Best places to take your kids before they grow up

Grand_Canyon_NP-Arizona-USA

Children grow up very fast and before you know it, your adorable five-year-old will be a teenager, skulking in their bedroom and not paying you any attention. Make the most of your child’s younger years by taking them on a vacation that can truly be a family affair.

The tourist trap

Before you try looking for vacation destinations that are a little off the beaten path and unusual, consider the more well-known holiday spots. Some places are regular tourist haunts for a very good reason, namely that they have a great deal to offer the visitor, whether in terms of natural beauty, education or just plain fun.

Consider the Grand Canyon as an example. The Grand Canyon is one of America’s most iconic locations, featuring a gorge that is 277 miles long and up to 6,000 feet deep at some points. The stunning rock formations that are millions of years old make for some great family photos. But there is more to the Grand Canyon than simply being a spot of incredible natural beauty. You can make your vacation active by taking a biking trip along the South Rim or educate your family by taking a ranger-led tour into the heart of the canyon to discover fossils, reptiles and birds. There is something for everyone at the Grand Canyon.

If you want a vacation that combines comfort with stunning scenery, then head for Mohonk Mountain House, a resort located alongside Lake Mohonk in the Hudson Valley, just a few hours away from New York City. Here you can embark on invigorating hiking trails, indulge in water sports or send the kids off to enjoy themselves on the various programs specially created just for youngsters. A vacation here does not have to be all about the kids either; you can indulge yourself and relax in the resort’s award-winning spa. This destination is ideal for all ages.

Perhaps you are looking for a destination that has a little more pizzazz? Then take your family to New Orleans, and in particular, the French Quarter. Here you can enjoy the spectacle of Mardi Gras, with many kiddie-friendly activities on show in Jackson Square. Watch a magic act, jugglers and mimes, or tap your feet to the sounds of street jazz bands. There are some great tourist attractions here too, such as the Audubon Butterfly Garden and Insectarium, or the Audubon Aquarium of the Americas. The perfect holiday for families with younger children.

Lastly, how about a little bit of educational heritage? Take your family to Memphis and visit the National Civil Rights Museum. It is located in the Lorraine Motel, the place where Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. Here, your children will learn about the civil rights movements, from the days of the slave trade right up to present times. An illuminating and inspirational destination, Memphis is sure to get your family talking, and it is a good vacation spot for tweens and young teens.

Take the opportunity to engage with your children by taking them on a vacation that will stimulate and inspire them in their formative years, and also allow them and you the chance to have a little fun.

2 Comments

  1. Julien Peter Benney

    September 14, 2015 at 06:45

    A great – if not cheap – place to take children would be the Australian outback, which really is the sole present-day representative of the vast majority of the Earth’s geological history.

    In contrast to the deposited and glacial tills which dominate soils in Eurasia and the Americas, Australian soils, in common with most periods of the paleopedological record, are the product of over 250,000,000 years of weathering under (mainly) very hot climates. These hot climates have completely leached Australian soils of elements taken for granted in Eurasia and the Americas – extremely potent catalytic elements like zinc, copper, cobalt and selenium, plus valuable, easily-smelted metals like copper, lead, tin, antimony and mercury.

    Instead, Australia is enriched in a large number of metals which bind far too strongly to oxygen for any hope of smelting before the invention of electrolysis, and indeed bind so strongly (and are too insoluble) to be useless as biological catalysts.

    As Gordon Orians and Antoni Milewski show at ‘http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1469-185X.2007.00017.x/full’ – though in fact they do not consider the social implications which are not that simple – the fact that Australia is geologically the only “normal” extant continent makes it a valuable lesson. A basic fact easily explicable is that warm-blooded vertebrates evolved in the previous glacial era around 250,000,000 years ago, but cold-blooded reptiles dominated until after the extinction of the dinosaurs. This was because Mesozoic soils were uniformly much too poor for the thermoregulation needed by mammals and birds, especially as wet-bulb temperatures could exceed 40 degrees Celsius. These high wet-bulb temperatures meant much higher body temperatures would be required for warm-bloodedness, as modern birds and mammals would have suffered lethal heat stress due to inability to lose heat by sweating.

  2. Why I Prefer Apartments To Hotels When I'm On Holiday - Enchanted Pixie

    September 15, 2015 at 20:49

    […] some fresh towels. But there probably is a washing machine to clean up that soiled baby grow! Maybe when the kids are bigger, I’ll be wanting to use hotels […]

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