Benefits of travel

I have been mulling over some of the reasons we take these month long family vacations. I see three main benefits to travel: Education, Growth, and Family Time.


Education

When we travel we see museums, hike in the hills, and try to learn about our country’s history. We spend very little time at amusement parks. In fact it has been four years since we took our daughters to an amusement park. It was Marine World. We went with my youngest brother and his family.

In our trip last month, our daughters learned about American history at Colonial Williamsburg. They learned about geology down in the Shenandoah Caverns.. They learned about animals at the Virginia Safari Park and the Washington DC Zoo. They saw famous paintings at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery.

I find that travel also provides great opportunities for discussion. Our daughters asked questions about the Revolutionary War while we were at Colonial Williamsburg. And while in Washington DC we had long discussions about the proper role of government.

I asked for some input from my wife and she said that part of the reason we travel is to explore the world. We live in a great big world. There is much to see. We are trying to expose our daughters to more than they normally see from our neighborhood.


Growth

Travel is often stressful. After our flight into Baltimore, we learned that the airline had lost our middle daughter’s suitcase. She was pretty upset. She seemed to feel that she couldn’t continue on the vacation. We calmly told her that it really was no big deal. If her clothes didn’t show up, we could hit Walmart and buy her some new outfits. Luckily the airline delivered the suitcase the next morning.

Our youngest daughter was uncomfortable being down two hundred feet in the Shenandoah Caverns. She thought the cavern was beautiful, but didn’t like the idea of having two hundred feet of dirt over head.

The first night at my brothers our daughters were awaken by loud booms as a thunder storm rolled in. The younger two girls didn’t remember ever hearing such loud thunder before. They were a bit scared. My brother said this happened all the time. They realized their cousins were still sleeping and so my daughters decided it was safe to go back to bed.

All of these experiences and many more help prepare our daughters for the challenges that life will throw at them.


Family Time

The longest lasting associations most of us will have are with our siblings. Our parents normally die before we die. Most of us will be buried long before our children. The people we know the longest are our siblings.

As parents we want our daughters to have close, strong relationships. After Janine and I got married, my parents loaned us a tape. Gary Smalley shared ideas on how to have a strong family. He felt things like travel and camping were great for helping families to draw closer to each other. Having shared experiences builds bonds. These experiences need to be more than watching TV together. When I get together with my siblings we don’t talk about the hours of television we watched together. We talked about the horse rides we took at my grandparents.

Taking our daughters on trips provides them with common experiences that will help tie them together through the years.



Travel has many benefits. The above three are the main reasons we get out of our comfort zone and go out to explore the world.


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