Road Trips with Children: How to Survive the Trek
Kids and road trips can be like oil and water. Trying to keep a child appeased in an automobile for hours on end is no easy task. I know because we drove to our favorite family vacation destination this past March. We usually choose to fly to this location every year, but we thought we would drive this time around to save a little money not to mention see the southeast portion of our country from the view of a car window. Since we live in the Midwest, I wanted my kids to see the mountains and even count the scores of Waffle Houses on the way down to South Carolina. The cargo in our Honda Accord consisted of my two children (ages 2 and 5), the co-pilot (wife), and yours truly.
Entertainment
The key to maintaining your sanity on such treks is to keep the youngsters occupied (at least if you aren't lucky enough to get them to fall asleep for a good portion of the trip). The first thing we did when traveling out on the open road is to play interactive games with the kids like "I spy" and "Travel Bingo". There are all sorts of games kids can play that are based on identifying items on your trip. (I always seem to think of the painful game of "slug bug" I used to play with my brothers). Our daughter loved playing these games and even our two year old was able to mumble and point out the window. While those interactive games carry some weight, it appears even the youngest kids nowadays are caught up in electronics to pass the time. While we used are best efforts to minimize exposure to TV and video games, the reality of the lengthy trip warrants a few cheats here. We purchased a portable DVD player a few years ago and have found it to be a good tool to relieve the "I spy" or "travel bingo" games that seemed to wear thin after an hour or so. The Leapster is our daughter's most prized possession. This hand held device was another time consuming tool to painlessly get her from point "a" to point "b", not to mention its educational usefulness. Our youngest didn't require as much entertainment surprisingly because he slept a good portion of the way. He did enjoy watching "Cars" on the DVD player.
Snacks
Having accessible food for the back seat mongers is critical. We packed an assortment of items such as honey wheat pretzels, trail mix (no nut allergies here), and some bottled water. The munchies on board eliminated extra stops and the persistent whining of "when are we going to stop". If we would have had more space, thus a larger cooler, we would have brought some fresh fruit such as apple slices or grapes.
Stops
While we wanted to minimize our stops, we found it essential to stop every 3 to 3 and ½ hours to stretch out. This was not only a relief for the kids, but the pilot and co-pilot can get awfully cramped as well. We usually picked rest areas to stretch. Rest areas by and large seem to be pretty scary places depending on which one you manage to stop at. Of course the same could be said for truck stops and gas stations off the interstate exits. Make sure you size up the people in the neighboring cars parked before you get out of your car. We stopped at one rest stop that was only populated by a few cars with odd looking inhabitants. I proceeded on to the next rest area.
Lodging
We ended day one of our first leg after driving about ten hours. We stayed at a Holiday Inn Express just off the interstate. The hotel was pretty decent. My wife was really happy to have a refrigerator in our room to keep the kids milk cold along with our bottle water. We were also able to refreeze our chill packs that were in our cooler. The only downside to our overnight stay was that our room was located directly over the hotel lobby. There seemed to be excessive noise from the early risers in the lobby. I do recommend these hotels or Fairfield by Marriott if you have a long trek and need to break up the driving. Kids definitely need to sleep in a bed and I wasn't going to subject them to the fifteen hour trek without a good night's rest. The first day of our trip had already caused a crick in my son's neck from his head being tilted in his car seat while napping on and off. I wised up and purchased a neck rest at a dollar store for our return leg home.
Let me conclude that road adventures with little ones does have its limits. Our trip is about 950 miles each way and I would recommend against driving distances much further than that. All the gadgetry, snacks, historical landmarks, and games of slug bug will not prevent a back seat melt down from your kids. I wish you luck on your trip and hope you find my post useful.
Regards,
BradK
Related Tags: travel, kids, road, south caroline, travel bingo
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