The Importance Of An Adventure

Other Foghorn Press books of interest include "Best Places to Go", a worldwide family destination guide, and "The Camper 's Companion", a how-to book for beginning and advanced campers.

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER: Part One (of 3)

What makes an adventure work is an accumulation of so many things. It 's those moments of sheer joy and just feeling alive that only come after moments of discomfort or hardship. It 's knowing your family just accomplished something you never thought you would, reaching a new pinnacle of achievement. It 's the rapport and tight bond that is forged between family members thrown together on an adventure. Most of all it 's an attitude, a belief that your family adventure is going to succeed.

Despite the best intentions,

The first 24 hours is like your first day at school, overwhelming, confusing, scary and sometimes even slightly disastrous. If the rest of the school year was like that, children would refuse to go. The same is true of adventuring. Like the child plunged into a strange classroom, you 're presented with a whole new environment in which to function.

By some twist of fate, we 've discovered that we can almost assume that first day will be anything except fun. If we 're bicycling, it always rains, even in places where rain happens about twice a year. If we 're going somewhere hot, it 's cold when we get there. The year we went to Greece, we missed a connecting flight, went stand-by with about 100 shouting Greeks, landed in the wrong place and arrived at our destination in the middle of the night. In Madeira we spent the night in what must be the most abysmal pension ever in operation. There was laundry in the tub, cigarette burns in the carpet, holes in the bedding and a clientele that never, as far as we could ascertain, went to sleep. Despite the fact that it was June, when we arrived in England it did everything except snow on