We’re the
Wandering Fam

We’re a family of four based in Michigan. There’s Mom and Dad, Raynuv (our 4th grader who will hike anything you put in front of him), and Aryan (our 5-year-old who is mostly interested in rocks, sticks, and whatever snack is in the bag).

By day we work in tech and shuffle the kids to school and activities like every other family. By the rest of the time, we’re planning the next trip.

We’ve hiked across lava fields on the Big Island, watched bears chase salmon in Alaska, canoed on Emerald Lake in the Canadian Rockies, and done the Road to Hana with two kids who asked “are we there yet?” approximately every four minutes.

Traveling with young kids is messy, unpredictable, and occasionally involves someone crying in a parking lot. But it’s also the best thing we’ve ever done as a family. The memories stick in a way that nothing else really does.

There’s no shortage of travel blogs out there. But most of them are written as if kids don’t exist, or treat family travel as a neat lifestyle aesthetic rather than what it actually is — chaotic, expensive, and completely worth it.

We write the guide we wish we’d had before each trip. Real costs, honest takes, what actually worked with kids in tow, and what we’d do differently. That’s it.

Two full-time tech jobs, two kids, one mortgage, and a Michigan winter that makes you want to be somewhere else for a week in February. We’re not full-time travelers or trust-fund nomads — we’re a regular working family that figured out how to fly four people home from Delhi to Chicago in Swiss business class without paying business-class prices.

The short version: we run almost everything through points and miles. Flights, hotels, the occasional rental car. We’ve been doing this seriously for 4 years, have redeemed roughly 4 million points across the family, and have flown to most of the destinations on this site for a fraction of what they’d cost in cash.

Our approach is boring on purpose:

• A small, stable set of credit cards we actually understand (no churning 12 cards a year)
• Plan the trip first, then figure out the points — not the other way around
• Pay for the things points are bad at (food, experiences, the kids’ activities). Use points for the things they’re great at (premium cabins, hotels we’d never otherwise book).
• Keep enough flexibility that one canceled flight doesn’t blow up the whole vacation

If you want the actual cards and the actual numbers, What’s in Our Wallet has the full breakdown.

Got a question about a destination we’ve covered? Planning a trip and stuck on a points puzzle? Want to point out that we got something wrong? Email us at hello@thewanderingfam.com — we read everything, and we usually reply within a few days (slower during school breaks, because, you know).