the whole Harry Potter series during my driving trips.” Wow! Those must have been some serious road trips. I stubbed my toe on the fifth Harry Potter book the other day, and I thought I’d broken a bone. The audiobook series must last a week.

Other common answers to the contest question were like Jim Cincinello’s: He wrote “I have never listened to an audio book before but would like to.” Please don’t let them pass you by. Books on tape are a great way for busy people to “read.” Time on the road is time well spent when we can soak up that classic or new best seller. What can I say? It beats road rage.

Mama Zen, email me at MudslideMama at Travelingmamas dot com, and you’ll be listening to The Kite Runner before Spring Break. Congratulations!

Best Activities for Kids in Denver, Colorado

Recently, while we were enjoying the indoor pool/waterpark at our local AmericInn (only $5 per kid; which beats the price of the local rec center!), my son picked up a brochure for Denver’s Downtown Aquarium. He’s been carrying the flyer around with him everywhere: “When can we go, huh? When can we go to Denver to feed the stingrays. Can we go soon?”

Clearly, a trip to the Mile-High City is in our future — probably this spring. Or maybe after April 19, when Elitch Gardens opens for the season. To think we have this mega amusement park and water park sort-of in our backyard, and our deprived children have never been. Horrors!

If a family vacation takes you to Denver when the warm weather hits, here are my top attractions to visit:

Downtown Aquarium takes visitors on a journey through various habitats, both under and above the water–from the desert to the coral reef, and from the beach to a sunken temple. The Aquarium Restaurant is a cool place for families to get a bite to eat—you can get up close and personal with a variety of marine life in the 150,000-gallon tank that surrounds the eatery. Special programs allow you to dive with the sharks, be a marine biologist for the day, even sleep at the aquarium overnight. Open year round.

Elitch Gardens is smack dab in the middle of downtown Denver. It’s hard to miss the giant roller coasters, Ferris wheel and other major rides. Thrill rides at Elitch’s (as it’s called by locals) include the Mind Eraser coaster and the Tower of Doom; family-friendly attractions are the 74-year-old carousel, the Tea Cups and the Star Toons Studio with rides for kids under 54 inches tall. Getting wet at the Island Kingdom Water Park is included with your admission: free fall in a cliff dive, frolic in a giant treehouse, relax on the lazy river and more. Open on the weekends from end-April through end-May, then daily through mid-August, and again on weekends through end October. Water park is open mid-May through Labor Day.

Children’s Museum of Denver is ideal for kids from infancy through eight years old. Conveniently located in downtown Denver, just off of I-25 and 23rd Avenue, the museum offers interactive “playscapes” for various age groups. In the “Center for the Young Child,” babies, toddlers and preschoolers have a safe place to explore, climb and make believe at a pretend fishing pond. Bigger kids can explore a real fire truck, sell goods at a market, make train tracks, shoot baskets and put on a puppet show. Open year round.

Denver Zoo in City Park, five minutes from downtown Denver, is home to more than 4,000 animals representing more than 700 different species, including 144 endangered animals. From penguins and polar bears to tarantulas and turtles—you name the animal, and you can likely find it at the Denver Zoo, consistently among the state’s most popular tourist attractions. The zoo is especially festive during the winter holiday season, when the annual beloved Zoo Lights, with millions of sparkling animal displays and glittering trees delight visitors and locals alike. Open year round.

Denver Museum of Nature and Science is also in historic City Park and offers intriguing exhibitions for school-age children and their parents. Ongoing museum xhibits include “Egyptian Mummies,” “Prehistoric Journey” and “Space Odyssey.” The “Discovery Zone” offers hands-on opportunities for learning (although kids just think they’re having fun!) with crafts, digging for fossils, even singing karaoke. The IMAX theatre and the Gates Planetarium offer multiple daily shows.

Visiting southwest Colorado with children? Here are top things to do in Durango in the summer months.

Travel Guide Book Review: Rome with Kids

Rome with Kids: An Insider’s Guide, by JM Pasquesi, is different than the straightforward, dry, “just the fact, ma’am” style of most guide books. International family travel anywhere can be a trial; try adding sites of historic interest, and it doubles. Rome might be boring for young kids who don’t care about or understand the historical context of attractions like the Colosseum or Forum, and aggravating for parents who want to see said attractions without their children whining and complaining. Interesting travel can’t all be about the gift shops, after all! That being said, Rome with Kids: An Insider’s Guide helps makes a family vacation in Rome fun and exciting for children. In an interview with the author, JM Pasquesi told me that the key to easy European travel with kids is “spacing and pacing.” Slow down the pace, and take time to experience sites. Parents need to adjust their expectations: Changing the pace of a trip to Rome may mean not getting to see everything on a parent’s list, but those that are seen, are appreciated much more. Children benefit from taking time in the same surroundings, to feel comfortable.

Rome with Kids is a great family guide, with suggested itineraries and tips for how to explain Rome’s long history in accessible ways. “Kids enjoy touring when information is presented in entertaining ways,” says the author, who has taken her boys for extended vacations in Italy several times. The guide book includes creative treasure hunt style games, and doesn’t shy away from some of the more grim tales of gladiators and other aspects of Rome that have built-in appeal for older kids. With these older children (especially boys, for some reason), the bloody stuff is the most interesting – and since it’s part of the history of Rome, it’s legitimate to talk about it with the older set.

The Forum, the Colosseum, the Pantheon, the Vatican and more all get their sections in this book, which manages to wrap 3,000 years of Roman history in its easily comprehensible manner. You don’t have to travel with kids to appreciate all that this guide book has to offer (although it’s a good excuse). The creative suggestions for children can also be fun for adults getting to know Rome – I think it would be fun to try to find many of the “Can You Find” highlighted sections for kids. Finding Michelangelo’s signature on the Pieta, for example, would be quite a thrill. I wholeheartedly recommend this new travel guide (published by Synergy Books, July 2007). A family planning a vacation in Rome would benefit greatly from this book. Children will enjoy the tips and creative suggestions for having fun in Italy, and when the kids are happy, so are the parents.

Accessible Family Vacations

Recently, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition aired the Hughes Family episode. The team built a new home for the Hughes Family and their blind, disabled son, Patrick Henry. Patrick Henry is an inspiration to people of all abilities, with his words and music. The show sent the Hughes Family to London, showing that families of all needs can travel and explore the world.

Author Candy Harrington provides the perfect avenue for planning a trip for a special needs family. Her recent book, 101 Accessible Vacations: Travel Ideas for Wheelers and Slow Walkers can help find the destination for any Traveling Mamas searching for the best holiday for her entire family. Now everyone can have better quality travel, from the family with special needs children to including a grandmother who is a bit of a slow walker. You’ll find extensive information on accessible cruises, RV travel, and active holidays.

Candy has provided resources at the end of every chapter, helping travelers make the most of their time as a family.

Order your copy now so that you can start planning your accessible vacation.

Try Letterboxing for a Modern-day Treasure Hunt

Have any of you ever gone on a letterboxing adventure with your kids? I haven’t but I keep thinking that on family vacations, or during the warm-weather months here in Colorado, I should try it. Namely because my children, ages 5 and 7, loved the GPS Mountain Treasure Hunt we went on with Santa Fe Mountain Adventures during a visit to the New Mexico capital last year. Letterboxing is a bit different, but the concept of puzzle solving in the great outdoors remains the same. Here’s how it works:

Letterboxing enthusiasts have hidden upwards of 10,000 waterproof boxes throughout the United States and Canada—in parks, remote picturesque places, even city streets and indoor tourist attractions. Inside these boxes are typically a logbook, rubber stamp and inkpad.

The letterbox owners write clues to the boxes’ locations at websites like Letterboxing North America. At LbNA’s site, you can search for boxes by geographic location—they can be found in every state in the U.S., plus Canada, Central America, Bermuda and some Caribbean Islands.

When you uncover a letterbox, you stamp the logbook with your own personal stamp, and you stamp your personal logbook with the box’s stamp to keep track of all your finds. Sometimes other small rewards or clues to another letterbox are included as well.

Some letterbox owners give straightforward directions with detailed instructions and virtual maps; others give more cryptic clues. The location descriptions typically explain how remote the hidden box is.

In anticipation of our March trip to Palm Desert, California, to visit Grammie, I checked out the Letterboxing North America website for the listing of boxes hidden in the area. There are about a dozen, including one that is hidden at the top of the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway and one just outside the gates of the Living Desert. Cool! Now the kids and I just have to buy our own stamps (of course they won’t want to share one) and logbooks. I’ll keep you posted if we go treasure hunting next month!

How to have a More Eco-friendly Solo Road Trip

It’s never been easier to be a solo road tripper. Sure, the truckers have had CB radios since, like, forever, but the advent of Sirius radio and MP3 players made long hours spent of the road less tedious. Nothing like a fine selection of our favorite tunes to pass the time! I especially love the iPod Shuffle, because – when the highway stretches interminably in front of us, with nothing of particular interest on either side, wondering what song will pop up next can actually pass for a reasonable amount of excitement.

When travel writers have a press trip somewhat near home base, it’s a given that we’ll drive. Many other travel lovers choose long distance solo trips for either finances or convenience. Some of us may even opt for long drives alone for peace of mind; it can, after all, get a little meditative out there, alone. But let’s face it – gas is expensive, fossil fuels are in decreasing supply, and it’s probably a good idea to work towards leaving a lighter carbon footprint. I carpool when I can, which helps, but I don’t drive a hybrid (call me when they make station wagons electric and affordable). What else can the solo road trip lover do to help reduce greenhouse gases, without too dramatic a lifestyle change?

Here’s what I suggest: Switch from AAA to Better World Club. The Better World Club offers everything that triple-A does, without any of your membership fees going to the highway lobby (as with AAA). The Better World Club offers discounts on hybrid rental cars, discounts on eco-travel, and helps fight global warming by offering it members free carbon offsets (when purchasing airline tickets through BWT). Better World Club donates 1% of its revenue to environmental cleanup, and even offers roadside assistance for bicycles. Triple-A, on the other hand, uses some if its revenue to lobby against mass transit, bike paths, and the Clean Air Act. Now, this makes sense from a business standpoint – the more people in cars, the more people using AAA, right? But since Better World Club offers the same good stuff as AAA, without your money going towards things that actually increase your carbon footprint, BWC is the eco-friendly alternative.

It’s painless to switch to Better World Club. If you’re like me (somewhat environmentally aware, have garbage can set aside for recycling but won’t go so far as to actually do composting), then being a member of BWC is an easy way to live a little greener while still enjoying relatively guilt-free solo car trips.

LOST Film Sites in Hawai’i

I’m a television freak. If you add travel into the TV mix, I’m even more fanatic about it. That’s why I love Thursday night television. CBS has Survivor and ABC is airing new episodes of LOST.

A few years ago I had an to visit Hawaii and a few filming sites from LOST. Here are a few of my favorites:

Ala Moana Center – Take a ride up the escalator and shop at what was the airport scene for the Oceanic ticket counter.

Waimea Valley – This site is home to the infamous waterfall where Kate and Sawyer retrieve guns in the first season. There are also trails that are oddly familiar from the first season. As of February 1, 2008, this historical site has returned to the hands of the Hawaiian people. It was recently an Audubon Center. It is unknown at this time if the waterfalls are open to the public for a dip. I do know that the falls have something special in them for the skin. My skin was softer for at least three days after my swim. This is definitely a special place that should be visited while in the islands.

Dillingham Airfield – During my visit, I snuck around back and found the storage for the fuselage. I also took a glider ride that provided a glorious view of the beaches. It is also the airfield setting for the episode “The 23rd Psalm” which gives some background about Mr. Echo.

Mokule’ia Beach (Army Beach) – This is directly across from the airfield and was the beach setting for the pilot episode.

Ka’a’wa Valley – The LOST survivors played a few rounds of golf in this area that was also a film site for Jurassic Park, Godzilla, and Pearl Harbor. Do you want to play on the course where Sayid shot the guy? Visit the 17th hold of Turtle Bay Palmer Course.

Want to see more? Check out Lost Virtual Tours for pictures and videos of even more film sites. I’m looking forward to tonight’s episode. I wonder what crazy conspiracy will be revealed.

Away.com’s Site of the Week

The Traveling Mamas are very excited to be named the Site of the Week at Away.com’s new family travel blog.

You can read what the editor had to say about us here.

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