After traveling to Thailand, Tunisia, Manhattan, Yosemite, Paris, Chichen Itza, Hawaii, Pompeii, Barcelona, and Jamaica with children under five, Shelly has grown quite familiar with the technical details of traveling--and sightseeing--with babies, toddlers, and young children.

Shelly's family travel tips and advice have appeared in national parenting magazines, including American Baby, Babytalk, Nick Jr. Magazine, Parent & Child, Parenting, Parents, and Pregnancy, and on popular parenting websites and blogs including, BabyCenter.com, Babble.com, iVillage, Nickelodeon's Parentsconnect.com, Urban Baby Daily, aParentlySpeaking, and TimeOut New York Kids. She is also Baby Travel Expert for Tibesti.com, and a contributor to Travel Savvy Mom, and writes the national Examiner.com "Travels with Baby" column (www.examiner.com/travelswithbaby).

Shelly has made radio and TV appearances, including the Happy Housewives Club, Childhood Matters, and is a frequent guest on ABC San Francisco's The View from the Bay (see more in media section).

Shelly travels as often and as far as she can with her husband and three young children. The rest of the time, she hangs her hats (as mother and writer) in the San Francisco Bay Area. She blogs at Travels with Baby Tips. Browse travel photos from some of her family's adventures in the Photo Gallery.

Before Travels with Baby...

Shelly enjoyed travel since her first camping trips as an infant. When she was 11, her mother decided to take her own two children on a Western U.S. road trip, and even the loss of second gear shortly before the trip couldn't keep them from enjoying a great family adventure. At the age of 17, Shelly took her first airplane ride and traveled to Europe, where she celebrated New Year 1992 at Prague in the new Czech Republic. A month later, and still officially a senior in high school, she was living and working in Taiwan--and she's been a firm advocate of pulling children out of school for travel ever since.

Professionally, Shelly has worked as a full-time and freelance writer, with creative contributions in print, radio, and TV. She has also worked as a creative consultant on branding and software usability projects. Just before having her first child, she self-published her first novel I Was a Vacuum Cleaner Salesman (iUniverse 2003), a fictionalized account of her own experiences selling door to door, which received both Editor's Choice and Reader's Choice awards, and was enjoyed by a handful of West Coast book clubs. The book was also personally read by Jenny Bent (while at Trident Media), one of the most highly regarded literary agents in the U.S. Though it never fit neatly into a tidy genre of marketable fiction, with any luck it will one day appear on screen at a theater near you starring Reese Witherspoon, John Goodman, Renee Zellweger, Holly Hunter, Oprah Winfrey and Shirley Maclaine, among others. Until then, you can purchase a copy at Amazon.com.    

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Tips for camping with tots

Read camping tips in the blog and watch Shelly's camping tips on ABC 7's The View from the Bay.

Hear Shelly's radio broadcast of travel tips

Click here to listen to Shelly's travel tips on the Bay Area's Childhood Matters with Rona Renner.

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