Planning - Snapshot Chronicles Roadtrip

Surviving Summer Vacation: Keeping the kids entertained on the road

June 25, 2010 by Susan Getgood

School’s out for summer, and if you are like most Americans, you’ll be taking a family vacation. Parents, kids and possibly even pets displacing themselves from home to a vacation destination. By plane, train, automobile and even boat.

And the $25,000 question is: how are you going to keep the kids entertained in transit? Here are my tips for making getting there a part of the fun of the holiday, not just something to be endured.

1. Give each child a new game, toy or activity as you depart. Nothing expensive — a travel game or book for older kids, a small toy for younger ones. New is the key here –something novel that will keep their attention for the first stage of the trip, which is often on familiar (boring) ground, especially if you are driving to your destination. Important: don’t give books to kids who get carsick. It’s a tease, not a treat.

2. Now is not the time to impose a moratorium on electronics. Carefully stage and pack all hand held video units, iPods/iTouches and DVD players to make sure you have all the necessary chargers, headphones and games/DVDs. Try to avoid bringing every last game and movie — make the kids pick a few favorites You can always buy new movies in transit, even at rest stop convenience stores. Do the same for your own electronics — mobile phone, laptop, Kindle, iPod etc.

3. If you are traveling by plane, train or boat, each child should have his/her own appropriately sized carry-on for toys and games. If it doesn’t fit, it doesn’t come with, and don’t let your children have two carry-ons. You will end up carrying one of them. Instead, if you are traveling by plane, use one of the extra alloted carry-ons to pack a small suitcase with a change of clothes for everyone, basic toiletries and medicines. If your luggage is lost, or you have an extended layover, you will appreciate it. I learned this from experience. When Douglas was one, we had a lengthy and unexpected layover in Zurich on the way back from Europe. I had packed the diaper bag with everything I thought we’d need to get home, but hadn’t accounted for a 6 hour layover. I don’t know about now, but at the time, they did not sell disposable diapers at the Zurich airport. We made it home with none to spare!

4. If you are traveling by car, let the kids use their electronics when you are on long boring stretches of road. When there’s actually stuff to look at, or when the batteries die, try some of these games to encourage them to look out the window.

License Plate — This was a family favorite when I was a kid (pre-electronics era) You simply try to spot plates from all 50 states. This is especially good when traveling long distances.

Alphabet — Play Alphabet when you are in areas with lots of billboards and highway signs. Two teams, each has one side of the road. Your challenge is to spot the letters of the alphabet in order.

Travel Bingo — You can buy travel bingo sets or print your own from the web. We’ve used a pad and pencil version from eeBoo Travel Bingo and also have the cards with the sliders (Regal Travel Auto Bingo), no pencil required. As long as each player has a different card, you don’t have to pick sides of the car. Just be sure that every player stands a reasonable chance of seeing a number of the things on his or her card.

Want to get your kid’s nose out of the Nintendo while eating at a restaurant? Play I Spy. I Spy with my little eye something that is…. Our basic rules are the players can ask yes or no questions, and get 20 guesses/questions. But we often skip the rules and just have fun playing.

5. Popular games like Battleship and Mastermind have travel versions. Pick up some of your families favorites and a deck of cards for your travel games kit. Keep it small so it can fit in your airline carry-on as well as the backseat!

Next up in Surviving Summer Vacation: Kids and cameras

To RV or Not to RV

June 24, 2009 by Mary Cardwell

Deciding to travel across this great country was easy but trying to determine how to actually get from point A to point B proved to be a bit more complicated than I first thought.

First, get your basic framework in place – where you think you want to stop, how much can you afford, how long will you be away…stuff like that. Then the fun begins, detail by detail. But when you are talking about dropping $12,000 for a vacation, I guess detail is warranted. I always assumed we would take an RV but you know that saying about assuming, well, it’s true. I should have never assumed anything. I’ve been with the same man for almost 20 years – I should have known that we’d start with opposite opinions. Every time I said “we’ll rent an RV…” my husband would stop me dead in my tracks. “Do we really need an RV?” he said. “Why not just take our car? Lots of people do this trip in a car. I know this guy at work who…” That’s the point he would always loose me. I kept thinking “Are you INSANE!!?? Five weeks in a car with two hormonal 12 year old boys! I’m the only girl! I need my space!”

With an advanced degree in communications, I quickly ascertained my argument that he was just simply out of his flippin’ gourd was not going help us come to an agreement (yeah, I’m quick like that). We debated the pros and cons of our travel options. There were many sides to our discussions from the trivial pee breaks to the obligatory Robin Williams RV reference but ultimately it boiled down to three key factors: availability, cost, and experience.

On a side note, if you do plan a cross country trip, be prepared to be asked if you have ever seen the movie RV by every co-worker, teacher, acquaintance, relative and neighbor.

Availability – The first step to help decide if an RV is right for you is to learn what’s available in your area. When we began our search, we came up with basic criteria. We knew we wanted it to be small, under 25′ to be specific. Clean and smell-free also topped my list. More practically, vehicle mileage and miles per gallon were very important factors. With those basic criteria in mind, we started on our search. The internet was an obvious first start. A Google search gave us hundreds of RV sites to review. Most sites allowed us the opportunity to narrow down the search even further by our criteria. Immediately we saw a trend in location and availability – California, Arizona, New Jersey and New Hampshire were the hot beds for rentals. My super reasoning powers allowed me to quickly identify that availability wasn’t a problem for us. We live in New England; New Hampshire is in New England…see where I’m going with this.

Cost – Once we knew the model/size we wanted was available to us, we moved our discussion to cost. My philosophy on vacationing is exactly the same philosophy I employ at work – DO THE MATH. Make a list of all the costs you will occur for the different travel methods. For example, if you were to rent an RV you will need to consider the cost of:

rental fees
mileage fees (most places give you so many “free” miles each day and you pay a cost for any additional miles traveled. $0.35/mile was an average figure we saw)
taxes
gas (you’ll need to get miles per gallon to figure it out)
meals (consider groceries vs. restaurants)
RV park/campground fees (many National Parks ave. $25 per night, private sites can range as high as $40 per night)
insurances. Not all insurance is created equal and, in most cases, you auto insurance will NOT cover you driving an RV.

While visiting each dealer, we asked them for a ballpark estimate. The two big questions we got consistently were estimated mileage and timing. As you can imagine, the fees are higher in season. There is also the option to purchase an RV vs. renting. I’ll delve into that topic in a separate blog.

If you think you may want to drive your own vehicle consider

mileage
wear and tear on your car
meals
lodging/hotels/campgrounds
park fees

Depending on whether or not you want to camp or stay at hotels, you may also need to consider whether or not you’ll need to pull a pop-up camper or even a trailer for your camping gear. Obviously it is less expensive to camp but will require a lot more planning and towing on your part.

There is always the option to fly. You’ll need to look at flights, car rentals and meals.

When we ran our numbers, we determined that the cost of renting an RV and driving our own vehicle staying in hotels was only a couple hundred dollars. The hotel and restaurant costs, even assuming light meals at fast food places, added up quickly, making the rental cost nearly a wash. Again I highly recommend that you run the numbers appropriate for your own travel plans.

One tip when looking at RV rental costs – shop around! We priced out rentals with 4 different dealers and the cost varied by as much as $4,000.

Experience – By experience, I don’t mean whether or not you’ve ever driven an RV. Was your trip enjoyable? Fulfilling? Satisfy your expectation? Did you make the memory you dreamed of making? Understanding the importance of experience became more and more clear with each conversation we had with friends, family, each other and anyone else who wanted to hear about our plans. There are hundreds of ways to approach this trip and everyone knew of someone who did it a little differently. My favorites were the tales of adults who remember being crushed in the back of their parents’ station wagon 30 some odd years ago. Or the college kids who jumped into a car with nothing but a backpack and several hundred dollars. The common denominator of all the stories was how it was the best trip of their lives! Everyone with a different flavor but all consistently talked about the experience – “I remember teasing my brother…”; “We were exhausted by the time we got the Grand Canyon…”; “You have to see Crazy Horse. When we were there this guy…”

For me, the deciding factor wasn’t the cost or even the comfort but the experience. I knew at the end of a long day traveling and sightseeing, I wanted to be able to talk to my kids and not compete with the cable in the hotel room. I could see us sitting around the campfire, chatting about the day, joking about the crazy stuff we saw on the trails. When we reviewed our options after all the discussions and research, the answer presented itself. We knew we had access to what we wanted, the cost was close enough either way, we couldn’t have a campfire in our hotel room at night and I’m just not a tent type of girl. So, to answer the question to RV or not to RV – I’m RV’ing!

TIPS

Know a basic framework of your vacation dreams before you being your research – length of time, distance, budget
Research several options. The Internet is the perfect starting point. Don’t forget to talk with people you know, learn from their experience as well
DO THE MATH! Be realistic about your costs – hotels, restaurants, pit stops, gas, fees, insurance, repairs, etc. Be as thorough as possible.
Be true to you and your family. Know your limitations, like sleeping in the rain, and your expectations, such as quality time around the campfire. This is not the vacation you want to look back on with regrets.

Across the USA: Yah, I want to go…now what?

June 10, 2009 by Mary Cardwell

So, we’re going cross country! Yea! I’ve been talking about this trip for years and now it’s time to put my money where my mouth is! Planning major events is not new to me; I’ve done it hundreds of time…for work. The more I thought about it, the more nervous I got. What the hell do I know about going cross country?! Nothing! I need to learn and fast!!

I know I said this trip was for my kids – their education and an opportunity to spend quality time with us, that kind of crap – but that’s not the whole truth. The truth is much more selfish. I made a goal for myself to see all 50 states by the time I am 50 years old. I’m in my mid-forties and I’ve been to 34 of the 50 states. Not a bad track record but I’ve got a lot of catching up to do.

So back to what this all has to do with planning a trip. My first step was to mount of map of the USA on a board and note with pushpins the states I need to visit. Then I asked the kids what are the places they’ve heard about and want to visit. To this day, their answers amuse me – Niagara Falls, Las Vegas and Oklahoma. Don’t ask. So I marked those next. We then identified friends and family that we should stop and visit while “we’re in the neighborhood.” Up on the board they went, too. Last we added the obligatory National Monuments. How could we justify a cross country trip without seeing Mount Rushmore, the Grand Canyon, Old Faithful and the world’s largest ball of string, my personal favorite? It may sound like a painful exercise, it was really quick actually. The hardest part was finding the map. With that complete, the route presented itself almost immediately. It really came together by playing connect the dots with some string and the push pins.

A semi-painful but very useful exercise!

Although we had a basic route in place, we really didn’t have a good handle on how long or how many miles we were talking or how much time we needed. Google Maps became my best ally in the next planning stage. A quick search for directions from location to location, tracking the miles and time to get there gave us a good foundation to work from. We guessed on how many days to stay in each location, whether it was a stopover or a major sightseeing opportunity. My advice – make your plans like there were no restrictions – you have all the time in the world and money is no object (oh to dream!!) See what you get, then scale back as needed. What can you afford and how much time can you really afford to be away? As with most major decisions, budget may not be the deciding factor but it certainly has a big impact. Since we live on the East Coast, we scaled back Washington D.C. and North Carolina because we knew those were trips that would be easy for us to make at a later date.

So you’ve got some ideas on the where to go and how long you’ll be gone, you’ll also need to figure out the when. We knew we would go when the boys got out of school but we live in New England, predicting the end of school is nearly impossible but we did our best! Now your straw man is almost complete…

Let’s review. You should have a foundation of where you will travel, how long it will take you, how much you can afford and when you want to go. With a basic framework of your perfect trip, you can turn your attention to travel. How do you want to travel – car? RV? Plane?

Anyway you choose, be realistic about the cost of travel. You will never visit multiple states over the course of a couple weeks and only spend $100. That’s not to say that you can’t find ways to minimize your costs but know what and how much you are willing to compromise. What’s more important to you, getting to the largest collection of hubcaps or the extra $100 and 6 hours it’s going to take you to get off the interstate and head down the endless dirt road in the middle of nowhere?

TIPS

Write it down! Every decision, every idea, every phone number, web site or travel tip. You’ll discuss so much it’s easy to lose track. Keep a log of your dates, locations, and travel time.
Google Maps is your friend! So is AAA. Use the tools available to you.
Create a visual of your trip. A map with pushpins always offers a clear picture of where you’re going.
Not everyone has the luxury of unlimited budget and unlimited time. Set your priorities.

I Want to See (the Rest of) America

June 10, 2009 by Mary Cardwell

Deciding to go cross country was one of the easiest decisions we ever made. When I got pregnant with the twins twelve years ago, I had visions of our future family vacations. A cross country trip was at the top of that list. Initially, I hadn’t given it much thought about planning a cross country trip. It can’t be that difficult. I’m not really sure what caused my temporary insanity – maybe the excessive hormones, I was carrying twins after all? Maybe I was too focused on the tag team wrestling match knocking my spleen around? Whatever it was, I had unknowingly drifted back my college years … all we have to do was pick the landmarks, pack a cooler and pillow, grab a map and go! Eventually I regained my senses, most of them at least, and realized there was a lot to making this trip real. I don’t know that I would use the word “difficult“. Detailed is more accurate.

We talked about going cross country many times after the kids were born, well I talked and my husband nodded. I would remind him of our (by “our” I mean “my”) vacation schedule on a semi-regular basis – Disney at 5, cross country at 10 and Europe at 15. Really, just trips for me that I could pretend were age appropriate and were in the best interest of the kids. My husband’s response was always the same – a nod of his head followed by “Sure, we’ll talk about it.” Don’t get me wrong, my husband is wonderful but I wasn’t convinced he wanted to take this trip until one fateful day about 3 years ago.

I was droning on about the importance of “connecting” with the dynamic duo before we entered pubescent hell and I honestly believed a cross country trip would offer us much needed quality time with the boys (yes, it’s true, I will confess that as a first time parent I did fall for that Dr. Phil BS during the early years. No worries, like I said I did regain my senses.) As I continued to babble, my husband finally jumped in and bottom-lined it for me “You better start planning and saving for this thing if you really want to do it.” I was so excited; it was really going to happen! So, I started to plan, in my head. I thought about it a lot. And thought lots of wonderful ideas. In hind sight, it was not a very good plan.

Would we drive or fly? What would we drive – RV, car, van? How much vacation time will we need? Can we afford this? Should we stay at hotels or campgrounds? Where should we go? How much valium will I need (just joking!)? Our approach was simple – discuss it from every aspect, research, research and research some more and then discuss even more until one of us caves. Last man standing wins. Not scientific but works for us. Since my husband and I approach challenges from polar opposite points of view, we honestly felt confident that we covered our bases. Hopefully our planning adventures will be helpful as you start on your own cross country journey.