Prepare for your destination

Whether you are traveling with children, or traveling alone, it is always a good idea to familiarize yourself with the place you are planning on traveling to. For example: a few years ago we were going to be stopping by Devils Tower in Wyoming, so we found Close Encounters of the Third Kind and showed it to our children. (Thank goodness they thought it was kind of an interesting movie.) This year we were passing through Hannibal, Missouri, so we watched the Tom Sawyer musical with Johnny Whittaker. Our family was also planning on being around many different early pioneer sites, so as parents we decided that on our scheduled Family Nights we would talk about the significance of the different places that we would be visiting. We engaged in this from January until June of this year. Our children were actually very much aware of the history when we arrived at the different locations and they were interested because we had already discussed them. As something fun, we had the Wizard of Oz playing while we drove through Kansas...they were tired of looking at the cornfields anyway.