Estimated reading time: 7 minutes
If you’ve ever wondered whether meaningful family travel is still possible when life gets busy, expensive, or complicated—this week’s spotlight will absolutely inspire you.
Meet the family behind Have Kids Will Adventure, a family who didn’t just continue traveling after having kids—they completely reimagined how they do it. From backpacking beginnings to bike touring across Europe, they’ve built a lifestyle rooted in creativity, flexibility, and a deep love of exploring the world together.
In this feature, they share how their journey evolved over time, how they make travel work now, and why some of their most unforgettable experiences have come on two wheels.
Read more Family Travel Spotlights:
- How One Family Turned Real-Life Travel Into a Guide for Other Families
- How the Summers Family Makes Travel Work with Five Kids
- Redefining Family Travel
- How One Family Turned a Bad Trip Into a Love for Traveling with Kids
- How One Family of Six Is Raising Global Citizens Through Life Abroad
Travel Beginnings
Traveling has always been something that my husband and I have loved. We met as teenagers on a three week cultural exchange program to Japan through the Rotary Club. And, we’ve always loved traveling, ever since.
When I was in college, I spent a year studying abroad in France. That gave me an opportunity to travel to quite a few European countries, and it started off my habit of traveling with only a backpack.
Once my husband and I were married, we did a lot of backpacking and camping as ways to travel affordably. But once we had kids, we decided that we didn’t really like the idea of carrying all of our backpacking gear and carrying our kids. So, we decided that bike touring was going to be our new plan.
We already had a tandem bicycle, a double bike trailer, and backpacking gear. So, we started out by using what we had.
Our First Bike Tours
Our first overnight bike trip was when my oldest son was 2.5 years old and my daughter was 10 months old. We just biked to the only campsite we could find in Massachusetts that was open in early April. It was around 40 miles from our house. And, oh my gosh, it was so difficult! We had done practice rides, but actually carrying all of our gear was much more difficult than we realized it would be.
We did one more practice tour, another trip to a campground about 40 miles away, that spring. And then, we took four days to ride the roughly 200 miles from our house in Massachusetts to my parents’ lake house in Maine.
Riding to Maine was definitely difficult, but it was also amazing. We were bitten hard by the bike touring bug, and we still love it!
From Pandemic Pause to a Travel Breakthrough
In February of 2020, we took our kids with my parents and siblings to Ireland to visit our family that lives there. That was my older two kids’ first international flight. We had a really great time, and I definitely wanted to start doing more traveling. But, we were not really in a position, financially, to pull that off.
And, of course, then the whole world shut down in March of 2020.
Also, I got pregnant with our youngest son.
So, between being pregnant and postpartum, and that whole pesky worldwide pandemic thing, we didn’t travel very much until 2023. By that point, I was chomping at the bit to see all of the world! But, I still couldn’t afford to travel how I wanted to.
Luckily, I ended up coming across the concept of using credit card points and miles to fund travel. And honestly, we’ve never looked back. We have traveled more in the past three years than we ever did before that.
Our Favorite Trip: Bike Touring the Rhine
My favorite trip that we’ve taken so far, hands down, was when we spent a month bike touring along the Rhine River in Germany, France, and Switzerland in July 2023.
– Kelly
On a bike tour, the only things you need to worry about are the route you are taking, where you’re going to sleep at night, and getting food. And on this trip, the biking infrastructure was a thousand times better than anything we’ve ever seen in North America. The route was simple to figure out, finding grocery stores was easy, and camping was plentiful. That allowed us to spend the rest of our mental energy enjoying our time together, chatting with our kids, taking in the views, and relaxing.
We’re still chasing the high from this trip, and we’re hoping to plan another month-long bike tour in Europe in the summer of 2027.
Other Adventures & Travel Style
We also do a lot of other traveling that’s not bike touring. Our time in the Highlands of Scotland was probably a favorite for everyone in our family. The views are amazing, the people are welcoming, and the pace of travel was nice and slow.
Another way we make traveling part of our lives is by making it integral to our children’s homeschooling. We take advantage of having a flexible schedule to go on “Mom and Kids” long weekend trips. My husband is a teacher, so his schedule isn’t as flexible as ours. This has given me the opportunity to get good at traveling solo with my kids. And honestly, I love it. Traveling with my husband is amazing, of course. But, I’ve come to love traveling solo with my kids just as much.
I am eternally grateful that we are able to travel as much as we do. Our family learns about new locations, new cultures, and all kinds of amazing facts. But, we also learn to be patient, to be flexible, and to understand that not everyone is the same as us. And, that is what makes the world so interesting and vibrant.
Resources
- Instagram: Have Kids Will Adventure Instagram
- Facebook: Have Kids Will Adventure Facebook
- Blog: Have Kids Will Adventure Website
Closing Thoughts
This family’s story is a powerful reminder that travel doesn’t have to look one specific way to be meaningful. Sometimes it’s backpacking, sometimes it’s bike touring, and sometimes it’s simply finding creative ways to make travel fit the season of life you’re in.
From early camping trips with toddlers to month-long bike tours across Europe, their journey shows how adaptable family travel can be when you’re willing to start with what you have and build from there.
Their experience also highlights something really important: the best family adventures aren’t always the easiest ones—they’re the ones that challenge you, stretch you, and ultimately bring you closer together.
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