My daughter is seven. Last year we spent ten days in Japan — a country I’d heard was “not great for kids” and “too structured” for family travel. It turned out to be the best trip our family has ever taken. She still talks about the vending machine ramen we ate at midnight in Tokyo…

Somewhere on Highway 1 in California, just past Big Sur, I pulled over because the road simply demanded it. No plan to stop there. No marked viewpoint. Just an impulse and an empty shoulder and twenty minutes of standing at a cliff edge watching waves break three hundred feet below. That’s the thing about road…