meet leslie
Welcome!
I'm Leslie Harvey, and I founded Trips With Tykes well over a decade ago in July 2012. My goal was to share my love of travel and my tips for making it easier with young kids. I'm a mom of two (daughter born in spring 2009 and son born in fall 2013) living in the San Francisco Bay Area.
My travel story
My love of travel has a lot to do with my family. My grandparents were world travelers back before most Americans ever left their hometowns. They visited Persia before the fall of the shah and China soon after Nixon opened up relations between China and the United States. I have fond childhood memories of flipping through their photo albums documenting all the exotic locations they visited.
My parents continued that legacy with my sister and me. We were on planes during every major school holiday during my childhood. While most of those trips were simple family vacations to kid-friendly destinations like Disney World, they left an impression on me. My family was more adventurous as my sister and I got older, traveling to numerous international destinations while I was in high school and college.
A few years after finishing college, I married my husband Thomas. Luckily, he loved to travel as much as I do and we took many trips in our early years of marriage.
As you can see, I come by my love of travel honestly. But never did I expect that I would STILL be doing so much of it, especially with two kids in tow.
How I stumbled into travel with kids
When I had my daughter, my husband and I had settled in the San Francisco Bay Area. Since my family was located on the other side of the country in Alabama where I grew up, it was inevitable that we would find ourselves on the road (or more accurately, in the air) often. We wanted my daughter to have real relationships with her grandparents and extended family.
After surviving our first trip or two with an infant, we realized that we could do it. So, we simply kept doing it.
We logged dozens of flights with our daughter, and friends and family began turning to me when they were planning their own first trips with their kids. I wrote a couple of emails offering my advice, and someone encouraged me to turn those missives into blog posts. Trips with Tykes was born!
Adding our second traveling kid
In September 2013, we expanded our family when our son was born. Within a few months of his birth, he already logged his first flight hours, gotten his passport, and joined a few frequent flyer programs. We didn't slow down as a family of four.
Now that he is older and we are finally through some of the hardest ages to travel with kids, the sky is the limit.
What's my travel expertise?
My family travel expertise comes from in-the-trenches (and in-the-airline-aisle) real world experience. I've gained perspective from both the sheer quantity of travel my family has done as well as from the diversity of our travel experiences.
Since my family is based in the San Francisco Bay Area with three airports within an hour's drive of our home, we've flown almost every major domestic airline and have experienced dozens and dozens of airports. I've even been a brand ambassador for Southwest Airlines during this journey!
With family located on the East Coast, in the South, and in California, we fly to a lot of varied domestic locales on a frequent basis. And in the last few years, we've visiting an increasing number international destinations too.
Our international adventures have involved taking our daughter to Hong Kong, and both kids to Montreal, a jaunt to Panama and Cancun. We've also taken several epic European vacations that have included London, Disneyland Paris, Italy, Munich, and Salzburg.
Even as much as we love to fly, we certainly don't neglect other types of travel. Four plane tickets get expensive, after all. We are lucky to live in an area of the country with so many world class destinations within an easy drive, so road tripping is a priority. We've also been on a bit of a cruise kick now that our kids are older as well.
What can you expect to find on this site?
As a former attorney, I am a planner and an organizer by nature. I've found that this has come in particularly handy because travel with kids requires lots of logistics. It is often very difficult to get the information you need about traveling with children (especially by air), as the rules change often or simply aren't clear.
In this blog, I turn my list-making and organizational skills into simple posts that readers can turn to for one-stop information. No more clicking to 8 airline websites when trying to find rules about checking car seats before booking an airline ticket. My car seat post is all that you need!
Ready to send your older child on a plane by themselves? My guide to flights for unaccompanied minors has a deeply researched comparison chart to help you find the right airline and the best price. I endeavor to keep my posts updated so that you can trust even older posts with accurate information.
Finally, I should also mention that I'm a bit of a miles & points addict, so I've been able to do a lot of this family travel on the cheap by redeeming frequent flyer miles and hotel points. So I will occasionally blog about how you can use tricks in the miles & points world to do the same for your family. Tickets can really add up when you have to buy for three or four... or more!
I'm a recovering lawyer (I practiced intellectual property litigation for 10 years in the Bay Area), so I also have done regular travel for work. But most of my flight time is with a kiddo or two strapped in next to me. I hope to inspire and assist more families to do the same!
my promise to readers
Trips with Tykes is a No-AI Zone
In a world where the internet (and particularly a lot of travel blogs) seem to be inundated with AI slop, I'm passionate about providing actual human-tested, authentic and fact-checked travel advice to my readers. Everything you read on Trips With Tykes was written and photographed by me (or in a few rare cases, by guest authors I personally know and trust). I pledge to never use artificial intelligence to write posts or create images.
Get in Touch
Contact me at: tripswithtykes@gmail.com - I love hearing from readers with questions.
Want to work with me? Check out my media kit.
Want to find copious family travel advice from me elsewhere on the web? I also regularly write for The Points Guy and was a regular contributor in the past to TravelingMom, DisneyBaby, and MommyNearest.
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