Kids Cross-Country Adventure

Many of our fellow parents can understand the challenges of having a child with a chronic illness. In many cases, it can severely affect the child's daily life and activities, especially when it comes to sports or travel. In our case, we have two kids with skin conditions, with our daughter also suffering from severe food allergies and asthma. Still, we try to keep her life as normal as possible. However, that has meant that for the first 3.5 years of Zoya's life, I left my job as a professional mechanic to be a stay at home dad, while my wife is the primary breadwinner in the family, commuting 3 hours roundtrip to her job. We know that many parents in similar positions are afraid to expose their kids to nature - fearing that the air, the pollen, or other elements would be too much to handle for their allergic and/or asthmatic kids.  We want to show that it's possible to offer kids suffering from these ailments the opportunity to enjoy the outdoors - and to see some of America's greatest treasures - by driving cross-country from New York on the Trans-American Trail to the West Coast. We will be driving through different altitudes and climates.  However, given our financial situation, money is a bit tight. We are relying on your generosity to help us raise funds to cover fuel costs and some of the food. We will be camping, so we will forgo hotels. Moreover, any funds that we wind up not using we plan to donate to one of the national organizations working to find a cure for allergies and/or asthma, such as the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America (AAFA). If we are able to donate, we will post the receipt of the donation on this website.   With an estimated 11,000 miles roundtrip, we expect fuel costs alone to be around $3,000. As such, we're looking to raise $5,000 for the trip.