To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive. - Robert Louis Stevenson

After three years of having my son learning at home, I thought that I had rid myself of my old, school-based ideas about learning and education. This summer, I discovered that I still had a lot to unlearn.

My son and I spent a month driving from Southern California to Massachusetts. I had justified the cost of the trip by telling myself that it would be educational. We planned our route together, choosing places to visit that would be fun but also good learning opportunities. Then my expectations were derailed when my son spent most of the trip not feeling well, and therefore not wanting to do many of the "educational" activities along our way. It was hard to let go of the fantasy I had built up of the ultimate homeschooling field trip.

In the past, I would have let this ruin our vacation. I would have felt obligated to push my son to see every possible museum and historical monument along our route, despite his fatigue. In our second year of homeschooling, I had almost ruined a trip to Washington DC when I had trouble letting him have the amount of 'down time' he needed, wanting to cram as many lessons as possible into our few days there. Fortunately, I learned my lesson from that trip and had already built a fair amount of free time and flexibility into the schedule for our cross-country adventure. Now, I had to consciously remind myself of the unschooling lessons I had learned over the past few years – that there are many types of education and that learning is not just a matter of absorbing facts and figures. While I kept reminding myself of important lessons the trip was teaching us, I also worked to unlearn decades of mental habit, accepting the value of just being together and having new experiences without tallying up educational accomplishments.

The heart of the 'educational' part of our trip was supposed to be the section from the Grand Canyon to Mesa Verde. However, my son started to feel ill almost as soon as we reached the Grand Canyon. We had a 15 minute view of the Canyon on the way to the medical clinic. Our main educational lesson at the Grand Canyon was learning that it has an elevation 2000 feet higher than Boulder Colorado, that one’s blood oxygen should normally be 99 and that my son’s was down to 91 – in other words, he had altitude sickness and was told to get to lower ground as soon as possible. A trip to the Flagstaff public library for a computer search led to the realization that virtually all of the southwestern leg of our trip would have to be rerouted, including Mesa Verde.

It quickly became clear that the only way to salvage the trip was to roll with the punches, be flexible, and keep a good attitude when circumstances forced us to change plans. I began to realize that this was an opportunity to model attributes that I wanted my son to learn. My mantra became ?it’s not the end of the world.? I made sure that my son knew that he could cancel the trip at any time; we were in a rental car and we could drive to the nearest airport, return the car, and hop on a plane. I reminded myself that this, too, was a learning experience – that my son was learning very important lessons about coping with a difficult situation, enjoying what you can when things don’t go as planned, and 'going with the flow'.

Over the course of our trip, we were the recipients of kindness from strangers. Some thought that I was very intrepid (or foolish) to venture on a 3500 mile car ride with no other adult. At various times, waitresses who found out that my son wasn’t feeling well gave us bags of crackers for the car or exchanged barely eaten foods for ones that might be gentler on his stomach. Motel clerks asked how he was feeling. We had several discussions about how many nice people there are in the world. And I added that to my mental list of lessons from the trip – that there are many kind, caring people in the world who are happy to help a stranger in need.

Having grown up in an urban area in New England, this trip provided some surprises for my son. For example, it was quite a shock to discover that a town we visited in Arizona did not have a book store! In Ohio, we visited friends who lived in a small town in the hills where everyone knows everyone else. And as we drove through various types of terrain, we discussed what it would be like to live there, and what it had been like for the first settlers in the days before cars and air conditioning. We drove through the desert, mountains and plains; I remembered what an education it had been the first time I drove cross-country and discovered the vastness of the United States and the wide variety of terrain and climate it encompasses. We talked about how these differences shape people’s views of the world. When we reached the plains, we talked about what it would be like to grow up there and never have seen mountains or ocean. And I reminded myself that this, too, was educational.

Of all the places we planned to visit, the one I was least interested in was Nebraska. My only previous experience with the state had been driving very quickly through on my way to California when I was in college. Although I was looking forward to staying with friends in Omaha whom I’d met on an email list, I did not have any great expectation for that leg of our trip. To our surprise, Nebraska proved to be the highlight of our trip! In addition to having a great time with our friends, the Omaha Zoo is outstanding, with indoor rainforest and desert exhibits that kept us enthralled. One more lesson – you never know where you will have a special experience.

Before our trip, some friends and family members had wondered how we could handle four weeks of constant togetherness. I was surprised by that concern – after all, we are homeschoolers and spend a lot of time together even when we are home. We alternated visiting friends and staying in motels, and learned that we needed a balance of the two. Time with friends gave each of us a chance to play with our age mates, while motels gave us privacy and 'down' time. We learned about our mixture of introversion and extroversion, and we discussed our discoveries. We learned to make compromises when we had different interests and needs. Driving 3500 miles meant spending many hours together in the car. Sometimes we listened to audiobooks, sometimes we talked, sometimes we sat in silence. Of course we fought occasionally, but no more than we do when we are not on vacation.

Yes, I still wish that we’d been able to do all the 'educational' activities we planned for the trip. And of course I wish that my son had been well. Still, the trip proved educational in unexpected ways, furthering my 'deschooling' and helping me learn to treasure the moment for what it is, rather than for what it teaches. I learned that my son is a fun, interesting travel companion (even if he does want to visit every sports hall of fame in existence). And we both learned the joy of returning home after a long trip.

Meredith Warshaw lives in New England with her son. Meredith is creator of the Uniquely Gifted website (http://www.uniquelygifted.org) and works from home advising families with gifted/special needs children.