Hello, everyone!
Here’s another episode of #FamiliesOutside and today we are interviewing Dylan from Family Travel Go.
I super love this family of three because they are really young. We are currently taking baby steps with our homeschool and travel plans but I hope the Myers family will inspire you the way they did us. Read on to find out more about them!
1. Give us a short background of your family.
We are a young and active family of 3. Our favorite activities include hiking, geocaching, and swimming. We currently live in the United States in Oklahoma. It is handy being in the middle of the U.S. it works out great for our many road trips. Cash has already explored 21 states by the age of 3 and will be seeing 3 more within the next month making it 24 total states. But we don’t plan on stopping there. We have the world in our sights and specific goals set to reach our dreams.
2. Do you travel full time or part time? When did you start and why?
We currently travel part time with plans to travel increase as life goes on, eventually traveling full time. We started traveling with our little family when our son Cash was around 6 months old, the first major adventure was a multi-week road trip to visit family in Pennsylvania, with many great stops along the way. We started because we love exploring new places, trying new things and meeting new people.
3. How do you afford to travel as a family? Do you also work on the road?
We afford to travel as a family by planning, and budgeting. We save money, we live nearly debt free, and we choose inexpensive options while we travel. Currently the only work we do on the road is working on our website, but we are looking into ways to work from the road on our laptops.
4. How do you plan out your trips (and for full time travelers, are you always out or do you have days where you just stay in)? Do you particularly choose those “family-friendly” or “kid-friendly” destinations or are you flexible and just simply adapt to the place?
We plan our trips by deciding where we want to go, based on recommendations from friends, and online research. Then we budget out the math of gas prices, miles to drive, places to stay and things to do. We are flexible and learn to adapt as a family to the places we travel. But we ensure not to over plan, you need to leave room for random. You never know what you might find on the road so we always leave extra time and money for those random adventures that come as you travel.
5. What is that one item you can never travel without when you are with kids?
We learned on our many road trips across the United States to never travel without the necessities of food and water. You never know how many miles until the next gas station, or restaurant. Plan for the worst and hope for the best. Always have extra food and water, little ones have a lot of growing to do.
6. There are varied opinions when it comes to learning while traveling VS. formal schooling. What is your stand on this? Does travelling really give an advantage to your kid’s education, based on experience?
I believe learning while traveling really gives an advantage to your child’s education; they have the opportunity to see things in real life, rather than learning from books or online. You can definitely learn from reading and studying but nothing compares to feeling and experiencing things first hand. But at the time of this writing Cash is still too young for formal schooling, and we will have to see how the next few years go and plan accordingly. But schooling while exploring this world seems like an amazing way to learn and grow together.
7. What advice would you give to families who want to start out a travelling lifestyle?
Start small, Plan Big. Start with mini road trips, doing free things like hiking, geocaching, and visiting free museums. Pack food for your trip to save money. Treat yourself going out once or twice to save for entertainment and activities. If you want to save more money and really have fun outdoors, camp in a tent a few nights rather than paying for a hotel every night.
Be different, average people live heavily in debt spending money on the “fancy stuff” new cars, big houses, etc. If you save up and live beneath your means you can afford to do more rewarding things with your family rather than wasting life away in front of your screens.
8. Where else can we guys read about your family adventures?
You can visit us at our website Family Travel Go . It’s full of helpful tips and stories to inspire and share the awesomeness of traveling with your family.
Thank you for this opportunity and the great interview questions. It brings us so much joy to be able to connect with others and share our story as well as learn from other experiences.
Keep up the great work!
Hope our families cross paths on our adventures some day!
Follow Dylan, Kayla and Cash Myers at:
Blog | Facebook | Twitter | Google+ | Youtube
Happy Travels!
XX
#FamiliesOutside is an interview series to help encourage families to go out and explore places, near or far. Bi-monthly, we feature families who love travelling – full-time or part-time – or who simply love including the outdoors in their daily activities.
