Growing up in San Diego
I am from San Diego, grew up in San Diego, and love all things San Diego.
That doesn’t mean to say I don’t love traveling to other places in the US or the world, it just means I love a little bit of everything.
You see, San Diego has quick and easy access to the ocean, mountains, and the desert. You can find a forest or a lake or river not too far away. So many different experiences are within a day trip.
Growing up, my family had an annual camping trip with all 11 cousins on my mom’s side. This quickly escalated to staying in cabins instead of tents.
There are also a few choice hiking trails in San Diego county that I know like the back of my hand, so to speak.
As a Disney obsessed household we went to Disneyland about once a year (sometimes more), and have always held passes to SeaWorld and the San Diego Zoo and Safari Park. Being a native San Diegan, you also have to go to Padres games. At least once a season.
It may sound like a lot, but I didn’t grow up traveling like crazy compared to those who have visited every continent and dozens of countries.
As 1 of 4 kids, my parents definitely penny pinched and saved. Road trips were by financial choice back when gas actually was cheaper than plane tickets for 6…
But we did explore the country a little bit on our road trips to visit family in the midwest. I remember road trip destinations such as Yellowstone, Yosemite, Las Vegas, Mount Rushmore, Carlsbad Caverns, the Grand Canyon, and more.
My first plane trip wasn’t until I was 11.
I saved up my money, earned from chores and birthdays, to help fund a trip to the American Girl Doll Place in Chicago, Illinois.
It was just my mom and me and is still one of my favorite vacation memories, although I was scared on take off. A lady sitting next to me refused to switch seats with my mom, who was sitting a few rows back.
On a side note, she did end up switching seats after take off due to her husband’s nudging and my terrified expression. I wrote her a wonderful thank you note with my black paper and gel pens. She was very surprised at the gesture, and we both left the plane feeling much better about the whole situation.
Even some high school school trips fed into my excitement for traveling such as Oregon for the Shakespeare Festival, Crater Lake, and our science club trips to Catalina island.
High School also brought a change in my family’s vacation itinerary. We went on a cruise for the first time to Catalina and Ensenada. We were hooked and quickly agreed to a cruise when visiting my grandparents in Florida to Key West and Cozumel.
Cruises are simply amazing- your hotel and entertainment travels with you while you are able to get a glimpse of multiple destinations. My favorite cruise has to be Alaska, since it was the perfect combination of animals and adventure.
Can you get better than whale watching while seeing bald eagles dive into the ocean and watch a momma bear and a cub on the beach? Dog sledding, zip-lining, and a helicopter ride to a glacier? And that was just part of the awesome stuff we did on that trip…
Meeting Prince Charming
College. Rooming with your bestie, Disneyland Season Passes, working mucking out Horse Stalls. Such a simpler time…
Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t change where I ended up, but Space Mountain and a Churro after class on a random weekday is a pretty awesome memory.
I met my husband, Santiago, in college. I would say it was love at first sight, but the reality is I was a bit analytical and kept looking for reasons why the relationship wouldn’t last- and just couldn’t find any. We’ve been together ever since.
Other than being amazing and kind with a good sense of humor, Santi was adventurous and loved to travel.
On a trip to Cozumel with his family, he and his brother’s went off SCUBA diving. Not to be left behind, I did a temporary SCUBA certification and joined them on a few dives later that same trip.
We went to Colombia to visit his extended family which greatly expanded my international travel experience which has so far only consisted of Cruise stops in Mexico and Canada.
The food, the music, the language- everything in Colombia was amazing.
Eating pan de yuca for breakfast at a local pandería while drinking hot chocolate and reading Harry Potter y la Piedra Filosofal…now that is a good way to start the day.
Remember how I grew up going to Padres Games? Well, dating and marrying someone who loves sports as much as he loves travel brought a whole lot more professional sporting events into my life. Watching the LA Kings play hockey in downtown LA and rooting for LA Galaxy soccer games took up many of our evenings in college thanks to his mom’s season tickets.
We even got some of both our families together to go to a Chargers game when they were the San Diego Chargers…now we don’t talk about them.
Seems silly since I root for other LA teams, but LA and San Diego have a huge rivalry. I only root for the LA Kings and LA Galaxy because they were Santi’s teams of choice and I didn’t root for any hockey or MLS team before meeting him.
Moving away from professional sports and off to the snowy mountains, college is when I learned how to snowboard.
My family went skiing once with my family when I was younger which was totally awesome, but now that I knew someone who snowboarded, it made sense to learn a new skill.
Well, after graduation I became fully SCUBA certified (due to an internship with marine mammals), we got married at the San Diego Mission, and kept traveling together, especially to the Midwest multiple times and Colombia again for various cousins’ weddings.
First Camping Trip Together
You know how my annual camping trips with my cousins turned into staying in a cabin every summer? Well as we all grew older and got careers and married, those trips slowed down.
Santi and I actually had never gone camping together until we received an invite from some friends when I was 4 months pregnant with our first baby. We used our Target tent we received off our wedding registry (like 4 years later..haha!), and whatever other basic hand me down gear we had from growing up.
Why is this important?
Well, if you follow my blog and social media, a lot of it has to do with outdoor adventures, especially camping. In fact, we now go camping an average of once a month.
This first camping trip together showed us we didn’t need all the bells and whistles. What we had was functional, BUT…
…camping in a sleeping bag on the hard desert ground is not comfortable, even without being pregnant I would have been uncomfortable.
So we did our research and found the wonderful world of camping pads. And camping pillows.
We thought we were all set now…
…then we had kids.
A Growing Family
Our next camping trip as a family was when our youngest was about 5 months old and her older sister was 3.
Looking back, I’m not sure why we didn’t camp more often with our first girl when she was a baby.
I’m sure it had to do with just not thinking of it as a possibility. We were more focused on her first Zoo visit, visiting family in Las Vegas, Minnesota, and Colombia.
We even waited to go to Disneyland just before she turned 3 so her ticket was still free, but she was “old enough to remember and enjoy it.” Her sister was 4 months old on this Disney trip, and instead of postponing it we decided to go to Disneyland with a toddler and a baby.
Now I wish we had done more baby Disneyland visits. Sure, baby sister doesn’t remember the trip, but I do. And those memories of baby princess onesies, baby snuggles, and baby excitement at the new sites, sounds, and rides was totally worth it.
It was at this point I fully realized age should never be a factor in deciding not to travel somewhere.
Maybe a particular activity has an age limit, like zip-lining, but you can still enjoy the area and other activities you would not have otherwise noticed.
Every age is a different phase of adventure, and every age deserves the opportunity for family memories.
Back to camping, we were invited on a trip with some friends who also had a baby girl. We fell in love with camping again, and then decided to book a trip with just the 4 of us.
It just so happens that the next camping trip was in colder weather, and we learned a lot more camping lessons the hard way.
We did more research and found out about R values and sleeping bags rated for colder temperatures and thermal layers of merino wool, and so many more cold weather camping trips.
A few outdoor adventure subscription boxes later and we were having fun trying new products and testing new gear.
Pretty soon we had replaced all of our old hand me downs and were the go-to people in our group of friends to ask questions about what to get and what to pack.
Work was getting more and more stressful as more and more responsibilities piled on, and I started this blog in 2019.
It was a way to not just have fun with writing, web design, and video/photo editing (long time amateur hobbies of mine), but as a way to show myself and others how amazing traveling as a family really is. The blog is meant to show how rewarding adventures can easily bring back that much needed balance between work, home responsibilities, and enjoying life together.
2020 and the 52 Hike Challenge
The year 2020 was tough for a lot of people, and we were no exception. It was tough in a different way though.
I won’t pretend we had the worst time ever, but I think a lot of people are in that middle ground. Life became different, stressful, and weird. Normal ways to cope and escape, like traveling, were out of reach.
We were fortunate to have our health and to still have our jobs, I even got a promotion. But we were burnt out, working long hours, and stressed.
I kept going with my travel blog, hoping to continue inspiring families to find ways to spend quality time together as we figured it out ourselves.
Camping became our escape because travel was shut down. Everywhere was closed. Our very first cruise with the girls was canceled (and still hasn’t been rescheduled yet).
In 2021 my husband found the 52 Hike Challenge which I eagerly agreed to. It got us out of the house, outside, away from work, and enjoying time together.
As places started opening up again we chose to go more for road trips and outdoor adventures.
By the end of 2021 and in 2022 we began revisiting our favorite places like Disneyland, SeaWorld, and the San Diego Zoo.
I shifted my career to a job with less management responsibility, resulting in a better work-life balance. Things were starting to click back into a feeling of “normal.”
A vacation to Banff National Park in Canada with our Camp Squad friends completely lifted our moods. Dog sledding with our girls, frozen waterfalls, and our first International National Park.
We are doing the 52 Hike Challenge again, planning many more adventures in the US (Walt Disney World, I’ve got my eyes on you…) and internationally, and still camping as often as we can. We’re even branching into backpacking!
You Can Travel as Family too
Even with working full time or running a household full of kids full time, you can find time to travel and adventure together.
I know it can be intimidating if your baby doesn’t sleep through the night or your toddler has meltdowns over spilled milk (literally and figuratively…), but there are ways to have amazing experiences as a family.
This blog shows you how we create day trips and weekends getaways while saving up for annual vacations.
We focus on how to plan in easy, no fuss ways and how to equip your trip with the right gear to make things go smoothly. We inspire through destination reviews in a way that shows you can go there too.
I’m not saying our girls don’t have meltdowns or tantrums while we are traveling or that they always sleep peacefully through the night, but hopefully seeing where and how we make it all work can give you the peace of mind that yes, it’s possible and well worth every minute.
With the right level of preparation (and the awesome parenting skills you already have), you can also travel with your kids without it being complicated or overwhelming.
Thank You
Thank you. Yes, you.
Whether you’re new here or have been a part of the community since the beginning, your support means the world to me.
I continue to write and create content so that you and families like yours can get past their mental block of what family travel is expected to be, and thrive with what adventures await if you’re willing.
Parenting is hard enough without adding on all of the responsibilities of work, household maintenance, school, etc., etc., etc. (you know, life). We need each other to be encouraging and supportive.
We need that like-minded community of parents who want to show their kids the world and increase their quality family time.
We need travel and adventure in our lives.
So let’s go figure it out, share our memories, and encourage other parents to do the same.
#PlanEnjoyRemember
Happy Adventures,
Katie
