Grand Canyon 2015
At the time we went out west my kids were 9, 10 and 12. My kids two years later are still talking about our trip. It often comes up because of school. One day my son's class was learning about Mesa Verde and the teacher asked if anyone had ever been and my son was the only one to raise his hand. This has come up a number of times in the past two years. My kids are the only one in class to raise their hands when asked about different locations in the USA.
Recently my daughter has had to study the Little Rock Nine and we have been to the high school. I tell you this because the day we went to the Little Rock Central High School we had planned on diamond mining in Arkansas but it was raining. Since we were going to spend a lot of time in the car we decided to go to the National Monument instead because mud and four hours in a car was not a good mix. Completely unplanned but in hind sight I am so glad because my daughter has stood on the corner of the crossroads and has peeked in the windows of the front door (It was Sunday and the school was closed). The museum was open though. She has an experience not many, or any others have had in her class. Don't be discouraged by plan B.
I am writing this to encourage you to go out and take a road trip with your kids. We took two weeks and drove from Alabama to California and back. 16 states and 8 National Parks. This doesn't include state parks, national monuments and every other crazy stop we took over two weeks. We learned a lot about our country and traveling.
Travel Tips
Buy an annual pass to our National Parks and stop at as many as you can! It cost less than one Disney ticket and good for every park and national monument in our country.
Buy an old fashion Rand McNally map.
Decide how long at a time you want to be traveling. We tried to keep the travel time to around 4 hours at a time. This was the longest we wanted to be in the car. We would try to do something in the morning were we stayed the night, drive for a few hours and do something else and then drive to our nightly destination.
Sometimes we would arrive in enough time to do something extra so have a list of other things you can do in the next town. For example we got to New Mexico early and got to add one more National Monument to the list. Extra is good. Unexpected is good. Don't be afraid of the unknown. That is half the fun.
I found Trip Advisor to have the best lists of things to do with reviews. We went to a Museum of Osteology (study of bone structure) in Oklahoma. It is a museum full of skeletons from all kinds of animals. It is the only one in the world. I don't feel like I would have found this place without Trip Advisor.
Plan on rainy days. Have a plan B before you leave your house.
Call places to confirm hours. We ran into a late opening because of a holiday and it was not on their website.
This is a no brainer, have things to do in the car. Two of us really liked Smash books by K&Company. It is a type of scrapbook and was fun to put all our pamphlets and to buy postcards to use in our books. Cheap and fun way to remember a trip and take up the dreaded travel time in the car.
We had a cooler with lunch and snacks. Almost everyday we ate lunch in the car. It was easy to cut travel time. Eating one meal in the car and not spending more money going to fast food is a plus too.
Talk to people before you go. You will get great information if you toss it out on Facebook. I found out from a friend to stop before you get into the Great Sand Dunes and rent a sandboard, like a snowboard. It was the #1 thing my son liked on our trip. Didn't know about this until I put it out of Facebook and was my sons favorite activity.
I want to share and encourage you to go on a road trip this summer and will post more in the coming month. It only took me weeks to plan. Don't think it is too late. It is not, just sit down and start your trip on Google maps. Enter you starting point and find something four hours away. You will have to make hard choices but some of America is better than nothing.
Comments