I know many of you have been curious about how we managed to get our family across the entire country (diagonally) so I thought I would do a little write-up about the journey.
I will try not to go into TOO much detail, a long journey makes lots of details but hopefully I can keep it manageably long.
We started in Washington state, where my parents live. Here is my Excursion, starting it’s trek from Pacific Ocean:
Since we won’t be seeing family for a while we wanted to have a visit before our departure. Again, I will leave out the completely overwhelming details of us sending our kids to Washington on a plane by themselves from Montana, us following later, then flying to Florida to find a house, flying back to Washington and then driving back to Montana to eventually and finally leave for Florida.
This overwhelmed and confused most people.
At any rate, my parents got tricked into decided to come with us on this crazy-long road trip along with my youngest sister, Emma, and her friend, Brianna.
So we had quite the crew. 6 adults and 4 kids.
Great ratio.
We needed extra drivers, because this was being hauled behind the moving truck:
Can we say caravan? Poor little Land Cruiser was so filled with stuff it could barely drive up on the trailer…The neighbors all thought Ma and Pa Kettle had arrived.
I know because they told me. It’s probably true.
We had planned, up until the last minute, for me to pull our trailer with my excursion, but ended up getting a house without a spot to park said trailer, so we left it with a cousin. Had we known that before perhaps we would have planned for me pull the Honda…but mom and dad already had plane tickets for the return and we were a little nervous about the excursion pulling something that far because of this incident in Wisconsin a few years ago, resulting in a oil leak…yada yada yada…it got patched but never ACTUALLY fixed. So we figured it was better to just have my dad drive it.
There are a couple of awesome things we did for our trip that really helped make things easier and pretty manageable. If you are doing a long road/cross country move with kids and are terrified a little nervous, this, possibly, can help.
First and foremost, if you are a hunter/gatherer type and have a freezer full of meat (like us) which you would like to keep and take with you and you have a small generator. You can make magic happen.
Can I just say my husband is a genius?
He loaded the freezer into the moving truck LAST. Then chained our generator to the Land Cruiser on the trailer. THEN he ran an extension cord and the freezer ran the entire way. A SOLID week like that. He just kept filling the generator with gas and it totally worked.
The other thing we did that was the BEST idea ever, was to stay in Bed and Breakfasts.
I know.
You think of those for romantic getaways, don’t you?
They are SO completely perfect for long trips like these. Typically they are cheaper than a hotel. Nicer than a hotel.
Oh. And you don’t have to stay in hotels.
Which is always a bonus.
You get a home cooked breakfast, get to meet some nice people and just generally have a great time.
We did stay at some hotels, (and one hostile which was…WEIRD…but super cool at the same time, I’ll explain in next week’s post) some areas just didn’t have a bed and breakfast option or was more expensive than a hotel so we just went cheap.
Overall, we would really recommend the bed and breakfast thing. We even stayed at one, in Georgia, that had a pool, so you can’t always discount them if you’re looking for that option.
One of the ways we kept ourselves sane was to split the kids up. We made them rotate who rode in the moving truck with Dad, who rode in the Honda with Papa and Auntie Em and then two kids rode in the Excursion with Nana and I.
There were a few complaints at times because they all knew I had the little DVD players with me, and they knew Dad doesn’t stop to pee, but Papa had gummy worms so you know… decisions…
We utilize redbox BIG time on cross country trips. I never buy movies, we just stop at redbox every other day and switch out the movies. Works like a charm.
The other thing we were pretty proud of ourselves for, was virtually no fast food.
Can you believe it?
Over a week on the road and none of that crap. LOVE it.
I think we got fast food twice (and one was Sonic so doesn’t count?).
The way we manage it, and this is something my parents figured out long ago, is you get up in the morning and leave (now this is if you stayed at a hotel that isn’t serving breakfast) drive for an hour or two and then stop at some mom-and-pop sort of local breakfast place if you can find one or Cracker Barrel but-not-because-their-food-is-gross but something like that, you get the idea. Have your coffee and a big breakfast around 9am or so, the later the better. Then you keep lots of healthy snacks and some treats with you in the car, snack all day and then stop for the night, chill in the room for a bit and then go to a good dinner.
We actually got one of those metal platform things you insert into your trailer hitch and kept all the coolers (we had 3) on that and would just get a stash of stuff out at every stop.
HINT ON SNACKS: Before we left Bozeman I went and visited my friends, Matt and Jacy, at their produce farm and got a HUGE bag a carrots and a bunch of cherry tomatoes (you know the kind that taste like candy, so you can just chow on them). We also had a big huge thing of almonds, granola bars, snap peas, string cheese, peanut butter, sandwich fixings… I can’t remember everything. We did have our share of junk food for the kids but overall things were pretty good. About halfway through the trip we ran out of stuff and restocked with different stuff since we were then sick of what we started with. Having fresh veggies around made us feel SO much less gross. And chocolate. Just a little. Because a little really good dark chocolate goes a long way and the kids don’t like it.
I really don’t take a lot of toys for the kids on these trips. I find they don’t play with them and they get lost in all the shuffling. Each kid got a new small lego set to build, we had some coloring books and markers, some books to read (my older two had their kindles), joke books are essential, sticker books are fabulous for little ones but that was about it. We let them watch movies, normally they are pretty restricted on that type of thing so we don’t mind that and really feel like not having tons of stuff all over the place getting stepped on and broken helps keep everyone sane.
Whenever we would stop at a rest area my mom would take all the kids and have them play follow the leader behind her and run them through a little workout. It was awesome, she had them doing jumping jacks and burpees and squats and running and marching and I don’t know, I was usually cleaning out all the garbage in the car… but it was great and the kids LOVED it.
Eventually we made it to our new home and even though the trip went well…we were all READY. OH. SO. READY. to be out of the car.
Phew. Big sigh of relief.
And here is my Excursion on it’s first beach trip to the Atlantic (and my mom after a glorious day of boogie boarding!):
Next week I plan to do a write up about a couple of the totally AWESOME places we stayed! So check back because I’m excited to share 🙂
- Huckleberry Plum Pie - January 1, 2017
- Fresh Mango Sorbet - July 17, 2016
- Steak Caesar Salad - June 8, 2016
