What do you remember about summers as a kid? For me, it’s the road trips. It’s driving to Glacier, Montana or up to Canada, trips to Disneyland and a few rare plane trips to the East Coast. I felt like, perhaps, it would be irresponsible to take a big summer trip this summer — as my husband still isn’t fully employed but then my mind turned to those trips. And then, my mind turned to the fact that we have two summers left before my son enters college. Two summers {what happened — I used to be so young!}?
It wasn’t about kids who were miserable in the car anymore, and it was more about the memories and that we would likely have many more happy ones than sad ones.
And thus began our 26-day road trip. Maybe you’re following me on Instagram and have seen the fun pictures but there are a lot of supporting parts to such a fun family time. The next few days I’m going to share about our trip — but today is all about being in the car. We logged over 4,000 miles. And no one was killed. #win
Sidenote: If you’re looking for places to stay — I ALWAYS recommend checking out TripAdvisor. Their reviews always help us get the right spot for our family. 🙂
Here’re the 20 things I’d suggest you pack along — you can always trust the family travel tips from Pulling Curls
Electronics: As much as I hate to say it. I have given up on my ban of electronics in the car like I used to have when my kids were little. My kids love their electronics. By allowing them to have mainly unfettered access during the car time I was, able to block electronics (for the most part) when we were at our destinations. So, in time that we really wanted to spend in places and with people they did that. And in times that I wanted to sleep and not be bothered by them — I got that too. For the boys this includes tablets, DS’s and phones. Yup, I gave up. Sue me. We still don’t have a DVD player in our car though (read my giant rant about those here).
A great neck pillow. I bought a new one (this one looks like mine, I found mine at Marshall’s, but a zip-off cover was a must) before this trip and I loved using it for napping while we are in the car. I have a pretty wonky sleep schedule the past few years. The long stretches to nape were really appreciated. Also, my husband doesn’t appreciate my backseat driving. Shocking. I think he’d rather have me asleep. Does anyone else wake-up thinking they’ve severed their spinal cord of they sleep without a neck pillow?
A great driver. I hate to drive. I hate it. I hate it so much. My husband loves to drive. He loves it, he loves it so much. Honestly, if one of you in the family isn’t a big fan of driving, something like this would just be insane to do. There were a few close calls, and my husband is an excellent driver.
A reliable car. We took our 2003 Honda Odessey in for a check-up at the Mechanic before we went and it did awesome for the whole trip. It only had about 130,000 miles when we started so it didn’t have TONS of miles. I did consider renting, but in looking at the size of car we would need, and how many days we would need it – it just wasn’t cost effective. So thankful for that car.
A large enough car. We love our Minivan. It’s just so handy and nice.
A budget – I came up with a budget for the trip to make sure we would have enough money. You should also have a good chunk of change to cover any emergencies along the way. You’re going to have to prioritize what you think you can afford to do along the way, and the supplement with all the great, free stuff along the way! You can read more about my vacation budgeting here (and I have a great one about our Disneyland budget here).
A laptop – it was so nice to be able to write and work while we were on our way. I love my small laptop and it’s great to work on in the car. Also, you can’t really go that long with entirely disconnecting. I have a pretty small one (because I do almost all of my work on my desktop at home) – like this one — although, I wish I had more RAM — more like one of these.
AudioBooks – Our local library (and likely yours, as much as I’ve talked to friends about it) allows us to check out using the Overdrive system. I was able to download titles when we were on wifi (otherwise it eats up your data pretty quickly). Our favorites were from Jim Gaffigan (we read both this one and this one, and ABSOLUTELY loved them!). He reads his own books. The nice thing about those is that they’re easily started and stopped and you don’t feel a need to go back to catch-up on the story.
PodCasts – We listened to a few marketing podcasts on the way which kind of gave my husband some ideas of how I work to market my blog and books. BUT the BEST podcast we listened to was Serial. I had heard rave reviews about it from friends for a long time and it was SO engaging to listen to. Everyone 12 and up really enjoyed it and my 7 year old easily ignored it. So, so, good and now we’re listening to UnDisclosed that has more about Adnan Anyway – of you’ve read it, please tell me! Guilty or not? **A word about audiobooks and podcasts – these can really help the driver on long days too. Hard to fall asleep during jim Gaffigan’s Hot Pocket skit! **
Car Cooler – my husband enjoys beverages while he drives. Having them cold in a cooler like this is so handy. Also, it allows the kids to put their bags on top of it for easier access to their items.
Twist-up coloring pencils: These are great for the car (that 30 count pack is a great deal — but if you want less this is what we take on the road). They don’t melt like regular crayons. Not great for kids under 3 (although the twist-up crayons are good for that age), but perfect for after that!
Coloring books & puzzles: We had some great puzzle books and coloring books for princess P in the car. Big fans of children’s Soduku (that you do with stickers), it’s a great time to do some of your Little Passport activities (we had a big win finding state activity books at Goodwill a few weeks before our trip) or grab some of your PipSticks. We love the Melissa & Doug water marker books, magnet activities and marble games entertained me even as a kid. Many of the stuff in my quiet bags posts would be great too!
Thrift Store Books: These are awesome, because if you don’t love them – you can easily leave them on your way. We also found a bunch of comic books at Goodwill once. The best part of thrift store books is that they are new and cheap. Check when your thrift store has a sale and stock up for your trip. 🙂 Don’t have a thrift store, you can always buy used on Amazon!
Speakaboos – you can read more about it here, but this is an AWESOME car item!
Headphones – We got some headphones that were less likely to get tangled like these (a big problem for little kids). I made a cardboard holder for these for Princess P (or, wif you’re not in a rush, these fish are great) – made it easier for them to be tangle-free. But seriously, I don’t need to hear your games, your sounds, etc. Although, headphones can also become problematic so there were times they were banned from my teens. Someone needs to invent a way for ME to talk to my kids through their headphones. 🙂 These travel headphones look awesome for older kids — oh, and check these out for the littles! #cute
Kindle – Another great car tool. Every one of us has a Kindle. We load them up from the local library and are able to read without a lot of bulk (and for free). Plus, our kids have some fun apps on theirs. They can also download movies to them (if they have the fire, although I prefer my basic kindle). Basically, it’s awesome. 🙂 Also, the fire is only $50 — and my kids have found them to be quite durable.
Car quizzes and games. We even used these when we were in the car with large groups of my husband’s family.
A good GPS App, or GPS device. We use WAZE when we are in California, because it is so good at diverting you around traffic, but it can be annoying on less traveled roads where the item on the road was likely there like 2 weeks ago and the alerts get annoying (it alerts you to obstacles on the road, cars on the side of the road and upcoming police). Other times we use Google Maps. I also had a printed out copy of our trip just in case my phone wasn’t in the mood to work. We also have a plug-in GPS that our kids can always look at to see how much longer to the destination. I’d totally recommend having something like this in your car too as a backup!
Yelp – eating at good places makes the rest of the road trip more tolerable. I took a lot of joy in finding great restaurants to eat at each travel day, and I can thank Yelp for many happy tastebuds.
Luck — Yes, we could’ve had an accident and we could’ve broken down. There’s not anything you can do to entirely prevent either of those things. Luck was certainly on our side. Also, we set an intention that we would be safe and that our car would work well for us. #blessed
Those are my top 20 needs for an epic roadtrip. What else would you add? Stay tuned for all the fun we had on our road trip. Tons of great family activities and places to stop. I am excited to share it with you! Stay tuned!
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