Five years ago when Anne Schopen of Maple Grove let her parents take her 4-year-old daughter Ava on a ten-day road trip to Pennsylvania, it was the first time Ava had spent that much solo time with her grandparents. Schopen wasn’t worried, though. “For me it was really easy to let her go because I trust my parents so inherently,” she explains.
That is, until Ava was returned to Anne and her husband, Dan, with a yappy new friend: a bichon frise named Chappie. “Her parents were shocked, but they hadn’t seen Ava in a week and a half so they couldn’t say no!” laughs grandmother Barb Schopen, 61.
Barb and her husband Bob, 63, have since made it a tradition to take 9-year-old rock enthusiast Ava on one- or two-week trips every summer. Together the threesome has searched for sapphires in Montana, dug for rubies and emeralds in the Carolinas, and wandered the crimson sandstone of Zion National Park in Utah.
Since the mid-1980s Elderhostel has offered intergenerational trips that continue to grow in scope and number: in 2009 the organization offered more than 200 programs (180 domestic, 30 international) specifically for grandparents and grandchildren. “Part of it was demand and part of it was the suggestion of our program providers, who thought it would be a wonderful experience for two generations to get together without the parents around,” says Elderhostel’s Despina Gakopoulos. The trips range from a Harry Potter-themed journey through England to skiing the Tetons in Wyoming, all with an emphasis on learning. Other travel companies, from cruise lines to tours, are picking up on the trend.
Adventures with Grandma
When the oldest of her nine grandchildren hit their tweens, Jeanne Cloud of Northfield decided to take each child on a special trip by him- or herself. The first granddaughter, now 23, chose a trip to New York City. The next two boys toured the great sports halls of fame. But, the next year, her granddaughter Kendra asked about visiting a foreign country.
“I had to think about that a little bit,” Cloud remembers. But Kendra’s request to see “the city with water for roads” sparked a sense of adventure in her grandmother, at that time newly widowed. “So my daughter did some research and found Adventures by Disney,” Cloud says. “She said, ‘Mom this looks like a great way to travel with your grandchildren.’”
After that first tour of Italy, Cloud and her grandchildren have been to Spain, Costa Rica, and Peru, with a trip to Switzerland in the plans for this summer. It’s safe to say that she is hooked. “I don’t even look at anything else,” she says. She adds that she and her second husband are considering taking one of Disney’s adults-only trips.
Adventures by Disney offers about two dozen tour options on nearly every continent. The meticulously planned trips are designed to take much of the work out of travel — from planning to transporting bags to making sure there are American-style meals available for weary young travelers — so that parents and grandparents can enjoy their time with the kids.
Cloud’s trips with her grandchildren have allowed her to indulge her own sense of adventure, from whitewater rafting to cooking lessons in an Italian castle. Her favorite memory, she says, is ziplining in Costa Rica. “I had been there before and had the option [to try ziplining] and didn’t and always regretted it. So I thought, ‘This time I’m going.’ My grandson Teddy wasn’t really sure he wanted to do it but he did it because Grandma wanted to go.”
Young sailors
Many other grandparents opt for self-designed experiences. For Vicki McEvoy and her husband Paul of Minneapolis, both in their mid-50s, that means taking the grandkids out on their 37-foot sailboat “Nokomis” (the Ojibwe word for grandmother).
“I think the parents like the idea of the kids coming with us because when they’re on the boat it’s fun but it’s also about responsibility and safety,” says McEvoy, who expects her young sailors to help with cooking, cleaning, and dishes while they sail around the Apostle Islands in Lake Superior. They also have to obey one hard and fast rule: “When you’re asked to do something on the sailboat you have to do it right away; you don’t get to ask why until later,” explains McEvoy.
The kids like the trips because they get to be around grandma and grandpa without parents hovering nearby. “The grandkids can just be who they are,” explains McEvoy. “The funny thing is, they’re easier to get along with when their parents aren’t around!”
Tina Maynor, McEvoy’s daughter-in-law, says the sailing trips give her kids Gus, 9, and Maddy, 12, a better chance to bond with their grandparents. “The kids get life wisdom from their grandparents, but it’s not in the form of lectures,” Maynor explains. “The trips help them make the most of that multigenerational connection.”
Grandparents acknowledge that chasing grandchildren on the road or on deck qualifies more as a trip than a “vacation” in the classical sense. “We don’t take our eyes off her for one minute, even now,” says Schopen. And, of course, naps are appropriate at all ages.
