One of the first things to consider in travel planning is your overall plans for an interval of time. As an example, plan for travel for the upcoming year. While it may seem that budget planning should come first, you can't effectively budget until you have identified the type of trip or trips you will take and when.
Chances are you had some sense of a maximum budget before seeking travel ideas. If so, many locations you might consider for weekend jaunts have reduced rate, off-season prices allowing you to conserve enough in the overall annual travel budget to make affording the larger trip such as a cruise or to Disneyland more comfortable than you first anticipated.
Consider a family that includes a music lover parent, an offspring starting to develop an interest in horses, a different parent who enjoys reading mysteries, an older offspring who loves reading and another older offspring who shows signs of becoming a mystery buff. Over the course of your year of travel, you can find destinations suited to each one of these family members' interests.
You might provide the organ music lover some interesting travel experiences through one or more organ crawls which are usually local travel over a short time interval such as a weekend. For the horse lover, the family can take a trip to a dude ranch for a weekend or an entire summer. You can also find dude ranches in areas where you can find local attractions to interest either the literary or history buffs or both while the horse lover learns riding. For travel destinations focusing on the literary buff, you can locate a variety of attractions associated with classic authors now held in trust by conservationists. Possible such tours include those associated with Mark Twain, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Eugene O'Neill, Louisa May Alcott or Robert Frost, for example. History buffs can enjoy living history museums such as Old Sturbridge Village in Massachusetts and Mystic Seaport Maritime Museum in Connecticut. You can also find locations that incorporate more modern history such as that related to filmmaking or a history of the culture of the U.S. West such as Old Tucson.
Taking tours related to your family members' interest is fun and rewarding. However, when dealing with whole-family travel, ensure that at least a portion of your travel planning for the year incorporates plans for rest and recreation. Your family will benefit from a chance to just slow down, unwind and have fun. Include some time in your travel planning for fun at a theme park or splashing around at a beach or water park.
