If you know me in real life you have definitely talk about this road trip I have been planning for months. I love driving and look forward to getting to do road trips so much. Every summer I think, maybe we can do one this year and I plan out all the stops and time frame and everything. We have only done a couple.
This year I hit the jackpot of road planning! I told my partner that I created this road trip for this summer for the fun of it, he looked at it and said “well, why wouldn’t we do it”. I was over the moon, and started working out the finer details immediately.
There are a lot of details when planning a 7100 mile road trip with a 7 year old and 8 year old, a partner with dietary restrictions, and visiting all of our immediately family in five different states.
The skeleton of the trip:
- Figure out where we want to go
- Figure out when we want to go
- Figure out what time restrictions are around that
- Figure out overnight stops
- Create a budget for the trip
- Verify with each family member they are available at that time
- Re-evaluate overnight stops what feels like 23 times
- Book overnight stops
- Decide on renting car or driving our own
The driving details:
- Reach out to friends to make sure we hit all the must see places
- Figure out what restaurants are in each town and do takeout
- Find parks close to the restaurant so we can eat outside and the kids can get some wiggles out
- Decide what snacks to get now, and what snacks to get later at a place we don’t have here
- Driving time entertainment
- Make sure first aid kit is properly up to date
- Make sure car seats are not expired
- Analyze how much space will be in the car and decide if a rooftop carrier is needed or not
The trip details:
- Figure out how many days between washing machine availability
- Think of what activities we will be doing at each location
- Academic work for the kids for each day
- Decide what we have at our house that should be driven across the country to others
- Find dog/house sitter or boarder
and now that I have written an outline of the fun pieces of the planning I realize that it would make for a really long single post. I think I will break it into a series. I will post at least once on each section of the planning stage over the coming week. Most of the trip has fallen into place pretty smoothly, but not all of it. I hope you will learn from the planning I have, as well as the mistakes I have made. 🙂
The Adventures of a Wild Jess 