Road Trip Tips!
I will first say I’m no road trip expert, but the one to Florida taught me a lot. I polled my friends for tips on traveling with kids and came up with a solid plan.
We first decided we were going to drive, picked a southern location that was warmer than Wisconsin and not too terrible of a distance to drive. We toyed with the idea of taking my suburban, but with 3 young kids I really wanted more space so we decided to rent a sprinter van. It was an excellent decision since we basically brought the kitchen sink with us! Haha! We took a row of seats out which gave the kids a ton of leg room.
I took the activity recs and got to shopping on Amazon. I came up with so many great ideas (all are in my Amazon store under “road trip”). I divided them all up by kid and put them in a tote. I was nervous about the travel trays I bought the older two, but they came in really handy. The kids used them the entire time and they were nice and light so my concerns for safety issues were low. For the older two I balanced activity time with screens. Elliott rotated between his activities and averaged about 1 hour for naps in the van.
Eating in the van kept our stop times low. We grabbed a bunch of snacks at Trader Joe’s and grabbed meals that were easy to eat in the van. Having all that space made it easy for me to sit by Elliott while we ate so I could help him and I could also reach him easily from my seat. With Evelyn and Elijah by each other in the back he was able to help her if she needed it.
Evelyn’s bladder was a big determining factor for how often we stopped, but it averaged about 2-3 hours which was a nice amount of time. We’d stop, get gas if we needed it, use the restroom and do some jumping jacks, running in place or air squats to work some energy out.
Lucas did almost all of the driving. He’s a rockstar! I absolutely hate driving, but helped him when he asked. We listened to a couple of audiobooks to pass the time and these always help!
On the drive home we ran in to ice and snow which caused us to stop and spend the night in Illinois. Besides that I think it was a fairly smooth adventure for our first big road trip!