Road Trip with Children - need tips, ideas...

amother

Cerise

Fri, Feb 24 2017, 9:48 am

Personally we're signed up for Hilton hhoners. It doesn't cost anything and you accrue points for every Hilton stay. But I believe every large chain has its own reward program.

We've done it both ways. We've done 5 hours straight (with little rest stops, can make it worthwhile get slurpees or other little things to keep the kids going) or we've divided it up depending on the places we want to see along the way. Key is the kids should be constantly busy. Otherwise there will be lots of kvetching and fighting.

amother

Tangerine

Fri, Feb 24 2017, 9:49 am

cerise- please tell us more- how many days does it take you- how do you bring enough food, how do you cook it? Doing such a long road trip that takes a few days to get there is something I really want to do, so far the most we've done is one night in a hotel each way or a few days in a cabin but then we did barbecues every night. Would love to hear more!

amother

Cerise

Fri, Feb 24 2017, 9:57 am

OK THEres lots of details involved. We start planning 6 months in advance! (The planning is half the fun! 😄)

We usually take 3-4 days to get to Florida depending on when we are able to leave. Suppers we sometimes grill (always disposable grills so we don't need to deal with cooling and cleaning and putting back in the car- which could smell)
Grilling is great but doesn't always work out if we don't have an hour to spend on supper- after a trip we need to move on to next destination. Though sometimes the Bbq in a nice park can be the trip.
We bring cold cut sandwiches which ar easy to eat while we drive. Also if we are in a place that happens to have a kosher place to eat we stop there to eat.
Breakfast and lunch is cereal, yogurt, pb or cream cheese sandwiches, sandwich maker grilled cheese, macaroni, cheese Latkas, pretzels and chummus.
Lots of snacks, fruits, veg. We bring a large ice chest and transfer perishables to hotel fridge every night.

amother

Hotpink

Fri, Feb 24 2017, 10:03 am

OP here. Thanks so much!

I checked out AAA's TripTik planner and that has been very helpful in conjunction with GoDaven. Now we can start serious planning and not just theoretical of where we want to be.

Did you plan on kosher food stops (whether to restock or eat out) too? Or was that something that you did as it came up? I'm trying to figure out how much needs to be done in advance and how much we can do on the go?

Also, I need more ideas for activities to keep kids busy. One kid will love to be in charge of the map with a marker to mark where we're going. A notebook to keep some kind of diary. The other loves to look out of the window. I'm mostly concerned about my toddler and 1 year old. What keeps them occupied, besides for food Wink

amother

Cerise

Fri, Feb 24 2017, 10:58 am

We planned the stops. We plan everything. We can't afford to leave things to chance and get stuck. With 5 kids in tow it's hard to just make do. One time we stopped at a shul for mincha and it happened to be pizza night for the town and the shul was having a whole pizza situation. So we ate there and didn't use our planned supper. (Was a good hechsher)

Activities:
What we do is every hour on the hour we give out something new to do. One hour is activies like Fun books, activities, games, scavenger hunt contests...
the next hour is an exciting nosh that takes time to eat. We switch off every other hour food and fun. This way keeps them busy and also if it's say 12:45 and they're getting antsy they know 15 more minutes and something exciting is coming out. So it passes the time and keeps the morale up. We do lots of interesting I spy things of scenes on the road. Pinterest has loads of ideas.

We also made scrap books along the way of our trip. Pickup up pamphlets, souvenirs, hotel key cards and stuff along the way. Brought a bunch of scrap book and craft items and developed pictures along the way. It keeps them very busy and we have amazing memory books now!

I personally found that the little ones were happy if everyone else was happy. They feed off the big ones. Food keeps them very busy but also little toys and stuff. I was very worried about my baby who was 14 months last summer and she was Bh amazing just interacting with what everyone else was doing.

amother

Khaki

Fri, Feb 24 2017, 2:54 pm

amother wrote:

What time did you leave?
How did you know where to stop for breakfast? Did you eat your own food you brought along or you bought?
Did you switch off driving or was it one driver for the whole 24 hours?

We left at night and stopped st a rest stop along the way. We bthought out own food. We switched off driving. When one got tired the other took over.