The 10 Commandments of Family Roadtrips

We’ve been taking car trips with our kids since birth. Mostly, that makes people question our sanity. Trust me, when we were in hour 36 of last summer’s vacation from Texas to California and back, I thought the same thing. Sometimes we have banner days and sometimes we swear off ever doing another road trip again.

All those hours on the highway have taught us a few life lessons, though. Our pain. Your gain. Here’s your road warrior 10 commandments, y’all.

1. Lower your expectations. I’m serious. When you travel with kids, it’s a trip. When you travel as a couple, it’s a vacation. You have to know that traveling as a family is a teeny bit more like National Lampoons than some postcard picture. As we drove through Flagstaff last summer, we joked we should pick up grandma and strap her to the top of the minivan. The kids did not appreciate our humor. In the early years, we had such romantic thoughts of how a family road trip should be. After all, social media kept showing us these filtered images of smiling families happy to be traveling around the country. When our first vacation fell flat, the honeymoon was over. Now, we lower the bar wayyyy down. No road trip is perfect, but they can be – dare I say fun – if you walk into them with the right attitude.

Vacation

Trip

2. You’re not the flight attendant. If you are the keeper of the snacks, you become a slave to the, “Mom, I’m hungry” barrage of comments. That’s called death by snacks. Don’t do it to yourself. Instead, give each row of kids (or each kid), their own snack bag. Depending upon how long you’re in the car, maybe it’s for the morning/afternoon or the whole day. They get to decide when they eat and YOU get to decide what and how much they eat. But that’s all they get. Refrain from packing the kitchen sink. You’re not hibernating for the winter and neither are your kids. I can’t tell you how many arguments this has cancelled out. Also, bypass packing things that melt. Don’t ask me how I know. We tend to stop every 2-3 hours for potty breaks (the Rest Stops app is great for locating good ones on the interstate) and we always pack a lunch. It’s in the back of the van so sticky fingers don’t eat all the food and we bring our own washable tablecloth so we don’t have to eat on those nasty rest stop tables. A quick run of the wipes over it after we’re done and it’s ready for the next meal. We also ration the water they drink in the car so we aren’t stopping every half hour.

3. Make it memorable. Stop at places that have meaning or significance to your family or your faith. We always seek out beautiful churches when we vacation. Yes, I had to chase down one kid at Jackson Square so he didn’t set off the Cathedral alarm (embarrassing), but no one has gotten arrested, yet. The beautiful part of traveling by car is you get to decide how long or short to stay somewhere. We’ve done some really cool stuff these past 16 years with kids. You can’t see any of that from an airplane!

Jackson Square (and beignets!) | New Orleans, LA

San Jacinto Monument | Harris County, TX (on the 4th!)

Garvin Woodland Gardens | Hot Springs, AR

The Alamo | San Antonio, TX

Lower Antelope Canyon | Arizona

Dog Beach | Del Mar, CA

4. Visit people you love. Let’s face it, vacations aren’t cheap, especially when you have a big family. Driving makes them affordable, staying with friends and family makes it fun, and even more doable. Yes, the bed is free, but it’s the hospitality and time with people we adore that’s meaningful. Instead of our kids just seeing these people in the Christmas card pile every December, they reflect on actual time they’ve spent with them. What a tremendous gift that is. We also try, very hard, to meet folks en route to our destination. We’ve had lunches in parks, tea at roadside restaurants and ice cream and four-wheeling on the farm with people we adore. I promise, that will be the thing your kids talk about years from now.

My uncle, showing the kids how he makes custom jewelry at his store | El Paso, TX

Having breakfast with my 90yo grandfather | Amarillo, TX
(this was just 8 months before he died unexpectedly)

Meeting college friends | Texarkana, TX

4-Wheeling with friends | Oklahoma

5. Don’t break the bank. Or you may never do it again. There are lots of free or less expensive ways to travel by car. Maybe you travel in the off season, stay with friends/family, brown bag it, stay in a VRBO and cook your own meals or travel close to home. Whatever you do, set your budget and know your attitude dictates your happiness level, not your destination. As much as I would love to load the family up and trek around Europe for a month, it’s just in the budget right now. We do the best with what we’re given and we have really flourished as a family. When our Italian friends flew to Indiana, we drove to see them, spend time with several Godparents and see a lot of America along the way.

6. Have some dadgum fun. Crank the radio. Do something not “on the agenda.” Go parasailing. Paint some pottery. Go fishing. Tour that random national park. Drink bourbon at Makers Mark (definitely do that). Eat sour patch kids. Play putt-putt. These fun moments will carry you through the not-so-fun ones later on in your trip. Trust me.

7. Don’t rely on electronics or they will come back to bite you in the a**. If all you do is load the DVD player with movies or hand your kids the iPad, they will turn into monsters. I know, we’ve tried it. Let’s be realistic. As much as I want my kids to stare out the window and be amazed at God’s handiwork, they’re kids. It’s likely they’ll be fighting with their siblings too much to even notice that majestic mountain or breathtaking waterfall. So, we compromise. The first 90-minutes of any day in the van is screen-free and we don’t watch more than two movies a day. They have to earn it. We read, crank the radio, play games like car bingo, the alphabet game or the license plate game, sleep or {gasp} talk to one another. Sometimes I want to poke out my eyeballs and stuff my ears with cotton. Eek. But, that rule has been a game changer.

8. Don’t fear the trip. Maybe you’re not quite ready for a 2,600 mile excursion around the state (well, in Texas we can go that far without leaving!), but maybe you’re up for a few hours or a half day. It’s a bit like going to the gym. Build up your endurance. Head to a border state, or just down the road, then work up to a cross-country marathon. And, knowing that you have fun things to do along the way, or at your final destination, can power you through. And, don’t fear packing the vehicle, either. I let the kids choose their clothes and then I pack everyone in the same suitcase, packing it by day for the whole family. Then, I pack another with just pajamas and toiletries and our “day bag” that has that day clothes in it so when we unload, I only remove two small bags and a pack ‘n play. We pack three coolers (one large one for all our food, a small one for the back row and a medium one for the middle row and the drivers). Add in a camera bag and a stroller and that’s all we take. Nothing towed on the back or put on the top {see photo at the top}.

Our 2014 trek around the state of Texas, done in 7 days with 6 kids,
one of which was a 6-weeker. Because we’re crazy.

9. Take photos, even of the bad stuff. Document the trip, the good, bad and ugly. These are the photos that will be the highlight at the rehearsal dinner years from now. It usually takes me 35 photos, or more, to get one good one. PhotoShop and the headswap can be your friend.

10. Don’t wait until your kids are old enough, or the ship will have already sailed. If you wait until your kids are sleeping through the night, potty-trained, can talk, can get dressed independently, {fill in your own blank here}, then you’ll look up someday and the kids will be grown and on their way out of the house. Today, these memories, are the ones you’re making that matter. No vacation is perfect and some days of them can be downright miserable. I can assure you, you’ll never regret taking the trip. When our preemie was a few months old, we decided to get out of town and head to New Mexico. At that point he was screaming for two hours every night, like clockwork, whether we held or didn’t hold him. It was likely the most brutal two years of our life from birth to two. We figured we could stay at home and let him scream, or find our adventurous spirit and let him scream in Ruidoso. So we did. I knocked out the entire Harry Potter series during that trip, as I sat in the hallway listening to him cry. Yet, as I look at this photo, I just remember what a life-giving trip it was for our entire family.