A couple things I've learned: in spite of the fancy new renovation that has left O'Hare shinier and more sparkling than the last time I was here, airports all across the US are just a huge homogenized mass, and there seems to be a single company that has locked up all the concessions at every airport in the US. Seriously. It's the same books, the same bottled drinks, the same uniforms, the same "specialty" shops the same overpriced food everywhere. And, as I'm reminded every 5 minutes, it's illegal for transportation companies to solicit fares at the airport. Good to know in case I'm ever looking to supplement my income in Chicago. Also, Boingo WiFi sucks. It's great until you need to contact someone who only has a Facebook address, or you want to check your Yahoo! email, at which point it mysteriously refuses to work.

On the plus side, KORD Terminal 1 is mercifully free of the incessantly blaring CNN monitors.

I would also like to extend my congratulations to a few of my fellow passengers on United flight 535 out of Boston this morning for having toddlers that were so well-behaved that had I not seen them boarding I would not have even known they were there. It was nice to see amongst all the media attention to the "problems" of children on board aircraft, there are still some people out there that can handle their offspring.]]> TravelGator http://www.travelgator.com/do/blogs/Traveling-with-Kids Mon, 15 Sep 2008 12:00:00 EDT

We love Wellfleet because the beaches are beautiful and, even at the peak of the summer, it's never that crowded. The town is full of art galleries, and as long as your kids are well-behaved, they're always welcome. We always plan our activities around the tides (you always need to consider the tides at the ocean, bit it's especially true here if you want a sandy beach). Our daughter loves to collect hermit crabs, and there is no better place to do that than Great Island at low tide. When the tide is out, the beach at Great Island is a huge expanse of flat sand, you can wade out hundreds of feet without getting anything above mid-thigh wet and the water is, by New England standards, warm. As a bonus, there is free parking in the Great Island lot. In fact, free parking may be one of the best things about Wellfleet. There is a municipal lot at Mayo Beach, free parking on the wharf and free parking downtown. While many of the other beaches on the Cape may be more spectacular, the water is usually colder (they are after all, on the open Atlantic Ocean), parking fills up early, and it will cost you in excess of $15 for the privilege of parking your car on a patch of dirt.

This trip we managed to forget most of our essentials (water sandals, sunblock, etc.) so I ended up trying to walk out to one of the many sandbars that are exposed and almost exposed at low tide. About halfway there I began to notice a large number of sizable crabs (that is, those large enough to be able to get a claw around a foot or toe) and I began to wonder just how they would react to being stepped on. (See the photo of the crab hiding in the sand. Given another couple seconds and all that you'd see would a small depression in the sand with no other hint of what was hiding beneath.) Considering they can be aggressive little buggers, and I was in bare feet, I decided to abandon the walk and head back closer to shore where the wildlife is a little smaller. While we were chasing jellyfish close to shore we came across a larger crab (about a hand-span, claw-to-claw) that didn't seem interested in moving on, and when I gave it a tap on the elbow with our net, it just turned and brandished its claws at me. We decided to leave him alone and find another spot to chase jellyfish. This was the first trip we noticed jellyfish, and we discovered the trick to finding them is to look for their shadows. They're almost impossible to spot if you don't know where to look, but if you look for the distinctive shadow on the sand, you can follow back toward the sun and spot them. The shadows you want to look for will have some internal structure to them, and that's about all that distinguishes them from the shadows of the foam bubbles.

By the time high tide rolls in, all the shallows are under about 12 feet of water, and the beach is a narrow rocky strip. And, since the beach is so flat, the tide comes in fast. I mean one minute you're on dry sand then one wave rolls in and doesn't go out and you're suddenly in an inch of water that isn't going away any time soon.

If you do decide to make a day trip to the Cape from Boston or a little bit north, you'll want to leave as early in the morning as possible. Ideally, you should hit the bridge by 8 AM, so get up early, and grab breakfast on the Cape. Given that this is the family travel blog, I'll point out that there is a Friendly's just off highway 6 in Hyannis where you can feed and get going quickly and give the kids get a bit of a break without delaying things too much if your destination is farther. If you're heading farther out on the Cape, or want something a little different than an ubiquitous chain restaurant, there are a gazillion options on the Cape. On the food blog, I talk about a few in Wellfleet.]]> TravelGator http://www.travelgator.com/do/blogs/Traveling-with-Kids Mon, 11 Aug 2008 12:00:00 EDT York's Wild Kingdom Zoo and Amusement Park, and it really does have an amusement park.]]> York's Wild Kingdom Zoo and Amusement Park, and it really does have an amusement park.

The zoo is really good for kids, but having grown up in Toronto, with the Metro Toronto Zoo (MTZ), I'm a little spoiled when it comes to zoos. It's a very small zoo and the exhibits are packed together without a lot of context (e.g. a South American Cassowary across the path from the African lion, which was next to the Asian tiger and the Zebras and Gazelles were separated from the lions by the deer feeding exhibit and the emus). The information about the animals was a little sparse and didn't contain much more than the geographical distribution of the animal and some non-sequiturs that I'm guessing were meant to add some color and context but just left me with more questions. It reminded me of the Bowmanville Zoo in Ontario, Canada (I have pictures of me as a child there in the 70s) with the small exhibits and the emphasis on feeding and interacting with the less ferocious beasties. Throughout the park there are vending machines dispensing food for many of the animals. There are ducks, deer, llamas and goats that can be fed. The deer allow the kids to get right up close (see photos) and the kids can go right inside the goat pen to feed them. I have kind of mixed feelings on that sort of thing, but the animals seem to enjoy the food (maybe a little too much – I really could have done without having mud and deer snot wiped across the back of my hand when one deer thought I was taking too long at the vending machine).

Our daughter loved the butterfly exhibit, to the point that at the end of our visit when we went in for the last time, one of the curators said "isn't this like the third time I've seen you in here?" In spite of the sparse information on the signs, the staff (at least in the butterfly exhibit) seemed to be very well-educated about their charges and were happy to try and teach a 5 year old the names of different butterflies and show her some of the differences between them.

We did not check out the amusement park or the food concessions, beyond marveling that not only were they charging $3.75 for a hot dog and $8 for a hamburger, people were paying for them.

On the way home we decided to stop in Kittery, Maine at the Outlet malls to do a bit of shopping and get some dinner. Yes, really. Dinner was a reason to drive 30 minutes and forgo the pleasures of a $7 chili dog, but that is a subject for the food blog…]]> TravelGator http://www.travelgator.com/do/blogs/Traveling-with-Kids Mon, 02 Jun 2008 12:00:00 EDT

For some outdoor fun, Morton’s Warm Springs Resort in Glen Ellen looks like fun with geothermal mineral pools, woods and picnic areas, but unfortunately it's only open June-August and weekends in May and September.

Sonoma Train Town looks fun too, with trains and other rides and it's right in Sonoma. Again, it had limited opening hours while we were in town and we managed to miss the days it was open.

On the road between Santa Rosa in Sonoma valley to Calistoga in Napa valley, you’ll find the petrified forest. This attraction will be primarily of interest to older kids that have some interest in science- and nature-type things. Younger kids will probably not find it too exciting, since, to put it bluntly, it’s nothing but a walk in the woods amongst a bunch of fallen-down trees that just happen to be made of rock. If you can’t appreciate that sort of thing, you’d probably be well-advised to take a pass on this one. Perhaps the mud baths in Calistoga would be more your speed (especially if you need a break from the little ones). Calistoga was featured in an episode of Dirty Jobs on the Discovery channel.

Sonoma would have been a perfect place with another couple with children. That way we could have done the adult activities in shifts. Most wineries have outdoor picnic areas where you could take turns watching the kids while a couple adults do some tastings, which would also have the added advantage of slowing down the wine sampling to a more reasonable pace.

Given some illness and a very bored 5-year old, we decided to take in a movie in Napa. While the movie theatre wasn’t anything you wouldn’t find in any small city in the US, it was a nice break. Sometimes when you’re on vacation there’s this pressure to keep doing and seeing things, and having to take a breather and just do something regular (I think we were the only non-locals in the theatre) was really relaxing. In fact, I think from now on when I’m on vacation I’m going to try and take a day where I just do things that I’d do at home. Go catch a movie, sit at a cafe for a couple hours, or just sit in and read a book (okay, maybe do things that I wish I had time to do when I’m at home).]]> TravelGator http://www.travelgator.com/do/blogs/Traveling-with-Kids Mon, 19 May 2008 12:00:00 EDT Cabo Dolphins, where your children (and adults too if you are so inclined) will get a chance to get up close in the water with dolphins. They split the kids up into groups by age so that they can tailor the experience for the entire group. Older kids will get the chance to get pushed around the pool by the dolphins, while the younger ones will get towed around on a huge inner tube. All of them get lots of opportunity to interact with and touch the dolphins. ]]> Cabo Dolphins, where your children (and adults too if you are so inclined) will get a chance to get up close in the water with dolphins. They split the kids up into groups by age so that they can tailor the experience for the entire group. Older kids will get the chance to get pushed around the pool by the dolphins, while the younger ones will get towed around on a huge inner tube. All of them get lots of opportunity to interact with and touch the dolphins.

I can’t say enough good things about their staff. Our daughter is very shy and doesn’t like to be away from us until she’s had a good long time to get comfortable in a new situation. The leader of her group held her hand and took her over to the area they’d be learning about the dolphins, and made sure she was having a good time throughout the experience. It made up for the obscene prices they charge for photos (they don’t allow photos from the viewing platform, and quite honestly, you wouldn’t be able to get a good shot from there anyway).

The same company operates desert tours, but those are strictly adult-only. Both the dolphins and desert tours can be booked in advance (we bought the dolphin tickets from http://www.cabosanlucastours.net/ and tried to book a submarine tour, but that was not available due to scheduled maintenance and the ticket agent called us and offered a couple other options, none of which worked for us, so they cheerfully refunded our purchase with no fees that certain unnamed American concert ticket outfits charge). I recommend doing so to avoid the rush of cruise passengers.

We didn’t find many other suitable entertainments for children. There are a couple submarine tours (see this one and this one). The latter is not a true submarine, and the former is a real submarine designed by a former soviet military submarine designer. It looks worthy of a Bond villain. Unfortunately the week we were in Cabo the “Yellow Submarine” was out of the water for its annual maintenance and I found out about the Sea Eye too late to book a tour.

Other things to do include taking a water taxi out to Land’s End (that would be the famous arch) or try some snorkeling off one of the beaches (Medano or Chileno). The snorkeling isn’t the best I’ve seen, but it’s convenient. If you can, avoid doing either activity when a cruise ship pulls into the harbor. You’ll have a much weaker bargaining position when trying to negotiate a price. Snorkeling tours can also get expensive when you’ve got to pay for a couple adults and a few kids, so you might consider renting a car for the week (definitely worthwhile if you’re renting a condo and need to do grocery shopping, but a bit pricey if you only expect to use it one or two days). As a bonus it will give you more freedom in coming and going than a tour boat will.

Honestly, with kids, I think the best thing to do if you are dead-set on going to Cabo San Lucas is to stay at a resort that has extensive activities. Of course if you are just going to stay within the sanitized confines of a resort, you may as well pick the the best combination of time/price and not bother about what country it’s in.]]>