World Of Travel

Taking your child on his very first camping trip can be very exciting for you and your child. It can also be very scary, especially for your child. In order to ease your child's fears, I have put together some suggestions that might help you and your child to prepare for the first time in the Great Outdoors. These activities are a way of helping your child get some experience and comfort with the outdoors without being far away from home for days at a time.

The best way to help your child get acquainted with camping is to have a campout that isn't too far away. In other words, have the campout in your own backyard. This allows the family to have the experience of camping out without leaving the security of the house. Being in your own backyard has the advantage of canceling the campout if the weather turns bad.

You may also decide to ease into camping by having a series of campouts in the backyard. For each additional camping adventure, you can add on a responsibility. For instance, the first trip might include setting up the tent and sleeping out. For smaller children, they will be able to focus on setting up the tent properly. The next trip might include building a fire to cook a snack. Your child will be able to focus on building and maintaining a camp fire safely.

Another trip could focus mainly on planning and preparing food. I know that most children think that camp food consists of hot dogs and s'mores, but they can quickly learn that there are a variety of healthy, tasty meals that are easy to prepare over a fire.

Other camping trips can help children learn how to use different types of camping equipment. Even though each of these outings has a main focus, your child will also be practicing some of the things that are fundamental to camping. For instance, every time, your child will experience a night outdoors in a sleeping bag. This will help him to gain experience and confidence for camping away from your home.

Other activities that you can enjoy with your child on these regular camping trips in your backyard are searching the sky for constellations, listening to the different night sounds, and enjoying special nighttime snacks.

If you are worried that your child isn't ready for camping in the backyard or you would like more activities to prepare your child for a camping trip, here are some additional suggestions to get him familiar with the outdoors to eliminate his fears.

You can take your child (even a group of children) on a small hike in the woods at a local park. While there, you can teach your child about safety and how to respect nature. You may also be able to teach him some outdoor skills and outdoor ethics.

You may decide to take your child to a nature center. This would allow him to experience nature a bit more than just the local park. You could also go fishing at a local pond or stream. Most children love to learn how to fish. Even having a picnic is an excellent way to experience the outdoors.

On days that you don't have the time to plan a full day of activity, you could easily go on an evening walk or a flashlight walk. Your child will be able to experience more of nature in the evenings and at night because the hustle of the day dies down and you will be able to hear nature better.

Don't forget that simply reading a book about camping will also help your child to become familiar with camping which will help to lessen his fear.

Happy Camping!

In Europe, hotel charges bite far deeper into budgets than you would sometimes expect. In Britain there is the inexpensive alternative of bed and breakfast. This does not exist to such an extent in the rest of Europe.

One way of getting around this, particularly for friends planning to travel together around the Continent, is hiring a car and, in summer, staying at camp sites.

Europeans are fond of the outdoors and there are camp sites wherever people holiday. There are, perhaps, three types of camping: luxury, pretty snazzy and bring your own tent. Which you select is up to your budget and style. But note most carefully that if you are taking your own tent you MUST camp in a proper listed camp site. You cannot pull into a field and hope for the best. It is illegal and strongly discouraged.

The three classes

Eurocamp is primarily intended for motoring holidays and is particularly suited to a group travelling around Europe by car. Eurocamp provides a choice of six-berth tents or six-berth caravillas, which appear to be of a very high standard.

Luxury first: Eurocamp, http://www.eurocamp.com, a subsidiary of the Next group of clothing stores, has well over 100 sites in France, West Germany, Spain, Yugoslavia, Belgium, Luxembourg, Italy and Austria. Many are away from the population centres in the Swiss Alps, the French Riviera, Tuscany, Innsbruck and the German Black Forest, but Eurocamp also has sites in Florence, Paris and Munich.

The caravillas - 9.5 m long by 2.5 m wide -- and tents -- 5.2 m by 4.9 m - come with cooking facilities, pots, pans, crockery and cutlery. The caravillas have showers and toilets. Both forms of accommodation include a double bed and four single beds.

The campsites come with a variety of amenities -- most have restaurants, bars and either a swimming pool, lake or beach. All campsites have running hot and cold water, modern washing facilities and fresh water taps close to the tents. For some this will be paradise. For others, perhaps, a form of hell.

Many of the sites are in France, in the Loire Valley, Dordogne, Riviera, Provence, Pyrenees, Brittany, Normandy and Picardy. Free child care is provided at about half the camp sites.

Mid-level comfort

Self-Drive motoring holidays in Europe (http://www.drive-alive.co.uk/) for the independent motorist. These are camping and mobile homes in France, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. The minimum stay is three nights. The cost of your camping is included in the package price.

To check out prices I invented a family, parents and two kids, with a saloon car coming from Britain in May and spending five nights camping. The answer came back: The price of your holiday is EUR404 ($US508) including accommodation and crossing, but excluding insurance and maps.

Bring your own tent in true camping style

Interhike, http://www.interhike.com, covers UK, Ireland, Spain including the Canary Islands, Germany, France, Portugal, Czech Republic, Denmark, Poland, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Switzerland, Italy, Greece, Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg which is pretty well most of Europe.

Note that this is both a listing of camping sites and a booking centre. It does not guarantee the quality of the sites although, from experience, outside of the annual European holiday in August they are generally quite splendid and civilised. In almost every case you have to take your own tent and gear.

This is just a brief sampling. You can explore the Internet until your eyes grow dim. Use a Google search and just type in camping Europe. Then pick and chose.

The United States alone has more to see and do, than one can accomplish in a lifetime, because of this one needs to carefully choose which locations and sites are more important based on their type of interest. By far, camping would be a great way to explore our country in an economical way with the comforts of being at home. So, lets plan a trip around the lower forty-eight States and Canada. One should plan on three to four years to accomplish this journey. Now how does one do this?

First, write down each state and Province of Canada on a piece of paper. A pretty easy task if you can name off all the states, if not a map of our country will aid in this process. Next, one should Google each state's tourism department requesting travel guides and state maps. For the most part, this should be pretty easy. However, getting some information from Canada might take a little more effort, some provinces may even take a phone call, don't worry they have a toll-free number. Some of the states will have the travel information broken down into categories', or have different brochures by location within the state, while other states just have one brochure. After a couple of weeks, the onslaught of mail will start, they will be days the mail person may have to bring it to the front door in a bundle. In about six to eight weeks one will have a stack over two feet high. Now this can be overwhelming.

The next task at hand is, how does one track this in an organized way? Easy enough, Excel spreadsheets. A good idea is to take a map of the United States and with a black marker divide the country into six sections. Southeast, South central, Southwest, Northeast, North central, Northwest and one for all of Canada. In all, seven named spreadsheets. With each spreadsheet, create a tab for each state and province. The next step is a lot of reading, and of course looking at pictures.

Looking at the travel brochures, one can tell some states put forth a great amount of effort with the information regarding their state. As one knows, good pictures are a great attention getter, while some states did this, others didn't. The idea is to complete one state at the time. As you read through the brochures, Google anything of interest to you, if it's something you feel would be enjoyable, put the name of the site, the web link, city, address and any fees associated with it on the states tab.

Once you have all the information on each States tab, it's time to organize the sites by location within the state. Google map is an ideal tool to help with this process. First, divide each state into nine sections ex: Northwest, Center west, Southwest. For the most part, most of the states should be pretty easy to put your places of interest into geographical locations. By far, Texas and California due to the size of each state, may be pretty difficult and very time-consuming. As a note, don't be surprised, all states don't have something to see and do everywhere, especially Canada in the far northern sections.

The idea is to stay at a campground which is centrally located for the places you wish to visit and then move to your next location. For this task, one should join Good Sam and All stays Pro camping clubs, both have campground maps for North America with most campgrounds listed. This should be a great tool from which to select campgrounds. One can open each campgrounds web site and read all about them. Try to target around five to seven campgrounds in each location for future planning. List the campground, prices, how many sites and their ratings on the spreadsheets. Next, one can use Google map to find the distances from the campgrounds to each place you plan to visit. This will give you an idea of which campground is better located for your stay.

The last step is to plan your route, being as efficient as possible. Things to consider are many campgrounds in the north are seasonal, as well as the seasonal temperatures at any given location. The length of stay at each location should be decided by the things you plan on doing, given time for what the locals may suggest and a little down time. Due to campground pricing, your shortest stay should be seven days and the longest thirty-one days.

The last and most important thing one must decide on, is their home and personal belongings. To maintain a home for the length of time you may be gone, can be quite expensive.

When visiting the Galveston/Houston area there are many RV Resorts from which to chooses. The time of year and one's interest when visiting can help determine which campground is best. Staying on Galveston Island has many advantages over staying near Houston. For one, it gets a family away from the everyday life of being in a city with all the traffic and most important, many of the campgrounds are located near the beach. The amities' the campground offers can help with one's decision, for most of the Galveston campgrounds are just like Hotel Resorts. For example, the Jamaica Beach RV Resort, is ten miles from downtown Galveston. The resort has 181 sites with full hookups including cable Tv. There are two swimming pools, one with a swim up bar, a hot tub and a 700-foot lazy river. Other amenities include, shuffle board, basketball court, mini golf, and a fully equipped outdoor kitchen. One will fine the forty-five-mile drive to Houston is very easy on Interstate 45.

Galveston island is around 25 miles long and, in some areas, less than a mile wide. At the Southeast end of the island, one has to cross a toll bridge for $2.00 to get back to the mainland, the Northwest end just stops at the mouth of the bay; however, there is a Ferry service which will take one to Bolivar Peninsular. The other entrance to the island is across Interstate 45 which turns into Broadway Avenue, this is like main street through the center of the business section of Galveston.

Downtown Historical Galveston is located along Galveston Bay at the Port of Galveston, where the cruise ships dock. All the buildings here are historical in nature, while some buildings are offices, others are shops for tourist, as well as some have been developed into historical museums. Along the bay, one will find an assortment of Seafood restaurants and museums.

For the person that enjoys historical as well as educational sites, Galveston Island is a great place to visit. Buying the Galveston Island city pass has a big advantage, one has to buy at least four or more attractions and the savings are 40 percent cheaper than individual tickets.

Some of the attractions included are, Moody Mansion which was built in 1895 portrays one of the richest entrepreneurs in 20th century America with all the original furnishings. I have to say the furnishings for the living areas is quite impressive, yet the bedroom furnishings lack in comfort and style. At the Navel Museum, one can tour the inside of the Famous USS Cavalla Submarine which sank the Japanese Navy Carrier Shokaku, that attacked Pearl Harbor. I'm not for sure how people could live in such close quarters, one thing for sure, no-one had any secrets. The USS Stewart is the only Edsall-Class Destroyer preserved in the United States. These are the only two vessels located at the museum. Ocean Star, a retired off shore drilling oil rig turned to Museum explains the process for drilling, extracting oil, safety and environmental impacts the oil industry faces. The living quarters has been turned into the museum while the drilling rig and equipment for the drill is still intact. Being on this rig can give one the sense of what it's like to be miles off shore and working twelve-hour shifts. For the person that likes trains, The Railroad Museum is a must. Here one will find many cars that were built in the early 1900's to the mid 1940's, all restored to their original dates. There are several engines from different eras; however, only one can be boarded. Although Galveston Island is small, with the many historical sites, beaches, and the family attractions available, Galveston can keep a family pretty busy for days.

Battleship Texas located in LaPorte about forty miles Northwest of Galveston is well worth the drive. The Texas was scheduled to be used as a bombing target, but after a successful drive by the people of Texas, she was awarded to the people of the state of Texas in 1948. When the Texas was commissioned in 1914, she was the most powerful battleship in the world., In 1925 she underwent major modifications and for the next twelve years she steamed the Atlantic and Pacific, representing American Naval power. Battleship Texas is a large and complicated artifact and getting around her can be very confusing. To our surprise, one can not only walk around all the deck levels, but the engine rooms as well.

Buying the Houston city pass is the best way to see the top five attractions at an affordable price. With Houston being the fourth largest city in the country, one can see how the city is really spread out. Three of the destinations are downtown, while the other two are on the outer sections of the city.

The Houston Museum of Natural Science was very educational as well as informative. The museum displayed the dinosaur era, as well as the evolution of mankind. Here one can learn about the minerals the earth provides us and how they are transformed to create today's technology. In addition, the museum displays many species of animals in their natural habitat and their means of survival. The Houston Zoo is small, but very nice for adults and children alike. For a small zoo the variety of animal's was quite impressive. My favorite part was feeding the Giraffes, large but very gentle creatures, just don't turn your back on them. The Houston Aquarium is quite small, but well worth the visit. Here one will find many species of smaller fish from the Gulf of Mexico, some quite colorful, but not eatable. Included with the pass is an assortment of rides for the smaller children. Kemah Boardwalk which sits right on the water about twenty miles East of downtown Houston, is a popular destination for all ages. The boardwalk hosts a large variety of shops as well as restaurants. In addition, there are many rides for all ages to enjoy. This is a popular destination for weekends and evening time. Space Center Houston, located in the Southeastern part of Houston. The space center displays past, present, and future space exploration. With the space center being very educational. Our favorite part was the Independence Space Shuttle sitting atop the Boeing 747. The shuttle is a replica from the original, yet it was interesting to see how the inside of a shuttle looks.

By far, the history and attractions in and around Galveston and Houston will keep a family entertained for several weeks.