Road Trip with Kids | An Introduction

Every now and then, I do a fun blog post or series that is not photography related in any way. It’s been a while since I’ve done a series. I’m starting a new Friday series where over the next couple of weeks, I will be sharing my tips and tricks on how to successfully road trip with kids.

Every year I do at least one mega road trip and often one or two smaller, more “local” ones with my kids. I do it by myself with one or both kids in tow. My husband works and has limited time off, so he’s not able to join us on these trips, nor does he really care to! haha. I know road trips aren’t for everyone! He likes to chill and relax while on vacation while I, on the other hand, LOVE to travel and be doing all the things on vacation. If you know the enneagram at all, I am a very strong 7w8 in all the ways that make 7’s what they are. I constantly see things about 7’s and one of the main things I see is travel! It definitely is one of the main things about being a 7 that is true to me!

I started this tradition of road trips with kids when it was just Levi and back in 2017 as a way to go visit my best friend from growing up. They live in Branson, MO which is about 12 hours from door to door. It’s a lot of driving with a little kid on my own, so I decided to break it up and take 2-3 days to get out there, stay there 2-3 days, and take 2-3 days to get back. I looked at where they lived, mapped out the route and looked to see what friends I knew that lived along those routes. I wanted to make a loop of some sort in order to not go back the same way I went.

He was just 3 years old and I look back to how I was a little crazy to consider a trip like this. Hop in the next year and I took Abigail at 9 months on our next road trip! So far I have done 6 road trips with the kids in 4 years. I have two, maybe three planned to this year so far!

Basically from then on, I have mapped out my road trip with kids like that. I’ll go into more details in my series, but basically, I figure out:
1) who I am going to see/why I’m going on the trip. Generally it’s a good friend of mine that I want to visit that is 10-12 hours away from me.
2) figure out who I know along the way and who would be willing to host us for a night or two.
3) what kind of fun stuff is along the way.
4) how far I’m willing to travel/how many days I want to be done

Again, I’ll go into more details in the following weeks as I do this series, but for now this is just a fun blog post to introduce the series and get you excited to join me on Fridays coming up to see how we plan our trips. I’m in the middle of planning my next one for this July and am already so excited and ready for it to be here! Feel free to comment and ask whatever questions you have! I even like to do a blog post on the most frequently asked questions from here, so don’t be shy!