Preparing for a trip with this undertaking was quite a challenge. Traveling around the United States (21 days-19 states 7, 622 miles to be exact)! We have been planning for this vacation for the last 2 years. Some people are calling us crazy for what we are preparing to do, we are just excited. Crazy or not, this is something we will never forget. If you know our family, you know how busy we are and our schedules are just getting busier as the kids get older. We have to do this now, or we may never go! Here are some of the ways that we prepared for this trip.
1. We decided a while back what main places we wanted to visit.
2. Play connect the dots.
3. Add in those extra places...ie any extended family you don't get to see often, local restaurants and hotspots. I made a binder with our calender, all the places we were stopping, reservation confirmations, and back up gps directions in case the gps goes down and the old fashion map isn't helping.
4. Decide how you are going to travel and what is best economically for your family. We originally wanted to take an RV, but that was going to cost what our total budget was. (I am going to tell you what we spent and on what so you can hopefully plan something like this for your family.) To rent an RV to fit a family of 5 was going to cost about $5,000 and that is without gas. To rent a nice van (we happened to get a VW Rutan) with unlimited miles was about $1,400. This meant we were going to have to camp and stay in hotels. Work out where you can camp and where you can get hotels for a good price. We budgeted $73.00 a day for eating and gifts. Some days we will be way under, other days over. Then we take the average $ of gas and how many miles we are driving. We have these two envelopes with the cash in them. (We have been setting cash aside for a while) Everything else was pre-booked, hotels, car rental, camping sites and any tours we knew we wanted to take.
5. Start to stock. I already stock quite a bit, but everytime I bought something, for example, paper towel or fruit snacks, I would buy a roll or box to bring. Because we are camping half the time and staying in hotels the other half, we had to plan accordingly. I was not about to cook while camping. This adds a whole other bit of planning. I made a bunch of bread so we could make PB and J, snacks, breakfast foods such as granola, bagels and dry cereal. We also have 2-31 coolers with apples, cheese sticks, drinks, carrot sticks, etc. I put ice in ziploc bags and filled with ice when I can. Most places that you stop will have ice.
6. Start to pack. I packed 6 "summer" outfits, 6 pairs of socks, underwear, swim suits, 6 summer jammies and put everything in outfits in ziploc bags. Girls included bows for hair. I had already researched where laundry places were and I knew we didn't have enough room to carry 21 plus outfits for each person so we were restricted as to how much we packed. Also, I knew many of the places were were camping got quite cool during the night and average temps during the day were cool, ie San Fransisco, so I packed 2 pairs of jeans, 2 longs sleeve shirts, 2 sweatshirts, 1 sweater and 4 pairs of winter jammies. The bags work great for pulling out of the suitcase quickly and this way when we go do laundry, I can just throw them back into the bags. See below...
I packed all of our supplies and food in medium sized containers. Separated them into categories, cleaning/paper products, snacks, breakfast foods/car foods, cd's, dvd's.
Each of the kiddos got a container with pens, pencils, colored pencils, journal and paper. This is also great for a table for them to draw on.
Found this idea on Pinterest and thanks to my mom and her sewing skills and all her extra fabric, she was able to make these fabulous car pillows. Each person had a different color with fleece on one side and cotton on the other. The seem down the middle is for folding around the seat belt in the car. When you camp, fold in half and sleep on. This way, you are not taking any bulky pillows. Works awesome!
I have my 35mm and cell phone, but the kids want to take pictures too. Grab some disposables. (We actually found an old digital camera and gave it to Aidan to use.)
We left early around 4:45 am. Normally we drive through the night, but decided to take the chance and travel through the day. It worked this time. Kids were just so excited to start this trip. The van is packed to the max and ready to go. We drove 20 across the rest of Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and finally Texas. We were heading to Van Alystyne, TX, just north of Dallas. It took us about 14 hours including the hour that we gained. We stayed at Brad's cousin, Patty and her husband Bryan's house. Their daughter Brianna is just a little younger than Aidan. We ate a wonderful dinner and the kids swam and played till dark. It had been nearly 12 years since we saw them and had a wonderful visit! So glad we decided to make this stop!
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