The bone-dry cabin air is recycled. Spaces are ridiculously cramped. Passengers don’t always have ready access to food, water, and restrooms. It’s a fight waiting to happen—and happen it does.

Flash points include seat territory disputes, scuffles over luggage space, and arguments about unruly kids. The reluctant referees are flight attendants who are part waiters, part playground monitors, part sentinels against potential terrorism.

Here’s how to short-circuit five common midair melees:

Right-to-recliners: The average economy-class seat offers little legroom — the “pitch” between seats is around 28 to 34 inches — but when the guy in front of you reclines his seat as far as it goes, you’re wedged in. Airlines created this problem by squeezing an extra row or two of seats on a plane, but it’s up to passengers to solve it. Not the easiest thing, it turns out.

On one side, you have those who think because they paid for the seat, they should be able to use it any way they want. On the other are folks who believe the seat should never be reclined, but simmer in resentment when the person in front does. You could jam the seat in front with a device like the controversial Knee Defender (frowned on by the FAA, though no airline I know of has banned it), which is all but guaranteed to start a rumble.

The real solution is understanding that the space must be shared. Ask before leaning into it. Or, spend extra for a premium economy seat, which comes with a little more legroom. Another option: Ask to be seated in an exit row.

Armrest wars: The tight squeeze in economy class comes from all sides. With only 17 inches of space per seat, plus whatever you can negotiate on the armrests, many passengers find themselves packed in like wheat in a shock.

I recall the case of Arthur Berkowitz, who on a flight from Anchorage to Philadelphia was seated next to a passenger “of size,” whose girth “required both armrests to be raised up and allowed for his body to cover half of my seat.” Berkowitz stood for most of the trip, instead. But even when there’s room, who owns the armrests? If you’re seated next to a window or aisle, one of the armrests is yours to do with as you wish. But in the middle seat it’s not so simple.

Pushy passengers simply claim the space as if it’s a landgrab, defending it against your elbow incursions with occasional “ahems” and glares. Don’t become that person. Introduce yourself and smile. If you’ve done that early on, an armrest discussion later won’t be a tinderbox.

Overhead bins: The space above your seat does not belong to you exclusively. Overhead bins are a source of endless conflict, especially now, when passengers max out their carryons in order to avoid paying checked-luggage fees.

The answer is to carry a soft-sided bag, smaller than the maximum size allowed, that will fit, if necessary, in the space under your seat.

What about the rest of your stuff? Check it or ship it ahead.

Scofflaws: It’s true — failure to comply with a crew member’s instructions is a federal crime. Offenses range from minor infractions, like unbuckling a seat belt before the plane has come to a complete stop, to more serious violations such as making a call on your smartphone while the plane is on final approach.

It’s hard to know which rules are there for your safety and which ones are just silly. For example, the rules prohibiting the use of in-flight electronics, which are being reconsidered as I write this, seem oddly inconsistent. Why am I not allowed to use my iPad, but the pilots can use theirs?

More germane to this article, what’s a passenger to do when someone breaks the rules? Tattle? Look the other way? As someone who has been both witness and perpetrator (I’m pretty addicted to my devices), my advice is to let go of the little stuff.

The teen playing Samurai, a graphic video game, next to my five-year-old daughter? Beheading the enemy in front of a kindergartner is uncouth. But instead of making a fuss, I switched seats with my daughter.

OPKs: There’s nothing that sets off the fireworks as much as Other People’s Kids. On a recent flight from Honolulu to Los Angeles, I watched an elderly passenger who had the bad luck of being surrounded by screaming kids, one of them, unfortunately, my daughter, who, he remarked, “acted as if the plane was her personal playground.”

I did not argue. She was behaving that way, and try as I did, couldn’t be persuaded to just sit down and watch the romantic comedy playing on the flickering TV screens five rows away. Next to this hapless man, a newborn wailed. Behind him, a three-year-old with extreme aerophobia clung to her mother, weeping. It was the flight from hell for this poor gentleman. And yeah, for me, too.

OPKs are unfixable. All the responsible parenting in the world can’t make up for boredom or pressure in the ears or a really bad in-flight movie. May I recommend a nice pair of earplugs?

But while we need to give kids a pass, adults need to stop the childish behavior. Everything you need to know about surviving a flight, you probably learned in kindergarten. Use common sense. Think about others. Share. Flying isn’t going to get any easier. I know what my mom would say: “Now, Chris, be nice.”

Christopher Elliott serves as resident consumer advocate and ombudsman for National Geographic Traveler, and writes the “Insider” column for the magazine.

Here are a few strategies we picked up along the way:

Don’t overplan. It’s possible to do too much research and plan for each moment. Leave some things to serendipity, otherwise your itinerary will get too cluttered and nothing about your trip will be spontaneous. And the spontaneity can be half the fun. After a few cross-country trips, we felt more comfortable winging it, and we made some great discoveries as a result. Like Deschutes National Forest, the dormant volcanic near Bend, Oregon, which we didn’t know about until we decided to pull over for a picnic lunch.

Simple is better. No matter how complicated your itinerary, there are ways to streamline the process to include the important information and exclude the extraneous details that will be insignificant until you arrive at your destination. For example, we whittled a list of recommended restaurants down to a hyperlink that we could access later, instead of trying to save everything to a document.

Share your itinerary. Letting people know where you are is helpful when you’re on a multi-stop itinerary. When your hosts know where you’re coming from, where you’re supposed to be, and where you’re going, you can avoid all kinds of trouble. That’s why car rental companies ask for your flight itinerary – they aren’t really interested in which airline you’re using. They want to track your flight so that if your plane is late, they can hold your rental vehicle.

Pad your schedule. Remember the 15-minute rule: For every one hour on the road you should plan 15 out of the car. (And not necessarily every hour; we would drive three hours and pull over for half an hour or so, give or take.) You need to stretch, eat and take a break from sitting. Also, you can never plan too much time for meals and national parks. If someone recommends half a day in a national park or forest, take a whole day. You won’t regret it.

Be flexible. Life is too short (and so’s your trip) to lock yourself into a schedule. If you see an opportunity to do something interesting, to make an unexpected detour, or to extend your trip – do it! Just don’t forget to share your new itinerary with everyone along the way. Our favorite detour? The Grand Canyon, a day-long diversion on a road trip from California back to Florida. It was way off our designated route. And so worth it.

Those two words are enough to make the average reader click away. But they shouldn’t be.

Family travel — at least the way it’s often portrayed by mainstream media — is predictable and completely boring. The family trip happens during a sanctioned vacation period and takes you to the same old places, like Yellowstone, a Disney park or the the beach.

No wonder you don’t want to read another story about family travel. You probably think you’ve seen it all.

You haven’t.

Family travel is a real adventure

Eleven years ago, when I found out I was going to be a father, I thought I’d have to hang up my travel-writing saddle.

I couldn’t see myself covering family-friendly cruises, children’s museums, and zoos, for a living. But beyond that, I had a little trouble with the image of family travel propped up by marketers and family travel “experts”: that every family trip is smiles and togetherness, and, above all, safe.

I’d been raised to know better.

Ever tried to pack a family of five into a 1953 Volkswagen Beetle for a weekend ski trip in the Austrian alps? My father, a Presbyterian minister, did. (Our skis rode with us in the vehicle.) Ever slept on an airport floor with your folks? I have. Have your parents ever made good on their promise to pull over the car and make you walk home? Mine have a time or two.

Point is, family travel is a real adventure fraught with delicious conflict, miscues, and misadventures — but does anyone want to know the unvarnished truth about it?

Erysse Elliott refuses to pose for a photo with her brothers in Salem, Massachusetts. (Photograph by Christopher Elliott)

All the signs pointed to “no.” When I pitched stories about odd places to take your kids, my editors invariably countered with a question: Did I have anything on theme parks or beach adventures for their “summer family fun” issue?

What’s wrong with an idealistic view of family travel? Well, almost everything. Fashion magazines that pretend every woman is a size zero perpetrate the same kind of fraud. The real world looks much different.

To be clear, there’s nothing wrong with spending a week at the Magic Kingdom or camping in Yosemite — I’ve done both and they are lots of fun. But to suggest that every family trip fit that mold is as absurd as saying we should all look like runway models.

Likewise, it’s true that a vast majority of family trips happen during school breaks. Of course they do. That’s when the kids are available. There’s nothing wrong with that, either. But to imply that there’s no other time to travel with the young ones — that’s just wrong.

Bad parents?

Not long after our first son, Aren, started walking, I tried to strap him to my back on Whistler’s black-diamond ski runs. (Not allowed, said the lifties.) Mom, a scuba instructor, once inquired about taking a one-year-old on the boat with her. (Again, no.)

Our children were never harmed, even as we tested our parental boundaries.

Aren, Christopher, Iden, Kari and Erysse Elliott at the start of their extended family trip.

That’s when we decided to record our adventures online, informally at first. We documented every trip, from Aren’s first cruise to his first international flight to London. On that journey, he (and we) explored more Roman ruins and medieval castles than tourist traps, which was is exactly as it should be.

Over time, and with the support of other forward-looking bloggers, our audience began to warm to the idea that there was life beyond amusement parks and children’s museums. I think this view was further validated when National Geographic Traveler decided to start Family Time, a blog devoted to the view that family travel can be a true adventure.

I’ll admit, it isn’t always easy. Some readers pinned the “bad parent” label on us for letting our kids skip school and for revealing their real names online.

I find these criticisms amusing. The world is the best classroom, something the smartest teachers understand. And at a time when privacy is a fading relic of a bygone era, refusing to show photos of our kids or making up fake names for them would probably attract the wrong kind of attention, anyway.

Things became to change when Aren’s siblings joined us, and our adventures became more ambitious. It became our mission as parents — and writers — to prove that you can be away and also be at home, that travel can be the ultimate classroom. To do that, we had to turn convention on its head, starting with the premise that everything you thought you knew about family travel is probably wrong.

In the 21st century, when definitions of “education” are being challenged as they’ve never been before, you don’t have to wait until September to start schooling your child, or until Thanksgiving to take a family trip. Plus, there are more opportunities than ever to get up and go with your whole family in tow – and to keep your career while you’re at it.

We spent much of the fall in Hawaii. The kids went to school (online) in the morning and, in the afternoon, were off national parks and learning about the islands with their parents in tow. (Fun? Sure, but it’s also enriching and inspiring.)

Why now?

It’s time to think differently about family travel.

With so many parents working from home and with kids being educated in all kinds of creative new ways, different is the new normal.

The idea of untethering yourself from an old-school education, of not living at a permanent address — or, at the very least, of taking an unconventional “family” vacation — is becoming an exciting reality for some families.

Definitely for ours. And maybe for yours, too.

Christopher Elliott writes the Insider column for National Geographic Traveler. He’s traveling across the country with his family and blogging about the experience at Away Is Home. Follow him on Twitter.

You know — jagged peaks plunging into hidden rainforest valleys, beaches with impossibly blue waves thundering ashore, and of course, endless summer weather.

That’s Kauai. But that’s not all there is to it. Behind that postcard facade there’s a funky island that your kids can connect with. Ours did.

A canyon and a forbidden island

The signature attraction in Kauai is Waimea Canyon, also known as “the Grand Canyon of the Pacific.” If you only have a few days to spend in Kauai, put this at the top of your list. Think of it as a tropical Grand Canyon, because — well, that’s what it is. It’s a mile wide, 14 miles long, and roughly 3,600 feet deep, and on a clear day you can see all the way to the secretive (and privately owned) island of Niihau.

Chickens are ubiquitous on Kauai. (Photograph by Emily Murphy, My Shot)

Kids don’t just notice the big things, like the terrifying drop-off in front of them or the diminutive guard-rails separating them from the abyss. But they do notice animals. Like the free-range chickens my 10-year-old son was obsessed with photographing (and which he later made into a collage using PhotoShop).

My daughter paid no attention to fowl or the scenery, and instead set her gaze on the mountain goats scaling the cliffs. Who knew there were mountain goats in Hawaii?

The real danger lurks in the valley, where shops line the road selling authentic and intricate Niihau shell lei necklaces that can set you back thousands of dollars a pop. They managed to take us for five aloha shirts. Isn’t that what visitors to Hawaii are supposed to do to support the local economy?

One of these days I’m going to return to Waimea Canyon with a full-frame DSLR camera and a tripod and take real pictures of the place. It is unspeakably beautiful, but in a surreal way. How else do you describe the odd confluence of livestock and extinct volcanoes?

Espressos and … puppies?

Kauai isn’t as well known for its coffee as Hawaii’s Big Island. That’s a shame, as we discovered when we visited Kauai Coffee, which offers free tours of its working plantation and plenty of samples. We found the coffee to have more character than some of the Kona coffees we tried a few weeks before. But, then again, Kona coffees are known for their subtlety.

Waimea Canyon, "the Grand Canyon of the Pacific." (Photograph by Daniel Lockhart, My Shot)

A word of warning: When you visit a coffee plantation with your kids, remember to keep an eye on them. We failed to pay close attention and all three of them decided to try the coffee, too. I caught them as they were pouring themselves a sampler of espresso. It wasn’t their first cup, either.

You can probably imagine what happened next. The sedate retail floor became a playground for three caffeinated children. At some point, if I’m not mistaken, they decided to chase a chicken, because there are chickens everywhere in Kauai. We were thankful there were no puppies to be found — the only thing that could have made the situation worse.

For what it’s worth, Kauai’s coffee is really good. Even the kids liked it.

Gimme some sugar

Kauai is known for its historical sugar plantations, and the one we visited came with its own train. The Kauai Plantation Railway offers two tours: a short one that takes you around the old plantation by rail, and a longer one that includes a guided hike on the property and lunch. If you’ve ever wondered what sugar cane looks like, how it’s grown and processed, opt for the longer tour. The most fun part – at least for the kids – came at the end, when our guide brought us to the mango and starfruit groves, and allowed us to pick and sample some of the fruit.

Kauai is the kind of place where you can really get lost. Once the kids are older, I’ll bring my hiking boots and backpack and set off into the rainforests to discover the real island. But you don’t have to rough it to get an authentic experience. Just take your kids to some of the attractions, and you’ll see things they won’t show you in any tourism brochures.

And you’ll thank them for it…once the caffeine buzz wears off.

Related: 

• Best Family Trips: Kauai

You can see couples holding hands in Lahaina, cuddling up in a private cabana at the Four Seasons, and getting up early to see the sunrise on Haleakala.

Haleakala Crater at sunrise. (Photograph by Jeremie Schatz, My Shot)

And let’s be honest: the last thing these newlyweds want is for everything to be ruined by someone else’s kids.

We know, because we took our kids to Maui. We took them shopping in Lahaina (our first mistake), visited the Four Seasons (our second), and then dragged them up to Haleakala (numero tres).

I’m kidding.

But there were a few moments when we felt as if our kids — who are not known for being quiet and demure — were in the wrong place.

As it turns out, that wasn’t quite true.

Upscale — and that’s the way they like it

Maui is one of the most beautiful Hawaiian islands. If you don’t believe me, take a drive along Highway 360, which runs from Kahului to Hana, on the eastern side of the island. Around each hairpin turn, you’ll see impossibly beautiful seascapes, lush rain forests and waterfalls you thought only existed in the movies.

Along the famous Hana Highway in Maui. (Photograph by Anthony Burton, My Shot)

But if you have young children, you’ll need a stiff drink once you reach Hana. Want to make a rest stop to buy banana bread from a food truck? Better keep an eye on your youngsters or they could slide down a steep embankment into the Pacific.

Our kids didn’t worry about any of this. But we did.

It’s not that Maui doesn’t try. We dropped by the Four Seasons to visit a friend, and the hotel offered not only a children’s menu in its restaurant, but also a menu for teens. Among its “kid-friendly” amenities were a game room and goodie bags for kids when they check in. They even had a kids pool. But that didn’t make it any easier to escape the stares of the other guests — the ones that said, “You brought your kids here?”

Is there anything for children?

It’s a fact that finding things to do with kids in Maui, an island with a well-deserved reputation for being exclusive and expensive, isn’t always easy. Even the attractions you’d assume would appeal to the little ones aren’t really ideal for children, especially very young ones.

(For example, don’t even think of taking your toddler to the waterfalls at the lower Kīpahulu entrance of Haleakala National Park. It requires hiking boots, a good sense of balance, and swimming skills. I almost lost my balance a few times trying to negotiate the slippery rocks.)

The main drag in Lahaina. (Photograph by Roberta Niver, My Shot)

But turns out Maui does have a few kid-friendly attractions. The educational Maui Ocean Center, for instance, is well worth a visit with the little ones (and conveniently located near restaurants that serve yummy soft cookies and shave-ice). On our last visit to Maui, we also went horseback riding in the upcountry, and felt right at home and welcome.

But this time we stayed in Lahaina, on the southern side of the island — which is a historic but hopelessly touristy town that reminded us a lot of our hometown, Orlando — surrounded by honeymooners and newly disembarked cruise ship passengers in search of souvenirs. Not a person under 21 to be seen, save our children. We probably should have known better than to take them into an art gallery (and shouldn’t have been surprised when its owner scolded our son for being too loud).

The tepid welcome continued as we walked through town. Some merchants on Maui are crystal clear about their preferences: they have signs outside their stores warning parents to attend to their children or (the more lighthearted version) promising to present unsupervised kids with “an espresso and a kitten.”

Boo!

Just as we were about to give up on Maui and spend the balance of our visit doing homeschool lessons and visiting the pool at our vacation rental, we heard about the Keiki Halloween Parade. The Hawaiian word for child is keiki, and at first we could hardly believe there were enough kids on Maui to hold an event like this.

But, boy were we wrong!

Suddenly, downtown Lahaina was overrun by kids in Halloween costumes — and some of the same eagle-eyed merchants who held a kitty and a cup of coffee at the ready were offering them candy. Our kids marched right alongside them, never hesitating to climb up on stage to receive a bag of candy from Maui’s mayor. (Hey, it’s free candy, right?)

Had we not seen the keiki parade with our own eyes, and been part of it, we would never have believed Maui could be so child friendly.

But once you get past the tourist traps and dodge a honeymooner or two, this place really loves kids.

None of those cliches resonate on what we like to call the real Hawaii. Even though it’s one of the least-visited islands in the Aloha State, the Big Island (also known as Hawaiʻi Island) is far more exciting, and, at times, more dangerous.

To say our family just survived a visit might be a stretch — but not much of one. From an erupting volcano to a tsunami warning, we feel lucky to be alive.

It wasn’t our first trip. Two years ago, we stayed near the Kona side, a part of the island covered by black volcanic rock, where world-famous and preposterously expensive Kona coffee is grown.

This time, our accommodations were in Hilo, on the other side of the island, but we decided it was worth it to make the two-hour drive on a mountainous road to revisit Kona and Thunder Mountain Coffee, an organic coffee farm.

The highlight of our tour — other than the adults drinking way too much organic coffee — was a tour of the farm by its owner, Trent Bateman. After relating the story of how his tractor almost fell into an overgrown lava tube (a natural tunnel through which lava travels beneath the surface of a flow) in the farm’s early days, he urged us to watch our step. As we hiked down the path, I grabbed my daughter’s hand instinctively before stepping precariously close to a ten-foot drop off. The lava tube!

Sorry, Madame Pele

They say that if you walk through a lava tube, you’re forgiven. We walked through the Thurston Lava Tubes at Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park the next day, but only because we had done a bad thing. A certain member of our family — we won’t say who — had, um, borrowed a lava rock on our last visit to the Big Island. We returned it on this visit and walked through the tubes, hoping for the best.

But Pele, the Hawaiian goddess of fire, apparently had other plans. Our middle son, Iden, decided the hardened surface of a volcano made a great playground. Despite warnings from his parents, he insisted on throwing rocks and running around.

“Don’t disrespect the volcano,” I warned him.

Minutes later, he was on his hands and knees, having tripped over a large rock. The scrapes were deep enough for us to look for the closest walk-in clinic (he’s fine, but he’ll have a few scar souvenirs).

The volcano became very active during our visit, with Kilauea belching smoke and lava as if to say, “Now you’ve done it!” When we drove deep into the park to get a closer look at the eruption — which, now that I think about it, probably wasn’t the best idea — we were met with signs warning us to keep our windows closed because the air might be dangerous to people with respiratory ailments.

Fortunately, Kilauea isn’t a fast-moving volcano, but if it had been, I’m pretty sure she would have blown her top when we arrived. Instead she just blew sulfur into the sky and churned out more lava.

And now, the tsunami

If you’re the superstitious type, or if you are a Hawaiian person of faith, you probably won’t be surprised at what happened next: We arrived at our vacation rental after a long day of touring Kilauea to a phone call from our landlady.

“Everything is probably going to be alright,” she said.

“What do you mean, probably?”

“You didn’t hear the sirens?” she asked.

No, we hadn’t, I explained. We had been gone. That’s when she told us about the earthquake in British Columbia that might have triggered a tsunami, and that we could be asked to evacuate, but that we probably wouldn’t be.

She was wrong. But our neighborhood, which is right along the water, was cleared of residents and we spent five tense hours huddled in a parked car waiting for the warnings to be lifted.

Unbelievably, this wasn’t the first tsunami evacuation for some of us. Two members of our family were in Maui during the Japanese earthquake a few years ago.

Having experienced all that, you’d think we would never want to return to the Big Island again. Not true.

There’s something truly authentic, if not exotic, about this place. There are moments, when you’re driving along Saddle Road, between Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea, that you feel like you’re in the Colorado or Utah desert. At night, looking up at the stars might convince you that you’re on another planet.

(To really understand what you’re seeing, head over to the newish Imiloa Astronomy Center in Hilo, which explains the appeal of stargazers over the centuries and offers fascinating insights into their connection to Hawaiian culture.)

Despite the lava tubes and a possible tsunami, we have no regrets about our latest visit to the Big Island.

After all, if we wanted safe, we could have just stayed home.

We are the underappreciated engine that drives a $1.9 trillion business in the United States, which includes (ahem) $124 billion a year in tax revenue. What do American travelers—the ones who took nearly two billion trips in 2011—want from you? The list includes commonsense security, mass transit projects, fewer paperwork hassles for international trips, and consumer protections.

Frankly, the past decade has been so-so for us. Yes, the Department of Transportation made progress on passenger rights, requiring airlines to provide speedy refunds on luggage fees when bags disappear and more timely information about flight delays. Some visa requirements have been loosened. The trains got on track, too: California recently broke ground on its own high-speed rail project, and plans have been announced for Amtrak NextGen, which will cut travel time between Washington, D.C., and New York City from three hours to 94 minutes.

But there’s a long way to go.

I happen to have a to-do list right here.

This is the latest Insider column from Christopher Elliott, appearing in the November 2012 issue of National Geographic Traveler (on newsstands now).

Luckily my kids didn’t inherit any of my hang ups. So when they found boards stashed under our vacation rental’s balcony on a recent trip to Oahu, they made a beeline toward the monster waves without hesitating. (That’s me behind them shouting something unintelligible about riptides and dangerous shoals.)

Once we figured out that they had a healthy respect for the vortexes of water churning in the distance, and were just interested in riding their boogie boards on the wavelets breaking on the beach, the adults settled into a healthy argument about the best places to take kids surfing in Hawaii.

I love Maui, and one of the highlights of my trip to the island in 2011 was visiting Jaws, the legendary surf spot. Remember that interview with Dave Kalama in National Geographic Adventure a few years ago? That left an impression.

I couldn’t believe a 70-foot wave existed — let alone that it could be surfed — until I saw it with my own eyes. Wave is an understatement. It was a wall of water.

This is the place to watch surfing, I thought.

(But if I ever saw one of my kids try it, I’d go into cardiac arrest.)

Now here we were in this rental on the North Shore – right on the beach. With a view this great, you couldn’t help but admire the waves.

It’s around this time of year that the really big ones start coming. They form thousands of miles away in the Aleutians and come thundering ashore.

When the waves are high, the road outside our rental becomes a parking lot. Along a narrow strip of public beach, you can see professional photographers with their tripods and telephoto lenses, trying to get the perfect shot of these aquatic daredevils.

On our second day in Oahu, the owner of our rental – a Minnesota transplant who was transferred to Hawaii decades ago and never left — stopped by to say hello.

“You know about the camera on the roof, right?” he asked.

“Camera?”

Turns out a surfing magazine runs a “live” cam that streams images of the North Shore online. It’s right up on the roof, because that’s the best spot to see the waves.

Whoa.

Hawaii doesn’t have a shortage of terrific surf spots, but Maui and Oahu are two standouts. When people ask me which one’s better, I feel conflicted. If you’re going to watch surfing, you can’t go wrong with either place. The North Shore has more of a scene, with the surf museum, surfer hang-outs, and shave-ice shops. But Maui is breathtakingly beautiful and less developed than Oahu. It’s a hard choice.

In fact, there’s a rift in my own family. My middle son and I are big fans of Maui, but the rest of the family is all about the Oahu experience. And, yeah, I’ve gotta admit, the camera on the roof was pretty cool.

Gnarly, actually.

Christopher Elliott writes the Insider column for National Geographic Traveler. He’s traveling across the country with his family and blogging about the experience at Away Is Home. Follow him on Twitter.

When it comes to fall foliage drives, New England gets all the attention – some of it undeserved.

If you’re traveling with children who are easily distracted (like we are), a simple trip along Vermont’s winding roads just won’t cut it. A never-ending chorus of “oohs” and “ahhs” from the adults will only reinforce your kids’ belief that foliage tours are for fuddy-duddies.

That’s why we dropped in to Cottonwood Canyon, just a short drive southwest of Salt Lake City. We stayed in a rental cabin only a stone’s throw from the critically acclaimed ski resorts Alta, Snowbird, Solitude, and Park City.

The foliage there provides a fascinating backdrop to the epic action-adventure that is Utah’s great outdoors.

Look! There’s a waterfall. What’s that over there? An elk? A bear! Mind that cliff.

Where else can you go for a half-mile hike and gain more than 400 feet in altitude without rock-climbing gear?

Our hike in the Wasatch National Forest started late in the afternoon. The mountainside was ablaze in autumn colors, with golden birch leaves mingling with the burnt orange and raging reds of the maples.

Our two oldest sons fancy themselves mountaineers, and blazed a trail ahead of us. Meanwhile, our five-year-old daughter took it upon herself to collect every rock and leaf she could find.

Why? Who knows.

My wife and I were made to endure fall foliage “adventures” with our respective parents, so we were sensitive to the fact that these tours — if presented in the wrong way — could turn fall into a dreaded season. It’s bad enough that it’s the time of year that school begins, summer vacation’s over, and the weather turns cold. That’s why we didn’t mention the words fall or leaves as we described the trip we would be taking.

And yet…

“Look at the leaves!,” screamed our middle child, Iden.

“Did someone paint them?,” our daughter asked.

“I need to get a picture of this,” our oldest son exclaimed, pointing his Sony Bloggy at a brilliant branch of bright-yellow birch leaves.

Is that all it takes? Give your kids a little peep of the leaves and the rest will follow?

Nah. It’s not that simple.

Drag your offspring into the woods in late September and they are more likely to feel more like Hansel and Gretel than future members of the Audubon Society.

So go with it. Make it an adventure and maybe, just maybe, they’ll understand what makes the changing of the seasons so special.

You can’t do it in one hike, or in one day. A few days later, we drove across Utah and checked into another vacation rental in Breckenridge, Colorado, where a different kind of fall was in full swing.

Late fall, or so it looked.

Some leaves had already dropped from the trees and snow could be seen on the mountaintops. The ski season begins in early November, we were told.

At such a high altitude, you can see autumn happening — and you can feel it, too.

It wasn’t at all like Lake Tahoe, where summer still seemed to be raging as we drove the winding road from our mountain chalet to Mount Rose a few days earlier.

To stroll along one of the popular beaches in Incline Village, Nevada, is to take in all the sights and sounds of a long-gone summer. There were paddle boarders out on the water giving the lake an almost Hawaiian feel, and even folks splashing and swimming along the coast. Once ski season starts (and, eventually, it will), they’ll be replaced by snowmobiles and ice skaters.

Yet, a funny thing happened on our drive from Nevada to Colorado: the kids played fewer video games and asked more questions about the landscape emerging around them.

Out West it’s hard to throw a rock without hitting a national park, which gave us plenty to talk about — from geological trivia to extinct prehistoric creatures. The kids had more and more to say, though we heard a lot less of the “are we there yet.”

Maybe that’s the real lesson of our foliage tour: Appreciating the outdoors isn’t something you should force or teach, it’s something that’s best experienced organically. Seeing the western states as the seasons turned – that’s something we wish our parents had inflicted on us.

Mom, Dad? It’s not too late.

Staying in an older vacation rental can be a real adventure. And we know, because we’ve lived in a few of them during our year-long trip across the United States. A historical home can bring you closer to a city’s traditional downtown area, or to real residents. It can even help you feel like you’re a local.

But historical homes have, well…histories. The same thing that makes them fascinating can sometimes make them a challenge, from creaky hardwood floors to funky interior designs.

You can hedge your bets by going with a professional rental agency, which will ensure your house is stocked with the basic necessities, meets your standards, and above all, that it actually exists.

In Santa Fe, New Mexico, we stayed in an authentic adobe home we found from a local rental agency. Like most of the older places we’ve rented, it felt a lot like staying at grandma’s house — if grandma was a college history professor with a passion for collecting Native American artifacts. A variety of peppers were ripening in the garden, the New Mexico History Museum was only a few blocks away, and we could reach downtown Santa Fe in a matter of minutes.

The largest (by far) rental we stayed in, located in historic Beverly, Massachusetts (see video, above), turned out to be the most personal. The owners, direct descendants of one of New England’s founding families, greeted us warmly and told us about the special memories they had made there. But with a private library, a kitchen with servant’s quarters, seven bedrooms, and a tennis court, it felt like spending the night at the museum.

The cozy vacation rental we checked into in Carmel, California, only a short walk to the beach, was nestled in a cluster of cottages identified only by a sign stating “No Worries.” Turns out homes in this neighborhood have never used house numbers. But Carmel is quirky, like that. We figured that if we could find the funky yellow 1920s bungalow, we belonged there — and we did.

Did the rental have it all? No, but it had everything we needed. We were steps away from downtown Carmel’s coffee shops, fine dining, and exceptional take-out options. And the area’s signature attraction, the world-famous Monterey Bay Aquarium, wasn’t much farther by car. Our three kids didn’t complain, because they felt as if they were staying with a relative.

Not every seaside historical rental is that rustic. The one we stayed at in Ocean City, Maryland had just been renovated, to the point where the 20th-century home looked like a space station inside. I’m not kidding; the TVs, air conditioner, and sound system were controlled by a wall-mounted iPad 3 which we are still trying to figure out how to work. But darn if it didn’t look good. And the house was in the middle of everything, directly on the boardwalk. We couldn’t have gotten any closer to the action.

Another nautical-themed — and historical — vacation rental happened in Rockland, Maine. Our villa was so close to the sea you could stand on the  front porch and see boats in the bay. And you know what that means, don’t you? Lobster in all its forms, from lobster rolls to seafood salad to lobster bisque. Mainers are proud of their seafood, and rightfully so.

And our most recent vintage rental, in Saugatuck, Michigan, was just around the corner from the galleries, churches, restaurants, and artisan food shops around town. Still, the kitchen begged to be used, and it was. We cooked up something called Saugatuck Breakfast Squares, which resemble quiche made with fresh local veggies, and served with sourdough toast.

If your goal is to stay away from chain hotels and fast-food restaurants when you travel, a stay in an historical rental is just what you’ll want. It may even be more than you want.

Christopher Elliott writes the “Insider” column for National Geographic Traveler and is traveling across America with his family and blogging about it on Away is Home. The project is sponsored in part by the Vacation Rental Managers Association.