**PRESS RELEASE**

(Calgary, AB Canada, July 21, 2008) — Amber Johnson made a failed attempt to fly solo with her two children back to Colorado last week and spent an extra day recovering at her parent’s home in Calgary.

“I thought the flight to Calgary was bad enough,” Johnson grimaced. “I mean, it was such a headache when they lost Bode’s reservation and we then got stuck in the plane on the runway for hours on end. I thought it could not get worse.”

Sadly for this mother of two, it did. Johnson showed up at the Calgary airport with Hadley (age 4) and Bode (age 2). All went smoothly with check-in and security, after which time Johnson set the children loose to play in the terminal’s play area.

What happened next will go down in the record books as the worst luck ever experienced at an airport within a week. “It was boarding time and we leisurely made our way back to our gate,” Johnson said. “That is when they told me a bird hit the windshield of our plane, causing it to divert and land in another city. Our flight was canceled indefinitely.”

Johnson says instead of rebooking their flight, Canadian law required them to Read on …

I have always loved to travel. The problem is, travel has not always loved me. I once journeyed to France for a wedding, only to get lost and miss the entire celebration.

I built a career as a travel writer by writing a humor column about my mishaps. During a meeting with my editor, I made reference to one of my misfortunes on the trail and he professed, “You mean this stuff really happens? I thought you were making it up because there is no way all that could happen to one person!”

Welcome to my life.

When I had a family, there were understandably even more challenges. My recent solo trip home with my children confirmed it: I am the Real[ist] Family Travel Writer. While so many writers expound upon their tried and true tips for “The Perfect Family Vacation,” I keep it real. Family travel is about survival. The only two things that keep me sane are my sense of humor and a huge dose of denial. Maybe Prozac would help, too.

And so as the Real[ist] Family Travel Writer, here are some insights I gleaned from my trip that I summed up as follows to my husband: “Hell is assuredly an easier commute than flying solo to Canada with two young children.” Read on …

As backpackers, my husband Jamie and I are minimalists. We pack the bare essentials because we know we will be the ones hauling them into the backcountry.

We had also taken the same approach with car camping…until we saw the light during last weekend’s camping trip to Eleven Mile State Park, a venue that came highly recommended in Family Fun magazine and a rocky, barren venue that I would never recommend in a thousand years. Or in the eleven hundred miles it seemed to take to get us there.

Our friends Tina and Mark are Pack Everything Including the Kitchen Sink kind of campers. There is nothing wrong with this unless you are camping with them and your rations suddenly seem woefully inadequate and you find yourselves begging them to please share just a bite of their pancake, sausage and bacon breakfast to spare you the trauma of your Frosted Flakes without milk.

In addition to having a tent trailer that was stocked to the hilt, they also brought their canoe, a ton of toys, games, bubble whistles, glow-in-the-dark necklaces and a visit from the bead fairy who helped them make bracelets.

My contribution? Paper plates. A lot of them.

Oh, and both of my boys brought diarrhea. A lot of it. Read on …

Guest blogger Kagey is a mom of three living in southeast Centennial with her husband, Mr. Adventure and her dog. Her house is never quite clean, her clothes are always a little out of date, and she is always looking for more time to write, but at least she can laugh about it all.

It’s 4:30 a.m., and I scan the house for any missed essentials before heading to the garage, where my husband, a.k.a. Mr. Adventure, has the car warmed up, full of our sleeping children, son age 4, daughter age 2, and son age 6 months. If we’re lucky, we’ll hit the Kansas border before they wake up.

Why are we doing this crazy-long road trip, through three states, staying in three different places, with a preschooler, a potty-training pre-preschooler and an infant? Well, when you are blessed enough to have a grandmother turning 90, you don’t miss the party! We have known, barring a sad turn of events, that we would be heading to the big birthday party and family reunion this May for over a year. We had two options: the ridiculous cost of gasoline for the 953-mile drive, or the insanely ridiculous cost of airplane tickets, plus rental car and its gas.

How bad could it be? Read on …

A week ago, we attended Granby Ranch’s Summer Solstice. The resort went all out for this celebration that included fireworks, BBQs, chairlift rides, face painting, golf, crafts, a climbing wall, trampoline, massages, pony rides and mountain bike demos. To name a few.

We reallllly wanted to go on this trip because:

1) It sounded fun. Duh.

2) The following weekend would be our dreaded camping trip with the children and we wanted them to have at least one positive experience with the great outdoors. Even if it meant enjoying it from the great indoors of our slope-side condo.

If you’ve never been to Granby Ranch, you must not be a hip, nature-loving family with young children because that is 90 percent of their audience. The other 9 percent consists of suicidal mountain bikers who barrel down the resort’s new mountain bike park. The remaining 1 percent? Toileting-papering, hike-traumatizing city folk like us. Read on …

Last winter, I deemed SolVista at Granby Ranch as the ultimate family vacation and vowed to return in the summer. Guess what: I’m [going] baaaaaack!

On June 21 and 22, Granby Ranch will celebrate Summer Solstice by hosting an adventurous weekend packed with activities for the entire family. You can kick back and listen to Boulder-based country rockers, the Unknown Americans; take in a fireworks display after indulging in delicious BBQ; unwind with a chair massage by the Fraser River; join in activities from face painting, to fly-fishing the Fraser River, to hiking amid gorgeous peaks and wildflower meadows, to teeing off at the neighborhood’s 18-hole Headwaters Golf Course and biking the new SolVista Bike Park.

The Summer Solstice Celebration’s Stay & Play package is just $125 and covers all the weekend activities for the family, including Saturday night accommodations at a scenic mountain-side location, Sunday brunch and an exclusive mountain bike demo with national pro riders. For families who choose to come up just for the day, $20 covers the cost for the entire family to participate in an array of activities, complete with chairlift passes. And as always, parking is free.

For additional details, visit PlayGranbyRanch.com.

Guest writer Melissa can be found blogging at A Mom in the Burbs. While she claims it to be a work of fiction, the blog bears an eerie resemblance to her actual family of three delightful daughters (ages 9,6 and 21 (painful) months) and one incredible(ly) tired husband. She recently launched Under the Reading Tree, a Web site that has parent reviews of children’s books.

For the purposes of this post, I am going to consider myself an expert at travelling with a toddler. I am, at least, an expert at the pain and suffering associated with travelling with my toddler. In an effort to warn inform other parents, I have compiled a list of ways to possibly delay the hell small children impose on travel enjoy your trip with your little one!

1) Don’t go. Seriously. We just attempted lunch out with Toddler only to be vividly reminded as to why they invented take-out. Just borrow some nice travel DVD’s from the library. Easier on everyone. Checkout my 10 Steps to a Fun Family Outing to see why….

2) Okay, fine. If you’ve made it past #1, you are actually planning on going, blatantly ignoring my sage advice. Fine.

2) (For reals) Scale down your expectations. Read on …