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Virtual travel can be a real adventure

By ALLISON KAPLAN SOMMER

(April 15) - Some families enjoying extended trips are taking a whole host of unseen companions along with them - courtesy of the World Wide Web.

Who hasn't fantasized about the romance of extended travel - hopping into a camper or a boat and taking off to see the world? But the gap between fantasy and reality can often seem impossible to overcome, particularly after one has settled down and is raising a family.

Luckily, in the age of the Internet, it is possible to participate vicariously in the adventures of those who actually take up the challenge of embarking on a long family odyssey. A growing number of families who travel are using the World Wide Web to record their trips, educate others, and inspire those who only dream to get up and undertake a similar challenge.

From the moment Mark Blondin, his wife and three teenaged children decided to launch their nine-month camper adventure across the continental US and Hawaii between September 1996 and June 1997, the Internet played a key role in their plans. The Blondins had just enrolled their children in a new school: a science- and technology-based charter school near their Michigan home.

For the first four weeks the kids attended school physically, then took off for what the family dubbed as "Assignment America," promising to record their travels for their teachers and schoolmates on the Web so the trip would be an educational experience for all.

"Developing the website to chronicle our experiences became an integral part of our adventure. The school loaned us a laptop computer and digital camera," recounted Mark Blondin. "Our local community college volunteered space on their server for our website, and directed us to the technical people that would help us launch our project."

THE BIGGEST challenge for the family on the road was finding phone lines to connect to the Internet in some of their more remote destinations. "Very quickly we got adept at finding places like computer stores, hotels and Radio Shacks that were open to us using their phone lines," said Blondin.

"We accessed from some very unusual places, like the information desk at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. For about an hour we transferred files, checked e-mail and looked up information on the Internet, while handing out maps and directing visitors to various locations in the museum."

The search for phone lines was a "natural icebreaker and conversation starter" Blondin added, and the family usually ended up chatting and showing off their web site to strangers and discussing families, traveling, education, and technology with the new acquaintances they made during their quests.

Often their new friends would send them e-mail later on during the trip. Blondin believes that the ability to send and receive e-mail was vital to breaking the sense of isolation that can invade such a long trip, particularly for teens.

"E-mail from home, friends we met along the way, and complete strangers who discovered our website provided encouragement, support, and an acknowledgment that what we were doing was invaluable for our family," said Blondin. "We got several messages, many from complete strangers, telling their stories of family trips, defining moments of their youth and families. These kept us going and reinforced our commitment.

"At times money issues invaded our dream. It seems at the time of greatest doubt we would get an e-mail from someone that started, 'I think you are so brave...' or "I wish we had done something like that....'"

The Blondins took the educational aspect of their "Assignment America" extremely seriously, describing all of the art institutes, aquariums, zoos and national parks they visited, and what they learned there. Their children took a particularly keen interest in science, so in places like Big Bend National Park in southwest Texas they compiled web pages about the plant, animal, and geological life of the area for their site.

The site contains a map of their journey, as well as links for the websites of the places they visited, where they exist.

"Could we have done all of this without technology? Certainly. Would the adventure have been as rich? Not even close. We were pioneers on a new frontier. That frontier exists only now, in the latter part of the 20th century," said Blondin…”

back to: Blondins' Assignment America