Traveling with Kids (U.S.)

Here’s your chance ladies to share some of your experience and wisdom with moms traveling across the U.S. this summer!

*These responses were taken from our previous discussion over email in May 2011.

Load up on sleepy juice (Benadryl) but test it first to make sure it doesn't have the opposite effect! One summer, just after potty training, we ACTUALLY set up a portable potty in between the two boys. When they had to go, we would unhook, let them go and rehook--without stopping! and hopefully w/o spilling!! ...don't do that.... Another time, maybe the same time...we drove through the night...and hit two deer in the middle of a city in Kansas (not even in podunk Kansas). Guess what?! We kept on driving! (Go Suburbans! Would have been a different story in a van the way we hit them).  Then, we got so crazy we let them unhook to sleep b/c we were all so stir trip-dizzy. About that time, we passed a huge billboard in Kansas that said something like "if your kids are unhooked and you have an accident they will fly out the window like a speeding bullet". Who knows, that was probably God's sign put up just for us. It probably doesn't exist today ;)  It seemed when we stop, it always takes 20 minutes even if it's just a quick trip to the potty. 

Ok, here’s our potty plan…

Take the potty and cover the “cup part with a plastic grocery bag turned inside out.  Then turn a leftover whatever diaper inside out and put it inside the potty.  Whenever there is a “peepee event,” just take the plastic bag and fold it up over the diaper (the diaper absorbs all the liquid), tie it up and drop it at the next rest stop.  No splish splash LOL!

We are driving out with the whole kit n caboodle this summer too.  In 20090 we did it with Grace and Faith (almost 5 and almost 2) and this year we are headed out with a 6 month old.  Planning to drive 3, rest 1 hour to nurse and stretch.

Thanks for the potty advice!  We’re driving out with a 4 and 2 yr old!  I’ve got some good ideas from Brooke (Sherard) Miller who used to drive out with her family when she was little (thanks Jan!)…

1.       Give a little present for them to open each day to play with in the car

2.      Leave from the hotel super early in the morning so the kids can still get a couple hours of sleep in on the way

3.      Find hotels with pools.  End your driving for the day around 4 and let the kids get some energy out in the pool!

I remember wondering why all the East Coast folks complained about the drive to Colorado. Then we moved here. 1801 miles. Yikes.

We did the little present to unwrap idea. It's amazingly effective. Also, that was back in the bronze age before all the cars had video capabilities but we rigged our little tv/vcr combo. I always limited the movies to one a day so it would be "special." Usually we would stop for lunch, then do the movie, and hopefully at least two of the three would nod off to sleep. Sometimes we would do another after dinner too.

Blizzards at Dairy Queen were a major motivator to hang in there too.

The up side is that when you strap them in there young and drive more than half way across the country they grow up used to travelling and they get accustomed to that car seat.

For older kids the license plate game is fun. One year we found both Alaska and Hawaii. 

We didn't go by an exact schedule in terms of driving and breaks but we went hard and then when it was time to stop we ran them around as much as possible at a rest stop. If it was raining we looked for a mall or an indoor play place to burn some energy. We often drove later into the night because they would typically go to sleep pretty well and we could burn up the road. But at least one night we would stop earlier at a place with a pool.

Sonya

Sonya Hove

There have been lots of good suggestions for traveling to Colorado.  We’ve spent 17 summers out there and have driven for most of them.  We’ve done one kid under one, to 4 kids under seven and everything in between.  Mostly we all look back on these trips with fond memories.  Some years we went hard and fast and didn’t do a lot of stopping. Some years we bought a year museum pass at our local science or children’s museum and that gave us free access to museums across the country.  I usually researched which museums worked best and it was great that it usually worked in the Ft. Collins museum. Other years we meandered taking an extra week or more to get there, seeing some big sights like the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone and places in between.

As Alyssa said, if you are thinking of Benadryl to help them sleep, test that theory before you go.  Don’s dad (a pediatrician) suggested that with Jenny.  We didn’t realize that it causes some children to become wired until way too late.  Jenny was under one and didn’t sleep at all that first day.  We never tried it again with any of the others, we just called it a lesson well learned 

Some things didn’t vary though – early on we started giving each child a small item to open, one at the start and one after lunch – nothing big, but I did go for variety.  From around 2 on every kid had a tray that would set over their car seat, so they would work the puzzle or play with whatever they opened.   We also had a snack shoe box for every child – it really helped corral the trash and crumbs.  I would refill them each morning, but the kids decided when and what they had for snacks – I figured that if they ruined their lunch or dinner it wasn’t too bad, since it was only fast food anyway.

As often as we could we caravanned with another family.  It gave the kids someone to play with at stops and let us have some adult conversation at dinner.  Here it is important for the families to be on the same schedule, so you don’t have a million bathroom stops – we all developed large bladders on these trips.  One year, the family with us, called to tell us one of our bikes had fallen off into the road, thankfully no one was following too closely, but we did have to buy a new bike at a yard sale once we got to Fort Collins.

We also learned every car game you could come up with.  One of our favorites is a little box game called Are we there yet?  It had little cards that named items along the way you needed to find.  This is for older ones, since you needed to be able to read.  All our kids became great travelers as a result of these trips.  Today, traveling by any means isn’t a big deal for them.