Traveling the United States, we’ve visited many different areas and ecosystems. Beaches, forests, swamps, and mountains are all different and provide many learning opportunities. Many of the National Park sites we’ve visited have well-stocked gift shops with relevant books about the area. One of my favorite series of books for the kids are The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot about That.
“Miles and Miles of Reptiles” We picked it up in the Everglades. “Clam I Am?” From one of the many National Seashores we’ve been to. Since I’m a sucker for books at National Park Visitor Centers, we end up procuring quite a lot of these as we travel. We also manged to pick up quite a healthy stack of these used for cheap at Powell’s bookstore in Portland, OR.
There’s been many occasions where the kids spout some nugget of knowledge from one of these books. They are fairly comprehensive, accurate, and more importantly, fun to read! Each book ranges from $5-$10 and it just depends on where you find them.
Some of our favorite titles:
Inside Your Outside! – The Cat and the Hat take Sally & Nick on a ride through the human body.
Recently we also found this Step Into Reading book for Cara from Costco: Stories about Bees and Trees And Feet and Fur- and More! And let’s be honest, when you see something this good at Costco you grab it since it might not be around for very long!
She loves it! Its easy enough for an early reader, and once we’ve read a story together she has enough confidence to read it on her own.
We don’t officially incorporate these into our road school curriculum, but the kids love to read and by just having them lying around the books get read! See how sneaky I am?
What are your favorite books for road or home school?
Even though we’ve traveled full-time for over 2 years, there are only a few states we feel that we have thoroughly explored. Having spent almost fourteen weeks in Florida this past winter, we feel that we can officially check Florida off the list! There are few spots we missed (Shark Valley in the Everglades for one) but overall we covered the state fairly well.
We sat down with the kids and while reminiscing about our favorite adventures we put together our top 10 list of kid friendly adventures for the Sunshine State!
Travel Dates: Dec 3, 2015 – Jan 24, 2016 & Mar 8-13, 2016
Ages of Kids: 10, 8, 5
1. Camping on the Dry Tortugas. Definitely number one. Its expensive to get there, but cheap to camp so definitely stay at least two nights. Snorkeling, a historic fort, plenty of wildlife and beautiful beaches and crystal clear water made the trip a magical vacation.
2. Bahia Honda State Park in the Florida Keys – We spent Christmas here and it was perfect. One of the most popular spots in the Keys, the beach was usually crowded, but not overly so. We ate ice cream, swam, rented a paddle board, explored the bridge, and generally relaxed and enjoyed ourselves.
3. Canoeing in the Everglades. If you do one thing in the Everglades, we’d recommend canoeing. The “Everglades” are sunny, open areas of water that look almost like meadows. Very enchanting. The fore-mentioned bike or tram ride at Shark Valley is also a good option.
4. Mountain Biking. With a maximum elevation of about 300 feet, Florida has some impressive biking trails. We loved Markham Park down by Fort Lauderdale as well as Santos in Ocala, FL.
5. Swimming & Kayaking with the Manatees. We day tripped down to Crystal River from Ocala to meet up with @Drivingdownadream and swim with some Manatees. It was definitely worth renting our own kayaks rather than going with a tourist group. Much more freedom that way. Read the details here on The Outbound.
6. Space Coast & Rocket Launch. Sam motivated this adventure is he loves space, and rockets, and physics and stuff. I loved letting him take the reigns and decided what we did. Our two top activities were watching a rocket launch and visiting the Kennedy Space Center.
7. Butterbeer at the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. Fudge, Ice cream, hot, cold and frozen. Visiting Harry Potter Land in Orlando was definitely a highlight for us, as the older kids have read books 1-4, and all three have watched the associated movies. It was enough for them to really enjoy the experience and to be excited about all of the details we found at the park!
8. Hiking Through a Cypress Swamp. Nothing screams Florida like a good Cypress swamp. This is honestly what I thought the Everglades would look like, but I was completely wrong. Our favorite spot was Highland Hammocks State Park. There’s a fabulous trail called the Ancient Hammock Trail that winds through the trees. We also loved the tram tour (and its cheap!) and saw a great variety of birds and some alligators. Definitely isn’t Florida without the alligators.
9. Airboat Ride with Spirit of the Swamp. Just outside of Orlando, Florida this Airboat ride was an easy day trip during our stay there. Although the weather was overcast and slightly cold we actually saw more alligators because they were out sunning themselves in an attempt to stay warm.
10. Boogie Boarding on the Emerald Coast. The stretch of the Gulf of Mexico coast between Pensacola & Panama City is beautiful. Crystal clear, turquoise water, and white sand beaches were prime for boogie boarding. The weather was great in early December (slightly too cold for me) but when we went back through at the end of February we got a lot of rain. Boo. Better to go in November or wait until April when it warms up a bit.
While definitely not an exhaustive list, this definitely highlights the many different habitats and environments Florida has to offer! Even though I was frustrated and grumpy at first with all the people and the humidity, Florida grew on me and I really enjoyed our time there. After 14 weeks, however, it was definitely time to move on!
Florida in the rearview!
Other fun, kid-friendly adventures in Florida blogged by other traveling families:
A life with few possessions requires everything to have multiple purposes. That collapsible salad spinner? Also a bowl. And a colander. Single purpose things don’t serve us well, and are quickly dropped from our collection of gear.
We have two main types of lights for our adventures. Small area lights solve one person lighting problems, such as a bathroom run while backpacking or reading at night in the hammock. Such duties fall to small headlamps and our smartphones.
Our second light is a larger area light, useful for lighting a picnic table for dinner or games. This is a harder nut to crack. We have a few photography LED light panels that are plenty bright, but cast a bright light that isn’t very pleasant. We often attach those to a nearby tree or post with a GorillaPod. We have a smaller LED light that serves as a lantern, but the light doesn’t cover a very large area. We are stuck with a bright, harsh light or a more pleasant dim one, and neither is usually what we want.
We were recently sent a Luminoodle for review, and I think this might be the answer for our needs. The Luminoodle is an LED light strip powered by USB. It launched via Kickstarter in 2015, and is currently for sale. My favorite things about this as a lightsource:
Powered by USB. Luminoodle sells battery packs, but the power connector is a standard USB connector, just like your cellphone charging cable. This means it can be plugged into any existing battery pack or AC adapter that you likely already have. I much prefer this to a special battery pack that only works with this one product.
Shapeable light. You can circle a game, run this down the center of a table, or hang it from above. The ability to ‘shape’ the light is amazing compared to the other options we’ve used.
Durable AND packable. The luminoodle is flexible, which allows easy packing inside a small stuff sack. The sack itself doubles as a lantern for those times when you want a brighter light over a smaller area. The soft durable cover protects all the light components inside from scuffs and spills alike. (It is waterproof!)
A few things I’d love to change:
Longer. Our review unit is 5 feet long. They sell a 10 foot version, and I think this would be even more useful. 5 is just a little short for many of the things we would love to use it for.
Dimmer. The light is quite bright, but every once in awhile I could use a little less. A dimmer would allow the right light level and save battery as a pleasant side effect.
Easier Hanging. The rubber zip tie things included were not super easy to work with, and I think there is probably something better.
The Luminoodle is available, Prime shippable from Amazon. $20 for the 5 foot, and $30 for the 10 foot version, with battery packs also available.
Round 2
As it turns out, I’m not the only one with ideas for improvement. PowerPractical has a brand new COLOR version on Kickstarter, ending Friday, April 22nd. The new version comes in 5 foot and 20 foot lengths, and includes a dimmer, a remote(!) and 3 different white modes for different color temperatures. A new magnetic mounting option looks pretty darn nice. If you are lucky enough to catch it before it funds, great! If not, the new version will be available later this year.
I’m looking forward to testing the Basecamp versions as I think it would work well for our Airstream!
I’m a true believer in needing opposition in all things. Its hard to experience joy when you don’t know sadness. Beauty is all the same unless you’ve also seen something ugly. Travel and living adventure is fabulous, but only if you also have downtime.
We had a great time in Florida this winter, and I felt our pace was unhurried. We spent 14 weeks just bopping around the state from place to place and experiencing the different environments and ecosystems the state had to offer.
Then we headed west, and things started picking up. We ran into friends along the Emerald Coast, in New Orleans, and had a few meet-ups in both San Antonio and Austin. Combine friends with big cities, lots of tourist attractions, and plenty of outdoor activities and suddenly we started running ourselves ragged.
Its been a real struggle for me. More than just our most recent schedule, however, I’ve had an underlying feeling of needed a bit more community, and honestly less route planning would go a long way in reducing my stress levels. A frantic schedule on top of those feelings led to me being a bit of a mess the last few weeks. I apologize if you’ve seen me and I’ve been ragged, tired, and a bit short with my attention span.
We’ve been holed up in Hot Springs, AR for almost a week. In a campground where most people only spend a night, we’ve been here six and its been fantastic. Drizzly, overcast weather has helped keep us indoors to just get things done. We’ve been cranking on school, work, blog organization, and I’ve even read a few books.
While its a temporary fix, slowing down and spending a week in places where we normally would only spend 3-4 days will hopefully help us bridge the gap until we execute Phase 2 of the Currently Wandering plan. While we aren’t exactly sure what that phase will look like, we have goals and and ideals we’d love to incorporate into our family life that are difficult to do full time on the road. So, maybe we’ll graduate to a more hybrid approach. Whatever we end up doing, this year is bound to be exciting!
Its a rainy day here in Arkansas, which is a perfect day for soup! This is one of our recent favorites, although I apparently don’t make it enough. Each time I was asked what’s for dinner, and responded with, “Italian Wedding Soup”, I received an “Ooooh! Yum! I LOVE that!” comment. Cara is our pickiest eater (at 5.5 years old) and she’ll gobble down the meatballs and turn her nose up at the spinach. That doesn’t fly around here and I make her eat it anyway. So mean.
I usually make the meatballs one day and we’ll eat half of them over zucchini noodles (or zoodles), and then freeze the other half of them to make this soup later in the week. The ingredients for both meals are very similar, but they are totally different meals. Works great when you have very little fridge space.
I serve the soup with our Cast Iron Skillet Vegan Cornbread or a salad. Depends on my mood and how many other veggies we’ve had that day.
Italian Wedding Soup
Serves 6, 2 cups each
Ingredients
1 tsp olive oil
1 medium onion, finely chopped
4 cloves garlic
6 cups low-sodium chicken broth
2 cups spinach (or greens, but we usually just have spinach on hand)
20 Italian Meatballs (or however many you have left over after eating pasta – see recipe HERE)
2 large eggs
2 Tbsp grated parmesan cheese
1/2 tsp sea salt
1/2 tsp ground black papper
2 tsp lemon juice (or fresh lemon cut into wedges – which we never have)
Directions:
Heat oil in large saucepan over medium heat. Add onion and cook for 4-6 minutes or until translucent.
Add garlic, stirring frequently for 1 minute.
Add broth and bring to a boil.
Add greens. Reduce heat to low and boil uncovered, gently for 10 minutes.
Add meatballs, cook for another 5 minutes stirring occasionally.
Combine egg and cheese in a small bowl and whisk to combine.
Slowly pour egg mixture into hot soup, stirring constantly. Boil, uncovered until eggs are just set (takes about 30 seconds).
Add lemon juice, and season with salt and pepper. Serve immediately!