Our Summer “Micro Trips” This Year
Executive summary: With a 1.5yo and a 5yo, we are decidedly unadventurous when it comes to travel. But we do our best to find close(ish) destinations that still offer a change of scenery. Our summer this year was bookended by two trips: Pasadena in June and Santa Barbara in August.
One day (oh please, let it be soon), I would like to take a regular trip again, but with young kids, we are definitely in the “micro trip” phase (see original post on it here). One of the nice things about living in California is the natural beauty and diverse attractions within a reasonably small radius, which enables us to take the kids places without too much upheaval. This summer, we kicked off with a weeklong trip to the LA area in June (we did have to fly, which I try to avoid with kids and their excessive gear) and capped it off with another weeklong trip to Santa Barbara in August (road trip with a stop at grandma’s in Paso Robles each direction to break up the 5-hour drive for the little ones).
My husband and I have been to LA a number of times, as we grew up in California, but never with kids. I probably wouldn’t have bothered for leisure alone (yeah, right, like any trip with little kids can be called leisure), but there was a work reason to go this time. My husband spent the last year on the faculty job market and received offers from Caltech and Stanford (see post on it here). Schools offer what’s called a “second visit,” in which the candidate gets to bring their families for a personal visit to decide if the place is right for them. It’s the same as a “sell weekend” in the business world, where the company wines and dines you to convince you to accept their offer. So to Caltech we went, as soon as my son’s school let out for the summer, to see if we could imagine making Pasadena home for, well, ever. It was a very informative visit — we met with multiple professors, toured the childcare centers, saw the faculty housing, went out with a real estate agent to get a feel for the surrounding neighborhoods, etc, all arranged by Caltech. The only way we were able to do anything was by bringing my mom to help babysit. She’d watch the 5yo while hubby and I took turns caring for the toddler to free up the other parent to attend meetings and events. We traded off many times a day; it was like a relay race around campus. Everything these days takes a village and countless hours of planning and coordination.
This is probably the most photogenic spot at Caltech — they’re all about function over form, it would seem.
That was only the first part of our trip, though. Given that we’d gone through the hassle of figuring out how to bring the kids to LA while minimizing meltdowns (did I mention my toddler is in a phase where she cries when we enter an unfamiliar building?), we wanted to extend our trip a few days by going to visit my cousin who lives in the Pomona area. I think I hadn’t seen her in a decade — our schedules never aligned when we were living on the East Coast and flying to California once a year to see friends and family, then there was COVID and recurring kids’ illnesses keeping us apart. She has two boys aged 6 and 9 who my kids have never met. We thought it would be fun to have a (second) cousin hangout, especially because my 5yo and her 6yo would probably hit it off. My son is super excited about the prospect of seeing them again for the holidays, if they manage to make it up to NorCal (their cancellation rate is like 70% due to illnesses).
Second cousins, but who’s counting?
Then, on the other end of summer 7 weeks later, we took our Santa Barbara trip, which is another place we’ve been multiple times. My husband has an annual conference which has been held at UCSB for decades, so this was another combined work/personal trip. Good thing we’ve seen the area relatively thoroughly over the years, because we were once again confined to a tiny radius and restrictive daily schedule with the kids. We brought the other grandma this time (my MIL), but even if we can ditch the 5yo for a few hours, we always have the toddler with us. We did manage to repeat a couple of highlights from the last time we were here as a family, when my son was 3.5yo and I was 35 weeks pregnant with my daughter. Lil Toot was a favorite on that trip, a cheery yellow boat that goes between Stearns Wharf and the Santa Barbara harbor on an easy 25-minute ride that’s made for kids. We also visited the zoo again, but mostly to ride the tiny train and play in the kids area. Animals schmanimals. There went $150, lol.
We also “celebrated” my son’s 5.5 year birthday at the conference, which is just an excuse for him to pick out cupcakes, naturally.
As mentioned, we stopped in Paso Robles on our way to and from Santa Barbara so that we wouldn’t have to drive more than 2-3 hours with the kids in a single day. We have it down to a science by now. PR is too hot during the summer to do much, so we mostly played at grandma’s, but it’s nice that we had a place to crash instead of cramming the fam into another hotel room. And we took the opportunity to pick up a couple of our favorite bottles of wine while we were in town. ;-)
I don’t know when we’ll be able to attend the conference again. I used to think that Santa Barbara in August would become a family tradition, but that was before I realized how early school starts in our area. It seems that in most years, the conference happens after school starts, although maybe occasionally they may fall on the same week. My son missed the first few days of kindergarten, which is no big deal, but it’ll get harder to skip out on school as he gets older. So TBD on if/when we can make this happen again. Hubby is just going to have to attend alone for a while (he’s probably not sad about that).
I know this was not a scintillating travel post by any means. We used to go international at least 3x a year and have many fond memories of those trips from our 20s (the last of which was 6+ years ago, right before I became pregnant). I find consolation by reminding myself that parenthood is the adventure these days, not places. It’s true — parenthood is a wild and surprising (and always exhausting) ride. We have hopes of dropping the kids off with the grandparents in the (nearish?) future to get a bit farther away, but we’ve mostly accepted that our 30s are a decade of … domestic adventures, I’ll call them. Dreadful or delightful, we’re here for it.