Traci Suppa with her daughter Emilia, 8, and her son Leo, 15.
Traci Suppa was 7 years old when her father got a job working for an
oil company and moved the entire family from Long Island to Saudi Arabia. She
spent the next 7 years living in the Mid-East and traveling with her family
across Europe and Asia. Reluctant at first, she soon grew to love her family’s
globetrotting excursions.
“As I got older I began to realize that this was something special,
that none of my relatives were getting to experience this,” she recalls. Her
adventurous spirit hasn’t waned.
Read more: 5 Hudson Valley destinations
tourists love, but we locals tend to overlook
Now living in Hopewell Junction with a family of her own, Suppa has
turned her love of travel into a career: First as the Marketing Director for
the Westchester County Board of Tourism, and now as an editor on Amtrak’s New
York by Rail travel guides.
“I’m fortunate to
have a home office, so I’m here when the kids get off the bus,” she says. “My
profession is very flexible, because I have some control over my deadlines and
work hours. If I need to stay home with a sick kid, I fit the work in — usually
at 9 p.m.”
Read more: How to tour a museum with your child
What Suppa’s probably best known isn’t her day job at all. It’s her
travel blog, Go Big or Go Home. In it, she
chronicles her adventures as she travels with her husband, Matt, and their
children Leo, 15, and Emilia, 8, looking to visit the world’s largest . . .
well, anything.
That has included the world’s largest watering can in Utica, the
world’s largest accredited big cat sanctuary (think lions and tigers) in Tampa,
and some attractions a lot closer to home.
“We love the world’s largest kaleidoscope in Mt. Tremper,” she says. “Walkway Over the Hudson is the
world’s longest elevated pedestrian park. The Chuang Yen monastery in Kent has
the largest Buddha in the western hemisphere. And we enjoyed going to
Kelder’s Farm in Kerhonkson
to visit Gnome Chomsky.” (At the time of their visit, the 13.5-foot-tall Gnome Chomsky
was the world’s largest garden gnome. He has since been dethroned by an
18-foot-tall gnome in Poland, and a 15-foot-tall gnome in Iowa.)
Traci
and her family visit Gnome Chomsky at Kelder’s Farm in Kerhonkson.
All of this traveling makes Suppa
the Hudson Valley’s resident expert on road trips with kids. She recalls how
much more she and her brother began to enjoy their childhood travels once their
father finally started letting them pick some of their activities, and advises
parents today to do the same.
Read more: 6 travel activities to entertain and educate kids
“When you’re starting to plan a
trip, no matter if it’s 20 miles away or 2,000 miles away, you have to think
about what’s going to appeal to your kids and the best way to do that is to get
them involved in the planning process,” she says. “If you have them invested in
it from the get-go, everyone’s more likely to have a good time.”
Suppa also learned the hard way to set your expectations realistically
as to how much you can see in one day, and to organize your days around your
kids’ schedules.
“When they were younger, I knew at what point in the day they’d start
melting down,” she says. “Respect the nap.”
Sometimes, even the best laid plans can be quickly waylaid by Mother
Nature. Last year, Suppa and her family travelled to Providence and ran smack
into a blizzard. They threw their plans out the window and spent the weekend
holed up in the hotel watching movies together while the storm raged outside.
Learning to go with the flow has been one of the toughest things that Suppa has
encountered as both a travel writer and a mom. “I’m a control freak, so becoming a parent was a real
eye-opener,” she says. “I’ve learned to let a lot of things go, the most recent
being my daughter’s wardrobe.”
So, parents who fret that your children will grow up to be uncouth
dullards unless they take a pricey trip to Paris or Rome, take heart. You don’t
have to travel far to have a great time.
“Just the fact that you're
getting out of your regular routine is enough,” she says. “Travel doesn’t have
to be across the world. It could be across town! As long as you’re exposing
them to new things, new ideas, new foods; to me that’s what travel is and
that’s where the educational value comes in.”
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