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Health & Fitness

Pack Up For The Family Road Trip This Spring Break

This week, many families will head out on the road for Spring Break. Whether a couple hours to the Eastern Shore or half a day to find Mickey Mouse, here's a few tips from our road adventures.

 

For a family vacation, I really like the car road trip.  Perhaps this is left over from childhood memories, riding in the back seat to El Paso and Corpus Christie with only my brother and the scene passing by the window as entertainment.  This was way back before seatbelt laws when a sibling could actually stray into your space, so, aside from reading and asking “are we there yet?”, my brother and I also spent much of the road time pointing to that seam down the middle of the back seat, daring each other to cross the line.

This week, many Montgomery County families will continue that family tradition and pack up the car to hit the road for Spring Break.  Whether a couple hours to the Eastern Shore or half a day to find Mickey Mouse, car rides with children can be a bit to manage.  We’ve done a number of road trips, ranging from the day trip to the multi-day on the road variety.  The longest was a couple summers ago when my kids and I drove from Maryland to the Georgia coast – roughly 1700 miles, in just over 2 weeks.  If you are heading out this week, here’s a few tips from our road adventures, whether you’re driving 20 or 2000 miles this week. 

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  • Plan some stops along the way.  There’s the “we can drive to California and only stop for gas” type driver and the “let’s stop at every road sign” type driver.  I stop about three times on the drive from Montgomery County to Ocean City, so there’s telling you which I am.  But the stops are good for the driver as well as the kids, it adds some variety to the trip.  In addition to the necessary gas fill-ups, look for interesting fruit stands, petting zoos (you’d be surprised how many there are), and local sites.  If you have some faraway friends that you never see, here’s a great excuse to stop by and say “hey” face-to-face rather than just through FaceBook.


  • Pack the car with snacks, even meals.  We all know food on the road is expensive, so plan ahead.  Have a cooler that fits inside the car, in addition to or instead of (depending on the length of the trip) one that goes in the trunk.  Fill it up with juices, waters, bottles of iced coffee, cold cuts, cheese, spreads, boiled eggs, fruit, cut up vegetables.  In a separate bag or box, put all your dry goods – bread, tortillas, chips, pretzels, popcorn.  Include some healthy options, no better time when kids are bored and hungry than to get them to eat a carrot stick.  Find a place for a picnic or eat while making your way down the road.  Restock at local grocery stores rather than the gas station convenience store.


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  • Don’t forget the entertainment!  Whatever works for your family to keep them from throwing each other out of the window, bring it along.  For our trips, everyone packs their bag of books (and now a nook), coloring and activity books, a pencil box full of crayons, pencils, scissors, and glue sticks, a deck of cards, and other entertainment.  We picked up a pile of audio books from the library and I was happily surprised by how much my children relaxed and listened to them.  And of course, there’s the portable DVRs, video games, and iPads. 

 

Grab a basket and pack these:

  • a road map: Yes, an old fashioned, paper road map that you will never be able to fold back how it originally was.  Show the kids the route, teach them how to read the map.  This is a skill that will be lost as we sit back and let the GPS tell us where to go.  I have a road map from Cracker Barrel, with the restaurant locations conveniently marked on it, so that I can plan my drive with stops for fried fish and hash brown casserole.
  • a box of plastic sandwich bags: These do come in handy – divide up snacks, save crayons once the box breaks, for the half a sandwich someone wants to save until later, collect rocks and seashells.
  • hand sanitizer, hand soap, lotion, a couple wash cloths, roll of paper towels.
  • a reusable water bottle for everybody.  Its much cheaper and environmentally friendly to have everyone fill up their water bottles rather than buying bottled water everywhere you go.
  • all the medication you might need – allergies, cold, aspirin/Tylenol/Advil, eyedrops, something for bug-bites, whatever other ailments your family is prone to;
  • a journal and a big plastic envelope (from office supply or craft store) for all your souvenirs and memorabilia along the way.

 

If you've found some other things that helped save your sanity on the road, let me know!

Have a safe, fun Spring Break wherever you spend your week!

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