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Welcome to "Inheriting Wanderlust"... THE travel resource for busy parents of tweens and teens who want to (re) prioritize time for epic family adventures now, before having an "oh sh&t we've run out of time together" moment a few years down the road when setting up the child's first dorm or apartment.
Jump in my DeLorean and let’s head 15 years into the future…
You look at your adult children whom you exposed to adventures big and small both around the corner and across the globe.
You see in their actions that you raised them to be confident travelers, curious about people and places, and full of glorious memories of epic family adventures.
You’re a grandparent now and your children are carrying on the family culture you created. They invite you to tag along on their family adventures…creating amazing new memories evermore!
What a perfect vision of the future, right?
Let’s reset the DeLorean’s clock to the present day and make sure prioritizing quality family time now to ensure this future!
Here’s what life looks like today for you as a busy parent of tweens and teens:
You have a family culture of focusing on quality time together.
As a family, you’ve explored, learned, and bonded through experiences and travel. Despite being completely committed to prioritizing epic family adventures, as your kids have gotten older - hitting those middle school and high school years - you’ve found it harder and harder to do. Even something as simple as going out to dinner and a movie in your hometown takes hours of schedule coordinating.
You crave family adventures that you as parents AND the tweens/ teens will love.
You want your tweens/ teens to be curious about the world around them.
You know that epic family adventures don’t have to be all glitz and glamour.
But, life is pandemonium.
What if, even with…
Work, volunteer commitments, school schedules, kids activities, homework overload, social time, and a million other “priorities” that compete for your family’s time…
Kids getting older and developing their own interests (+ their little green Disgust personality appears more and more as you suggest ideas for family adventures)...
Knowing, as our mammas always told us, money doesn’t grow on trees! (Family adventures can be downright expensive!)
You were still committed to prioritizing time for family adventures???
Hi! I’m Jenny Zachry, Family Adventure Maven!
I was destined to be someone who never left her hometown…
Until I was thrust into a life of travel at age 10 when I became an army brat, left the only place I’d ever known (Utah), and moved to what was then West Germany.
35+ years (18 with kids in tow), 18 countries and 47 US states later, travel IS life for me.
And the only life my kids have ever known is one focused on experiences over gifts, one full of adventures big and small, and one where quality family time is priority number one.
My oldest is a recent high school grad and my youngest is a freshman in high school.
Carlines, volunteering, work, rehearsals, shows, and competitions (my kids are theater and robotics kids not sports kids) seem to take up ALL the time on the calendar.
But, I know there’s more to life than all of that. Just like Belle, “I want adventure in the great, wide somewhere.”
I live and breathe for travel, my husband enjoys it and goes along with all my crazy plans, and I like to think my kids have inherited at least a small part of wanderlust and passion for adventures and exploration since they’ve been on planes since they were six weeks old.
And yet, we still have faced these same challenges as our kids have gotten older.
Full disclosure - I worked very hard for three years to convince my husband that I am not in fact crazy, and a family gap year was exactly what our family needed before the oldest goes off to college…we are currently in month nine of what became a Year of Adventures — our form of a modified family gap year.
As I started planning a year’s worth of adventures, I became overwhelmed by the amount of irrelevant travel advice out there when it comes to traveling with teens (and planning is my superpower - so when I get overwhelmed in planning stages, I know it’s bad!)
There are no less than 525,600 different blogs, influencers, and other travel “experts” out there vying for our attention.
My frustrations came from the fact that the travel "experts" online did not offer what I needed and what I was looking for.
Because you, like me, love the process of researching and planning epic family adventures, tell me if you’ve experienced these 3 frustrations...
You’ve joined a bunch of Facebook travel related groups (and quite frankly scratch your head wondering if some of the people who ask questions in there have ever left their homes before.)
You’ve downloaded PBS to get access to your favorite travel shows (I know you binge watch every season of Rick Steves' Europe and Samantha Brown’s Places to Love too!)
You want to find epic family adventures that everyone in your family will enjoy (or, at least not pout and throw teenager tantrums over!)
I’ve got you covered!
And, not in a Clark Griswold way that will lead you to Wallyworld, just to find out the park is closed. (I did however recently make my family get to a museum at 8:00am - just to find out that they didn’t open until 10:00am...trust me, with teenagers, that’s a mistake you only make once!)
I am zealous about inspiring busy parents of tweens and teens just like you to prioritize, plan and plunge into epic family adventures now to avoid having the “oh sh$t we’ve run out of time”moment a few years down the road when setting up their first dorm room or apartment.
Here, in this zone made specifically for those of us yearning to continue having fun with our children before they completely grow up, you’ll find inspiration to make memories that'll be topics of conversations and inside jokes for years to come through:
Endless ideas for teen-approved adventures (that are tried and tested by my family…there will be no reviews of places we’ve never been or experienced!)
Travel planning tips that actually pertain to your family’s needs/ desires (While its sometimes fun to live vicariously through solo travelers, and watching family travel stories with toddlers and young kids may bring a sense of nostalgia, you need travel tips that pertain to traveling specifically with older kids!)
Support from a parent who gets how hard it can be to prioritize family time (I get it - you’re busy, have limited PTO, and have to plan around school breaks and activity schedules.)
(And, yes, we can cry over margaritas together at the thought of our babies spreading their wings and starting their adult lives!!)
As I mentioned before, there are no less than 525,600 travel experts and blogs out there, so why should you chase adventures with me?
There's five whimsical wonders about yours truly and our epic family adventures that you should know:
A Cowardly Lion…
I didn’t just play the Cowardly Lion in a dance recital when I was young… I am one in real life too! I love adventure, but I’m terrified by most adventurous activities (like standing on a cliff!)
WWII Experiences…
I played softball in the infamous Nuremberg stadium. While reading Anne Frank’s diary, I visited her family’s hiding place in Amsterdam. I lived in Germany when the Berlin Wall came down.
Find the other three whimsical wonders here.
Family adventures take a great sense of humor.
There’s epic highs and hilarious lows…
Here’s some of the highlights from our family adventures:
10 year old accidentally got on NYC subway by herself Walking through lava tubes at Volcano National Park Touring the Green Monster (Fenway) with my lifelong Yankees fan husband Buffalo stampedes in Yellowstone National Park Slipping on a banana peel in Manhattan (like a cartoon) Pointing out all the "Disney Magic" (or as my kids call it, the fake stuff) at Walt Disney World | Listening to my teens' observations of current civil rights issues during our Civil Rights Road Trip The Swifty child engaging at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, even though she swears she doesn't like country (lots of Taylor stuff there!) Watching my oldest do a photo shoot of banana slugs along a trail Being screamed at (indirectly) by a marmot All four of us having the flu during our trip to Paris |
As our (modified) family gap year is approaching the end, my whole family has told me that being a permanent vagabond is not very realistic (they're a bunch of party poopers, I tell ya!)
But, I guess it's time for new travel goals...(I don’t do bucket lists…but that’s a subject for a whole other post!)
We have three more school years till the youngest goes off to college. We've set a goal for Europe for the next three winter breaks (Germany, Italy, and Spain are currently the top three contenders.)
My mom really wants to get to her homeland - well, the homeland of her grandparents (and cousins that we're connected to on Facebook)....so hopefully Sweden will happen soonish too.
The oldest will be off at college in Maine - I LOVE Maine, so I just may pop in to see her unannounced once a month (every college student's dream, right??)
I am a very firm believer that life is short and we can never wait for “someday”.
I’m also very much aware that my oldest goes off to college (leaving us in Utah while she goes all the way to Maine) in less than half a year!
We only get a short time with our children. Let’s focus on quality family time through epic family adventures and make glorious memories - the greatest legacy we can give them.
If you want to uncover the...
Then your next step is super simple…
Subscribe to Inheriting Wanderlust
You’ll get a weekly blog , sent to your inbox as a newsletter (without any gross click bait subject lines or other yucky email marketing tactics) that is dedicated to:
Endless ideas for teen-approved adventures
Travel planning tips that actually pertain to your family’s needs/ desires
Support from a parent who gets how hard it can be to prioritize family time
PS - I LOVE theater, especially musicals; Disney and all their fun Easter egg hidden details; and 80s movies and songs. So, #sorrynotsorry if you are stuck with some ear worms from my subtle and not so subtle Easter eggs throughout this post!!