Days 1-3: Los Angeles
Kicking off a 52-night trip (now a 53-night trip!) to the South Pacific went into full gear this evening! Over a year of planning, budgeting, researching, waffling back and forth, and more has now kicked off. And WOW! We are excited about this journey and get the MostPerMile out of this adventure called Life!
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Day One – Two Time Zones
The journey was originally planned to begin with check-in at the airport prior to 5:00 am for a 6:00 am flight on Southwest Airlines. Seven people (four adults and three girls ages 11, 9, and 7) ready to embark on a memorable journey!! However, our family of four decided to go a day early, jumped on a great rate at the hotel to extend our stay there a night, and not wake up so early… so we flew out a day early. We got lucky and were upgraded to Club Level for our hotel for three nights, so breakfast was included.
This 53-night journey is divided into multiple parts with various people joining:
- Los Angeles (us, friends – family of 3, and Curt’s parents joining for one night here)
- Tahiti (us, friends – family of 3, and Curt’s parents)
- Auckland, New Zealand (us, friends – family of 3, and Curt’s parents)
- Brisbane, Australia (us and friends – family of 3; Curt’s parents in Sydney for a week then go home)
- Great Barrier Reef cruise (us and friends – family of 3)
- Melbourne, Australia (us and friends – family of 3)
- Sydney, Australia (us and friends – family of 3; both of their sets of parents meeting in Sydney)
- TransPacific Cruise for 23 nights Sydney to Seattle (us, friends, and both sets of their parents)
Staying near the airport, we chose to rent a minivan for a couple days and explore the local area. Outfitting the children with booklets correlating to our journey, we already had discussed the timezones of the world during the airport waiting time. Visiting Flight Path Museum & Learning Center, we had reviewed some notable pioneers in aviation history, including Sally Ride, Pete Conrad, Glenn Martin, and more. These are names we printed in advance for the children’s learning booklets in preparation of each step of our journey as this specific day would have us visit the Flight Path Walk of Fame. Since three of the four adults are active airline employees of multiple decades each, and two may be slightly intrigued with aviation history, I left additional explanation to them for the kiddos! (Or maybe it was the kids quizzing the men!)
For a free experience by LAX, the Flight Path Museum was excellent. Even listing to Air Traffic Control made it enjoyable, and gave us an opportunity again to talk about women in aviation. We may have lost the kids at the museum a time or three, but when my youngest was talking about Morse Code, or my oldest mentioned the coolest thing being the vintage uniforms (and a cuckoo clock in the Flying Tigers room), then you know they both paid attention. Being adjacent to the runways at LAX (which is why you sign in for security reasons and have alarmed security doors), we were able to really watch some cool aircraft and airlines we don’t see back home.
Culinary experiences included lunch at Wahoo’s for fish and shrimp tacos in Manhattan Beach not far from the airport area, and you must visit In-N-Out Burger when in California, right?? #117 is located near the LAX runways, so that was fun as well.
For hotel, we chose Crowne Plaza for our three nights, and being Platinum Elite with IHG properties, we were fortunate to be upgraded to Club level rooms on the 16th floor. Continental breakfast and snacks/beverages in the evening were greatly appreciated! Tony took great care of us, and the space in the room with tables gave us a chance to enjoy playing a new game picked up at last weekend’s homeschool convention in Fort Worth called Historical Conquest. Our 11-year-old really enjoys learning, and this is the first time we have ever purchased a game focusing on history. Curt enjoyed learning and playing as well, so we can definitely recommend this and it is easy to pack and travel with. (Thank you, Zack, for sharing this with our daughter at the convention!)
Recovering from late/early flights, both families retired early especially with the timezone difference from Texas. No need to overdo it!
Day Two – Fun day!
You can’t be in the vicinity of Disneyland or Universal Studios without letting kids be kids, right?!? Especially when your 11-year-old has read the Harry Potter Series (twice) and your 7-year-old is a Disney fan!! So we tag-teamed it and split up: Daddy took one to Universal Studios Hollywood and I took the other to Disney California. (Besides…. shhhh…. Food and Wine Festival may or may not have been going on!)
I know I most likely threw a shocker out when asked what time I thought we should leave for Disneyland, but I said 6:30. I dislike traffic, know we needed to purchase tickets, and LA may be known for having a little traffic. Besides, the doors open at 8:00am and we needed to get those fastpasses!! My youngest sidekick was my partner for this day, and she is a daredevil. We enjoy roller coasters, and she is the one just shy of her eighth birthday for the Sydney bridge climb, so is bummed with that coming up, but would totally be onboard.
Day Three – Another Two Time Zones
After requesting late checkout, we slept in and relaxed as we knew the 8-hour flight would be commencing later that evening. The club level room would normally provide breakfast, but being a weekend we were given vouchers for breakfast and met Curt’s parents downstairs who arrived during the day to join us for the next seven nights of our journey before we split on April 1 between Sydney and Brisbane. Also, work had killed me the weeks leading up to our departure from Texas, so I never had a chance to get a much needed pedicure. With a 2pm late checkout, we had time to get that taken care of as well. Air Tahiti Nui has a nonstop flight from LAX to PPT (Tahiti), which is our destination for the next four nights. This is our first experience ever with this airline. The flight was uneventful and while we left a little late, we arrived just five minutes late. The cloud tops were with us at 37,000 feet so we still had some bumpiness, but my aviation husband assured me everything was fine. I got no sleep but everyone else got at least a little. Both meals were fine as well, although the water cups were small – I got up to refill those several times as hydration is imperative on long flights (this one was 8 hours).
Local Immersion
California has such a mix of people from various countries, it is always intriguing the people we come across when visiting there! Whether it was standing in line at In-N-Out, walking through the LAX airport, or visiting local world-renowned amusement parks, immersion is all around us. Even seeing airlines such as Air China, Air New Zealand, WOW!, and more, those simply reminded us that the world is just a flight away to totally immerse in any culture!
Challenges
Traffic was our challenge today, as California was experiencing a large amount of rain. Everyone said “Welcome to sunny California!” but we came when a huge storm was passing through on Thursday. Another challenge: my first time ever…. EVER… to drive a minivan!! Thank you, Budget, for providing a car rental we booked months in advance at an affordable price! And to be honest, my youngest is our free-spirited child – the one who packed for the entire trip (and I did not look once at what she packed so each day is something new for me to see – yep – teach them young about responsibility!) and she is also the one who is very artistic, eclectic, and speaks her mind no matter what comes out, so I hope we don’t corrupt our traveling companions’ child these next 7+ weeks!!
Educational Aspects
Learning is always occurring, as we feel the world is an amazing classroom! Continuously looking for opportunities to learn no matter where we were at is how my brain functions. We are forever grateful for the opportunities we have, and as my husband has said many times previously, we scrimp on many things in everyday life (such as eating out, expensive haircuts, or “keeping up with the Jones'” mentality) so that we can do memorable things like this. We both completely realize that not many people in their early / mid-forties can arrange their jobs the way we can, or have the background to homeschool (I am still a certified mathematics teacher for grades 6-12 and principal for EC-12), so are appreciative of this amazing journey of a lifetime we are embarking on.
Stay tuned for the next installments of this journey, involving Tahiti, New Zealand, Australia, Fiji, Hawaii, and more! More pictures posted on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/mostpermile/
Possible Curriculum Correlations in Texas:
(5) Geography. The student understands the concepts of location, distance, and direction on maps and globes.
(4) Geography. The student understands the factors that influence the locations and characteristics of locations of various contemporary societies on maps and globes and uses latitude and longitude to determine absolute locations. The student is expected to:
(A) locate various contemporary societies on maps and globes using latitude and longitude to determine absolute location;
(D) identify and locate major physical and human geographic features such as landforms, water bodies, and urban centers of various places and regions;
(E) draw sketch maps that illustrate various places and regions; and
(F) identify the location of major world countries such as Canada, Mexico, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Italy, Spain, Norway, Sweden, Russia, South Africa, Nigeria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel, Iran, India, Pakistan, the People’s Republic of China, the Republic of China (Taiwan), Japan, North and South Korea, Indonesia, and Australia.
