About Backpack to Buggy
Backpack to buggy aims to give new parents, or prospective parents, help with the transition from traveling to traveling with kids. Hopefully it will show you that you can travel with the kids not for the kids. From sharing reviews of destinations, great gear, hard-learned tips & tricks, or just philosophy, I hope to inspire more parents to recommit to their love of travel and to inspire their next generation of travelers.
About Me
I am an late 30-something mother who spent 30-something years traveling the world to 19 countries on 4 1⁄2 continents. Only 10 years ago, I was traveling Asia with only a bookbag size backpack. Having my first baby a year and half ago almost put an end to my travels. After our first “test” trip to Hawaii, another parent summed it up accurately as “it’s no longer a vacation, it’s now a trip.”
Travel is in my blood. It feeds my soul. There are so many places I haven’t seen yet! One Christmas, while sharing a horrible cold with my daughter, (oh you know who shared with whom), and probably under the influence of a fever and drugs, I decided that we had to take a travel vacation. That meant no relatives involved, over an ocean, to a country where English is not the first language, a tropical climate and an exciting culture. We went to Bali & Hong Kong and I recovered my travel mojo. My husband had a wonderful, memorable vacation. My daughter added some stamps to her passport, made new acquaintances from around the world, learned new animal names & sounds, ate many new foods and was treated like a rock star.
There are lots more “trips” in our future and if all goes well, even raising our little girl outside of the USA for a while.
Where to go next?
Contact
Feel free to email me at meg@backpacktobuggy.com or twitter backpacktobuggy.
I love your about me. I too love to travel and it is totally possible w/kids. My 3 kids have passports full of stamps. The latest trip this summer was Paris. Not quite Bali. Would love to do that too!
I just stumbled upon your site from a link and this sings to me! I was an avid “packback – only-a-quarter-full-and-one-bar-of-soap-for-body-and-hair” kind of traveler as well, before my elder son was born 22 months ago. Like you say, we’ve taken trips since then, but he’s already got 5 foreign stamps from these vacations. Am looking forward to breaking in ourselves as a traveling family.
I’m showing this section to my boyfriend. He keeps saying things like ” you can’t travel with kids ” and I insist that you can proactively CHOOSE how to approach it! Having kids does not mean resigning from travel for good.
This is amazing! I am not a mother yet, but your stories are truly inspiring. Thank you for sharing your expertise!
Hi Meg,
What a great site! It’s so wonderful to see people keeping an open mind on the world while raising little kids. We took our 3 year-old to Sweden, Holland and Belgium this summer and he had a blast. So did we. I agree with the pp that you can indeed choose how to approach parenthood. It’s hard when you’re surrounded by folks who look at you as if you’re crazy to go anywhere but Florida with children, but you help keep the spirit alive!
Tacky Tourist Photos » Blog Archive » Mocking Frogs // Oct 15, 2010 at 6:10 pm
[...] Keough shares family vacation advice at Backpack to Buggy, a blog devoted to “Travel with the kids, not for the kids.” She’s extremely [...]
Great finding your site and am adding it to my blogroll to follow. I, too, am a life-long traveler who has passed on the travel bug to my two sons. They can now get through airport security faster than some business travelers! Keep it up and look for us on the road visiting the National Parks in the west this summer!
I am SO glad to find your blog! You’ve summed up my own wanderlust perfectly.
Travel has taken on a whole new life now that my children are in the mix. I love seeing the world through their young eyes – unfiltered and wide open! We have the added challenge of finding activities to suit the needs of our 14 and 12 year old sons and our 8 year old daughter. We have gotten creative over the years and find that we still all need a little down time in the afternoon when we are on vacation…just like when they were little!
As a fair skinned Irish girl, I appreciated reading about your sunscreen tips. It is so important to keep the kids and ourselves protected and we can’t let the clouds fool us…the sun’s rays are still sneaking through. Great to find a fellow blogger with the same passion for family travel!
It is refreshing to see other mothers who share the same travel bug.
Great blog!
Please go to KidsTravelDoc.com, the source of everything parents need to know about keeping children health, safe and comfortable when traveling and for outdoor recreationa activities.