One of the great things about homeschooling – vacations

Janine likes to travel. I think the planning for her may be more fun that finally going on the trip. She likes to scheme, trying to find a good deal, and to play with various options.

A month ago Janine said she wanted to go on another trip. Since we became foster care parents we have cut back with our travels. It is harder to get away when you have to ask permission from a social worker.

One of our daughters heard Janine’s thought about traveling and pointed out that they hadn’t seen snow for a couple years, and Baby Bop had never seen snow. They pushed for snow, and Janine willingly agreed.

Last Thursday we arose at 5:30 AM. (I had arranged to have my brother in Virginia call me just to make sure we didn’t sleep in.) We drove to the train station and climbed on the train to Emeryville. At Emeryville we waited for an hour to take the Zephyr, which goes to Chicago.

Our daughters are old hands at traveling by trains. The older two have been on trains a dozen times. They enjoy watching the scenery go by; they like to read; and they enjoy the treats from the lounge car.

Baby Bop was totally energized by the trains. He was almost bouncing off the walls. He had never been on a train before and thought it was totally cool. After we got back he would get super excited when ever we mentioned trains.

We arrived in Truckee about three in the afternoon. We walked over to the River Street Inn, checked in, and then went to play on the little snow around. Baby Bop won’t touch it for a long time. Our younger two girls dove right in to playing, throwing snowballs, and building snow caves. Our oldest quickly decided she wanted to go back to the bed and breakfast, where it was warmer.

We ate dinner, and crashed for the night. Freight trains seemed to go by every hour or two. I remember being awake for three. Janine counted four. Friday morning, we had a nice breakfast while we talked with the owner of River Street Inn.

We boarded the train at 10:30 and took the Zephyr back to Emeryville. And from there we caught a local train back home.


It was a fun trip. It is nice to be able to get away when we want to. If we had been forced to go on a weekend due to public school constraints, the bed and breakfast would have cost almost twice as much.

It was fun to spend time with my daughters. I was thinking about a number of things they learned over the trip.

We talked about economics. They wanted to understand why the freight trains each had close to a hundred cars, while the Zephyr only had a dozen.

We talked about science. They had questions about snow.

We did some logic games. I played “I’m thinking of an animal” with my youngest daughter for close to an hour. A couple times I’d explain how to break the animal kingdom down quickly by first looking for large groups like mammals, predators, size, and so on.


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