I work a block from the headquarters of National Geographic in Washington D.C. so there was no excuse to miss getting our area’s hottest ticket: the Terracotta Warrior exhibit.
We are, from time to time, compelled to post on subjects other than travel, like our nifty Steampunk Dining room, and the awesomeness of arena rock concerts. This is one of those posts but, I will circuitously connect dance to our exotic family travel shtick.
Our love of dance.
My wife danced semi-pro in her San Fransisco youth, but a near-death car accident and resulting spinal surgery put and end to her dance days. Twenty years later, we find our daughters have the same enthusiasm for performance as their mother. They love dance, ballet and gymnastics.
Creekmoreworld.com is a travel blog for exotic family adventures. We are David, age 40; Trisha, age 45; Lily, age 7 and Emma, age 9. Washington D.C. is our home, although Trisha is from the Bay Area and David is from New York.
The adults are avid scuba divers, skiers, video game players and fans of heavy metal. In her youth, Trisha went on long backpacking journeys to Thailand, Central America, Europe and Turkey. David spent many months traveling Russia and the Soviet republics, from the Black Sea to Lake Baikal.
In 2003, Trish was diagnosed with a dangerous breast cancer. The real possibility of death made us rethink our lives, and together we committed to travel more if Trish survived. Our girls were still babies then. In her chemo haze, Trish would fantasize about taking a year off to travel the globe with them. It gave her the strength to continue the ghastly treatments.
Trish remains cancer free and the kids are now old enough to handle adventure travel. Our goal is still to spend a year abroad. But rather than take a whole year off, we are doing a series of month-long trips. The kids love their school and we enjoy our careers, which permit us to travel quite a bit. We are fortunate in that way. By the end of 2010, we should be a third of the way to our ‘year-abroad’ goal.
Most of our blogs are ‘live’ — we post daily while on the road. Our primary purpose is to record our travel for kids, friends and family. If we can help or encourage other families to travel more adventurously, it would be a bonus. For us, there is no purer expression of life than traveling as a family.
David currently works at an international non-profit in management and Trisha is a journalist and Web producer, working most recently at Discovery Channel and PBS. A long time ago, she wrote guidebooks to Belize and Norway. They’re probably incredibly out-of-date by now, so don’t buy them.
