Hello Everyone!

[eXp_Chick]

Originally posted by kpc
This trip sounds like an incredible experience. Tell us how you will manage your daughter. How long will she sit in the pull-along? How many hours a day are you planning on riding? She will have so many wonderful experiences, how amazing for her! It's great that she's not in school yet, no disruption there. I suppose she loves the whole camping thing, how big will your tent be?

We have a trailer for her and her absolute essentials: things like a few stuffed animals, her favorite stuffed lamb, popup books, coloring books and crayons/markers.
Because of the extremely relaxed nature of our plans we are going to, with limits!! let her guide us about length of time in the trailer. We figure some days will be more, others less. However as of now she'll sit comfortably for up to 2 hours at a time as long as she has lots of conversation back there from my husband and me while we ride which isn't a problem because my husband is a "talker"!!

Realistically we're shooting for an initial 10-15 mile per day pace at the beginning. Sounds like crawling but with the sheer amount of gear we will be carrying and the length of time we have we figure, slow is better. Eventually we will aim for the 20-25 mile per day area. We want to experience the places we are in, not just ride through them so we think a slower pace is best.
I'll have panniers loaded with the lightest gear and the trailer with our daughter while my husband will have the heavy stuff; around 100 pounds of gear in just his panniers alone and somewhere around 80 to 100 pounds more in his trailer. His bike will weigh in around 137 pounds minus him and mine will weigh around 60 pounds without me excluding trailers for both of us.

So far we're planning our riding days to be something like this:

7-8am, get up, breakfast, breaking down camp.

9-9:30am to 12-12:30pm, be on the road(unless we see something we want to explore)

Lunch(homeschooling, playtime out of the trailer, etc)until 2pm

2-4 or 5pm(depending on the time of year)Back on the road, arrive at next camping area, setup, playtime, dinner, bathing, lite schoolwork(as she gets older), normal 'home-life' activities. The keyword for each day will be, Flexibility! Also, there will be many days with no travel.

For homeschooling we will be using a combination of real-time activities(what we come across on each day will become a focal point for her. A method called Unschooling.)in connection with the Waldorf School methodology and materials. We're VERY excited by all of this for her growth and development!!

We haven't fully decided on a tent yet but we very much like 2 that are offered by REI. One has what could be described as almost like a 'mud room' just inside the flap area that we really like for the added room for gear and bikes. The other is a more traditional design and may offer less headaches.