Happy 7th birthday, TravelswithBaby.com!
We returned late last night with more than 1550 new miles on the new (as in “gently used”) car from our latest road trip adventure and more than a few bugs on the grill. I humbly admit that cramming 13 hours of driving into the last 2 days may have been pushing it, even for our family, but how often can you start the day watching sea lions on the docks and petting sharks, then watch a gray whale swim right below you in a freshwater river, move on to admire a herd of elk in repose before the Pacific waves, AND drive your family car through a tree all in a single day–before getting your hubby home to be at work the following morning? Yesterday was long, but it certainly had its magic moments!
At one point during this journey, it occured to me that our entire family of 5 had already driven all portions of Interstate 5 between Vancouver, British Columbia (where it becomes 99) and San Diego, California – though thankfully not in a single trip considering what else we’ve been packing in during the past couple of years! (Google says this would take 23 hours without stopping – clearly they have not adjusted for traffic and road construction!) When I realized my youngest had actually accomplished this West Coast feat of roadtripping before his second birthday, I had to give him extra big kisses for his amazing patience with us – and praise his sisters for being so entertaining. For those who aren’t familiar, it looks like this:
During this road trip, we also quietly passed the 7th anniversary of when I aquired travelswithbaby.com, having decided that “Travels with Baby” would be a very suitable name for the book I was outlining and proposing to publishers, and that the site could make an interesting online companion. You can take a peek at the first page I put up in August of 2004 here in the Wayback Machine, and browse other pages to see its various incarnations: http://web.archive.org/web/20040901012409/https://travelswithbaby.com/
How… it’s… grown. đ
Last month, the website – not counting this blog at it’s own subdomain – got more than 672,000 hits with over 27,000 unique visitors stopping by. I can’t say I’ve done things perfectly, or that I don’t have a lot more to learn — or that there isn’t an infinite list of improvements and additions I want to make to the website, but considering that much of that work was done with various babies in my lap or while toddlers were pulling my hair and while trying to simultaneously write and publish books, keep posting to this blog–and, you know, plan a few trips, I’d say that’s not too shabby for a one-woman marching band.
Just think what might happen one day when all three kids are in school full time… Thank you to all of you who have supported the site, and happy birthday TravelswithBaby.com!
Safe journeys,
Shelly Rivoli
Author of the award-winning Travels with Baby guidebooks
All content of this blog (c) Shelly Rivoli 2007 – 2011