Most people assume the desert closes for the season the moment the temperature drops. That assumption is exactly why the smartest travelers have the whole region to themselves every winter. A southwest winter vacation is not a consolation prize for missing summer. It might be the best version of this landscape you will ever see […]

Nobody warns you that the hardest part of planning a Napa Valley family vacation isn’t the itinerary. It’s convincing yourself that you’re allowed to bring the kids. I have stood in that exact hesitation, scrolling through photo after photo of couples clinking glasses on a terrace, wondering if a place this polished has any room […]

Here’s the question every parent asks me before they’ve even booked the flights: Can one island really work for a toddler who naps at noon and a teenager who wants a real adventure story to bring home? After planning enough Kauai trips to lose count, I can tell you the answer is yes, but only […]

Somebody is going to cry before you cross the Oregon border, and it probably will not be the kids. That is the truth nobody tells you about a family getaway on this coast of the United States. The tears usually belong to the parent who packed too much into one day and forgot to breathe. […]

The waves were already crashing over the rocks by the time a family realized their mistake. They had pulled up to a North Shore beach in December, beach chairs and floaties in hand. They were expecting the same calm water they had seen in a photo online. Instead, they found lifeguards waving people back from […]

You have twelve browser tabs open, a Notes app full of contradictory advice, and a family counting on you to figure it out. That is exactly the moment I was made for. A family vacation in Oahu is one of the most rewarding trips you will ever plan together. I am going to walk you […]

The inn with the fireplace suite, the one that sits above a frozen river in Vermont with nothing but white pines and silence outside the window, was fully booked by October. Not December. October. The woman who finally decided in November that she deserved a real winter trip found the same thing everywhere she looked: […]

You did all the research. You read the roundups, saved the Instagram reels, and still ended up at the wrong beach in Maui for your group. If you have ever spent your first Maui morning standing at the water’s edge wondering why this famous stretch of sand feels nothing like what you imagined, you already […]

You have been picturing the wrong place to see polar bears this whole time and so has nearly everyone else. The best places to see polar bears are not at the North Pole at all. The best places are scattered across a wild, living edge of our planet. Once you know where to look, you […]

The presidential museums to visit for America’s 250th anniversary are not just history lessons your children will forget by Monday morning. They are the kind of experiences that rearrange something inside a person. The kind that makes your ten-year-old go quiet in the car on the way home because she is still thinking about what […]