Traveling the world is one of my key goals for the next five years, especially since I’ve never been outside the USA. The only reason I haven’t done it yet is the youth of my kids, ages 3 and 6. They don’t travel very well, and there’s no way I’d want to take them out of the country yet, at least not if I wanted to enjoy the trip or do anything at night.

All four grandparents — our best long-term babysitters — live in Los Angeles, 300 miles away. This usually limits us to weekend trips of 4 days max without the kids, which doesn’t give us much opportunity to travel internationally. For an international trip of substance, I’d want to go for at least a week, ideally 2-3 weeks.

We’re doing a lot more local travel though. In the past several months, Erin and I have been to San Francisco, CA; Laguna Beach, CA; Sedona, AZ; and St. George, UT. Later this month we’ll be taking a trip to Prescott, AZ for the first time.

Even with these limitations, we should be able to at least hit Mexico and Canada, so that’s probably where we’ll end up starting with our international journal. We’d really like to see Europe though, and I’d love to visit Asia. My younger brother currently lives in Tokyo, so it might be fun to visit him there (and his apartment that’s barely bigger than a coffin… hehehe).

I’d love to take a few months, maybe even a year, just to travel around the world, blogging from the road and arranging local gatherings in cities along the way. I think my business can be managed remotely well enough, so all I need is a good solution for childcare.

One option would be to travel solo for a few weeks and leave Erin with the kids. I’m amenable to that, but Erin threatened my life when I brought it up. I’d really like to go with her anyway, since we have a lot of fun on trips together.

I think the most practical solution will be for us to get a long-term nanny who can take care of the kids, while Erin and I leave town for a few weeks. We can afford one right now, but Erin is hesitant to leave the kids for so long, so we’ll have to work on those limiting beliefs there too. It probably would be hard on our 3-year old son to be away from us for so long.

My other idea was to start a new business, a place where parents can pay to leave their kids for an extended time with experienced daycare workers. I even thought of a great name for it: Kid Kennel.

For those of you with young kids, did you find a way to make extended international travel practical? Is there a solution I’m overlooking?

I know time will eventually solve this problem, but I hope to have a better solution in place within the next year or two. Getting firsthand experience of other cultures, especially those that are very different from mine, is something I’m itching to experience.