JENNIFER FLANDERSFamily Matters

Our honeymoon did not go smoothly as far as travel plans are concerned. For starters, my father drove us to the airport, cutting across five lanes of heavy traffic and jumping a median at 70 mph to get us there on time. He nearly missed his exit; we nearly missed the rest of our lives.

Transportation woes followed us to Florida. Our vacation package included a rental car, but neither of us was allowed to drive it. My husband had a valid license but wasn’t old enough; I was old enough but had let my license expire (why renew in April when I’d have to change it again in August?)

So we stuck close to the hotel and ate all our meals at a Denny’s across the parking lot. The one day of our trip we’d set aside for an ocean voyage happened to be the one day the ship didn’t run. It sailed 364 days a year, including Christmas, but on the third Wednesday of every August, it was dry-docked to have the barnacles scraped off its hull.

In light of that first frustrating foray into trip planning, is it any wonder I became so compulsive about making meticulous itineraries for our family vacations thereafter? I check and double check operating hours and holiday schedules and off-season specials, always trying to pack as much as I can into our travels while leaving just enough margin to accommodate unexpected delays.

By now I’ve developed a good feel for how much buffer our family needs, so it is rare for us to deviate significantly from these carefully crafted plans. Rare, but not unheard of — which is how last month’s cross-country road trip turned into an extended staycation.

I’d already charted our course, reserved our hotels, packed our bags, scheduled factory tours and planned sightseeing excursions. The only thing I hadn’t planned was the stomach virus that hit us just hours before we were supposed to leave town.

Our youngest succumbed first, then generously shared the bug with her brothers, who passed it to their sisters, who gave it to me. We postponed and postponed and postponed, then eventually canceled our travel plans altogether. Instead, we spent the week in Tyler, sipping Gatorade, passing around a throw-up bucket, doing a ton of laundry, and disinfecting anything and everything the afflicted touched.

Normally for a staycation, I recommend treating your home town like a tourist:

• Investigate local historical sites and markers.

• Search the city calendar for festivals and events.

• Explore local parks and hiking trails.

• Eat at one-of-a-kind, mom-and-pop restaurants.

• Check the library for free classes or children’s programs.

• Visit art or science museums in the area.

• Take a stroll through city gardens and arboretums.

• Go to a zoo or wildlife preserve.

• Contact area businesses about touring their facilities.

• Watch a matinee movie or planetarium show.

Not wanting to spread our germs to anyone outside of our family, we secluded ourselves indoors until everybody had recuperated. Then we used what was left of Dad’s time off to enjoy some family activities that sometimes get pushed aside during the press of day-to-day responsibilities.

We rode our bikes to a nearby restaurant for lunch, and again to the gas station for snacks (admittedly more expensive than buying them at the grocery store, but substantially less than we’d budgeted for our forfeited trip). We attended a symphony concert, played “keep away” at a local pool, read a chapter book aloud as a family, and sat through a free movie in the park (Bergfeld’s new amphitheater is nice).

One of the main reasons we travel with our children is to broaden their horizons and enrich their education by exposing them to a wide variety of people, places and experiences. Yet, sadly, travel in and of itself is not enough to accomplish such goals. No matter how new or exotic a child’s surroundings are, the benefits will be lost to him if his eyes are glued to a digital screen and his ears tuned into a headset. Same goes for adults.

The flip side of that truth is this: When you make a habit of viewing the world around you with the fresh eyes of a tourist, when you train yourself to notice things in your peripheral vision that might otherwise have escaped your attention, when you get to know the people who cross your path and ask them thoughtful questions about their origin and upbringing, and when you cultivate a deep love for learning independent of your surroundings, then you’ll discover it’s possible to broaden horizons and enrich education without venturing far from home to do it.

As a 30-year homeschooling veteran, Jennifer Flanders considers the world her classroom and tries to pack as much learning as she can into every vacation, daycation, and staycation. For more travel tips, please visit www.flandersfamily.info.