Hello world! Welcome to our family travel blog!! We are Zak and Kristen Larter and we have a four year old daughter. Our family of three is passionate about travel. We have been married for almost 10 years and have been together for about 14 years. Kristen has always had a passion for traveling ever since she was young. She would get super pumped anytime her and her parents would stay at a hotel or go on a road trip. She learned early on that getting to travel is a privilege and kept that sense of privilege and passion with her ever since.

Zak has always been interested in history and watching documentaries. Seeing all of the different places around the world sparked his interest in travel. To him, traveling just makes sense.

When we were dating, we took a road trip together to the Black Hills in South Dakota. What better way to get to know someone than by traveling with them? If you can survive a week long vacation or road trip with your partner without wanting to throw the other person out of the car, you’ve got a pretty solid relationship. Luckily for us, we totally clicked together and with traveling, and have been going on trips ever since! Our travel hasn’t always been for a planned vacation. We are lucky enough that our life circumstances have given us the opportunity to be able to travel. We have done some traveling related to IVF treatments and other trips have been for continuing education conferences through Kristen’s job. Of course, we have traveled some for family vacations as well.

When we had our daughter, we knew that we wanted to expose her to the world of traveling as well. Having a kid puts a whole new spin on traveling. There’s so much else to think about as far as packing, feeding, nap times, diaper blow outs on road trips, and coordinating all of your luggage and baby gear. Even with all of those extra things on your mind as a parent, traveling as a family is so worth it. These memories and quality time are the things children will remember when they are older. Sitting on a computer for hours on end playing games aren’t the memories that will stick out in their mind. The memories that will stick out will be things like “I remember hiking up to the top of that mountain in Hawaii and how amazing the view was!” or more likely with our family… “I remember that one canoe trip we went on and dad steered the canoe right into a log and we capsized.” People will always remember how you made them feel, which is why these experiences stay with children as they become adults. Even as an adult your child may look back and start laughing about how dad wasn’t the best at steering the canoe and how all of us (and our lunch) ended up in the water.

We decided to start a travel blog for a couple reasons. The first was to be able to keep track of our travels by writing about each place we have been. This way we can keep all of our travel memories in one spot. Another reason we chose to do this in blog form was to be able to share our experiences with our family and friends. Last of all, traveling as a family isn’t always easy and there are a lot of things to think about, as we already mentioned. We want to be a resource for traveling families by sharing our tips, tricks, and experiences of traveling as a family. Hopefully, this will make your travels a little smoother. As you read and follow our travel journey, we hope that you can take away some useful information about traveling as a family, as well as information about destinations. Please feel free to share our blog, subscribe, or comment. We would also love to hear about your own travel experiences and travel tips! Visit our contact page to get in touch with us. Thank you for coming along on this journey with us! Happy traveling!

The Larter Family