Nicky's Space: Touring with Teens

Sunday, May 5, 2013

Touring with Teens

I think I am going to write a new blog series of outings to take with your teens.

It's harder than you think.

There are so many blogs out there with ideas for preschoolers and grade schoolers and I used a good number of them when those years seemed endless.

And here I am with teenagers.

We have a great list of "favourite" places we love to go like Granville Island, Bellingham, Steveston, the beach anywhere, Westham Island, Seattle, Portland, Disneyland (ok our list is longer than I thought)..... These places all have many aspects that work for us all as a family... food, photography, adventure.....

I knew I was going to be solo parenting today so I wanted to try something or someplace new and local.

I decided to take them to the Museum of Anthropology. At the University of British Columbia.

But the sun was so gorgeous that we decided an indoor adventure was out of the question!

So after a little sleuthing I decided to take my teens to the UBC Botanical Garden, especially to the Tree Top Canopy experience.

For locals - there is a GREAT deal you can get - a family pass to MOA, The Gardens, The Nitobe Garden and the Beaty Biodiversity museum for $85 plus tax- good for 6 months.

We had an awesome afternoon wandering along dappled pathways

There may have been some jumping! I think is is our "thing now".... maybe we will have a series of jumps around the world on our trip! This may also be a way to engage teens!

And then we got to the Canopy. We did a guided tour (40 minutes) with Matt from Greenheart. It was a lot of fun....quite a lot of wobbly walking and climbing and you get quite high above the forest floor. Very informative and lots of fun!