Camille, creator of Camille On The Go, started traveling on her first trip to Jamaica for her 5 Year anniversary with her husband. While she doesn’t consider this her first time really traveling, it is the trip that got her excited to travel more. She now has 3 kids and continues to travel including a 3-week trip to Europe just last fall 2017. After this trip she says she was “Officially hooked”. She said after that she had to resolve to “No more excuses, we’re just going to make this happen. Kids or not, money or not, we’re doing it.”
After their trip to Jamaica, Camille and her husband both wanted to make a trip to Scotland, where their grandfather was from, a reality. While daunted by the big undertaking, they didn’t stop there. Camille told me about what they thought at the time. “I think that’s why a lot of people don’t go on trips. How do you even plan a trip to another country? How do you figure out hotels and rental cars? We just weren’t sure we’d ever have the money or ever know how to do it.”
In the summer of 2014, Camille’s and her husband were then presented with the opportunity to plan for a large family trip to Scotland. She says “We always wanted to go, but we just didn’t know how to do it.” When they were presented with the idea for the trip Camille says her husband’s grandfather “lit up like Christmas” at the thought of traveling back to his home country. They then started digging into the details of planning such a trip. They planned that they would need about 2 or 3 weeks and about $10,000. Energetically, Camille recounted her conversation with her family “Whoa, Whoa, Whoa. We have kids, we can’t do 2 or 3 weeks and we don’t have $10,000.”
Instead of cancelling the trip there, the family decided to plan the trip out over a span of 2-3 years, shooting for fall of 2017, to give everyone interested a chance to prepare. She said we went into it saying “This sounds awesome, I don’t know if it’s doable, but lets just say Fall of 2017 we’ll do it.” By 2017, out of 6 kids, 4 with their spouses had prepared and made the trip with their parents.
After a few trips, Camille now considers travel part of her lifestyle. “I feel like the couple trips I’ve taken within the last couple years have really changed my mindset on how I live my life. I’m now working so I can live, not just living so I can work. You know? I choose memories over stuff. I don’t want stuff anymore, I want memories. We quit giving our kids stuff for birthday’s anymore last year, instead we took my 7-year-old and her little cousin to Lego Land last year and that was their birthday present. In February of this year, my daughter turned 14 and I surprised her and flew her to San Francisco just to spend a short weekend. I want my kids to get the travel bug and just know that going and seeing things and experiencing things is so much more rewarding than stuff. Stuff you out-grow, stuff you get tired of. We have a houseful of clothes and toys and things we don’t necessarily need. I would so much rather my kids have a lifetime of memories than to have stuff.”
Camille now has a travel blog called Camille On The Go where she shares her experiences traveling and how she was able to do it. You can also follow her on Instagram @Camilleonthego to see all of her current adventures and traveler lifestyle.
