Today is my older daughter’s fortieth birthday; and earlier this week, as I pondered what I should write about for my GT blog, I realized how much travel coincided with some of my favorite memories of time spent with Sarah over the past four decades. So please indulge me for a bit as I share these with you. For those of you who are new parents, perhaps you have been wondering if you will have to give up traveling for a while. I hope these reflections will assure you that, while you may need to make a few adjustments to your travel style (and expectations), you can have rich and rewarding experiences on the road with your children.

Most of travel with Sarah in the first few years of her life involved the car. At just a few months old, she accompanied us on an anniversary weekend to a lovely, historic hotel in the Columbia Gorge and didn’t bat an eye at the change in her routine. We took daytrips to the Oregon coast because our child would, of course, love the beach as much as her parents did. We gave her a farewell visit there for a full week just before we moved to Southern Idaho when she was just a year old, knowing it might be quite a long time before she got to experience the ocean again. She became an adept (if young) road-tripper over the next three years as we traveled between Oregon and Idaho to visit family, proving to be fairly patient over the course of those 12-hour drives. She handled her first plane trip at the age of 2 with equal aplomb; we both appreciated the shorter journey!

Once we moved to the Puget Sound area when Sarah was 4, our road trips to Oregon grew blessedly shorter, and we also enjoyed more variation in our destinations and modes of travel. We found new beaches, parks and trails to explore and enjoyed ferry rides and excursions on friends’ boats. We flew all the way to Texas for a family wedding when Sarah was 6, and our first international trip involved a visit to Vancouver, British Columbia (when you didn’t need a passport to cross the border). But the most memorable trip during our daughters’ grade school years of course had to be our spring vacation to Disneyland. It didn’t matter that the weather was very wet while we were there (after all, we are Pacific Northwesterners, you know); it was all great fun.

As the years passed, we usually took at least one week-long family trip per year to the beach or the mountains, but one summer we took a long road trip to visit Yellowstone, Grand Teton and Glacier national parks. To this day we laugh over events from that journey. As you can imagine, several of them did not seem so funny at the time, and of course there were moments when we didn’t think we could tolerate each other one second longer together in that car. However, those are the experiences that end up creating bonds that tie us tightly together. Another lengthy road trip (this time in a roomier minivan) came several years later as we traveled to the Midwest to check out several potential colleges for Sarah, from Iowa to Chicago and Missouri to Nevada. This trip was a bit more poignant (at least for the grownups) as we realized these trips would be much more difficult to coordinate as our girls flew the nest, but we still had a wonderful time and again added to our cache of family stories.

Once Sarah went off to college (at one of those Midwestern universities we visited), she became very comfortable with flights home on school breaks to visit us, and during her sophomore year she spent a semester abroad in England. She took advantage of long weekends and visited several European cities, quickly learning how to scout out cheap fares and places to stay, navigating metro systems and rail travel as well. She was our guide as the whole family arrived for a week, taking us to visit all the highlights in London   before we headed north to Scotland. We saw how much she had bloomed over the months as she became an experienced, independent traveler.

Sarah graduated, found a job in Chicago, then married and settled there for several years. Before her boys were born, we planned one big family trip to celebrate my husband’s retirement: a Mediterranean cruise. We were delighted to travel with our girls and son-in-law as adults, and they were great at seeking out fun things for us to do and see. No longer were we the solely responsible parties!

Now Sarah and her husband are the parents traveling with kids, and we have enjoyed weeklong vacations with them at the beach and in the mountains since they moved here to Southern Oregon. Their boys have taken several cross-country flights to visit family and are easy travelers, and we are delighted to see their interest in the world out there grow.

Last summer Sarah and her sister and I took a wonderful road trip, just we girls. We brought our favorite snacks, the girls prepared their playlists, and we laughed and recalled those past trips and enjoyed each other’s company. We were mother and daughters but also three ladies freed for a few days from parental responsibilities and jobs and husbands. It was a magical time, and another trip to add to 40 years’ worth of travel stories and memories.

Happy birthday, Sarah. Here’s to many more years of wonderful journeys!

— Patty Vanikiotis, associate editor/copy editor