Posts About Wonder Year

Angela Heisten, Annika Paradise and Julie Frieder

The Birth of a Book

December 21, 2022

I looked online for the guidebook that would help me plan, and I couldn’t find one. I wanted the equivalent of a Lonely Planet guide for a Wonder Year, the nuts and bolts for how to actually pull this thing off.

Welcome to Wonder Year!

December 15, 2022

This blog is a space to share inspiration, questions and actionable tips for extended family travel. It is also an accompaniment to our forthcoming book, Wonder Year: A Guide to Extended Family Travel and Educational Adventures.

Recent Posts

Finding Community on the Go: Why We Don’t Stick to Just One Travel TribeNovember 27, 2025 - 7:27 pm
Guest Post by Alex Parrish @saltyvagabonds When we first stepped into this travel lifestyle, most of our days were spent with the boating crowd. It made sense, we were living on the water, and naturally, those were the people around us. But over time, our circles grew. Not because we set out to “find more […]
Stories from the Road – Moab, UtahOctober 14, 2025 - 11:52 am
Moonflower Canyon is spectacularly situated against deep-red cliffs streaked with black vertical lines called desert varnish. Since it’s on land that’s part of the Bureau of Land Management and not actually a national park, dogs can roam and kids can climb freely. We’re on the outskirts of Moab down Kane Creek Road, a popular route […]
Family Life on the Road: Interpersonal DynamicsOctober 14, 2025 - 11:51 am
Planning for Launch Many families experience transitions galore during their worldschooling journey, sometimes even before they leave home. As your launch date nears, feeling sorrow or grief is perfectly normal. It’s also totally fine to feel none of that and just be excited about the trip ahead. When it comes time, involve your kids […]
Stories from the Road – Somewhere in the Amazon, BrazilOctober 14, 2025 - 11:48 am
They tell us not to take anything out of the jungle. It is our last day at Pousada Uacari. Situated at a tight bend in the Japurá River, a wide feeder to the Amazon about a mile away, it is a place so remote that its location was described to us simply as “two […]
Coming Home – Angela’s FamilyOctober 14, 2025 - 11:47 am
I was standing on the musty, shadowed wraparound porch of an old farmhouse, looking for the first time at a view that would soon become familiar. Mark and I were on a late-December house-hunting trip to Colorado while the boys were with family in Ohio. A week before, we’d taken our final safari drive […]
Stories from the Road – Naxos, GreeceOctober 14, 2025 - 11:46 am
Past the freshwater spring, the well-maintained trail has been petering steadily out. We find ourselves using arms and legs to scamper up the hillside. A goatherd and his tinkling, shaggy charges are on the opposite valley wall. “I see it!” says Lucy, pointing to a doorway cemented into the hillside. “Finally!” says Kai. […]
Family Travel and Worldschooling: A Resources ListOctober 14, 2025 - 11:45 am
Below is a curated list of resources to help you start planning for a worldschooling journey. We’ve aimed to provide credible sources, but inclusion in this collection does not indicate our endorsement or affiliation. Accommodations Airbnb An online site for hosts to list available places, and travelers to book accommodations and experiences. The site has […]
Stories from the Road – Deadvlei, NamibiaOctober 14, 2025 - 11:43 am
We wake at 3:30 a.m., having committed to a desert safari in Namib-Naukluft National Park that starts at 4:00. Unlike a typical safari into a fauna-rich savanna, our aim today is to explore the massive sand dunes in the oldest desert in the world. At this hour, and without moisture to cloud the stars, […]
Worldschooling: Subject-Area Starter KitsOctober 14, 2025 - 11:42 am
As we shared in this blog on creating a worldschooling roadmap, we want to encourage you to experiment with education, be spontaneous, and trust your instincts. To help you get things started, the following section provides some techniques that worked well for us and other families we interviewed. Many activities and prompts are interdisciplinary, so […]
Stories from the Road – Weminuche Wilderness, Durango, ColoradoOctober 14, 2025 - 11:36 am
Charlie, my hubby, stays back with Max, our dog, while Johnny and I go on a multiday wilderness excursion with our good friends Kaitilin, David, and their kids, West and Zoe. With full backpacks and scuffed hiking boots, our crew disembarks from the Narrow Gauge tourist train in Elk Park, a grassy subalpine meadow along […]

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