How to Survive a 30 hour (one way) Road Trip with 3 Kids

I really have nothing to say to this.  The title of the post that is.  A 30-hour road trip is pretty miserable.  And then to have to do it again to get home?  And then to have to repeat the next summer?

It's like having a baby.  The first time you're really excited and have no idea what's in store.  Then labor starts and keeps going for 30 hours.  You survive and claim "It wasn't that bad!"  But then the next one comes around.  And you know it's not that bad because you've done it before without dying, but you also know that it is bad.  So you try not think about it or plan anything for a long time because you know no matter how much planning you do, it's 30 hours.  It's not fun.  And then your sister invites you to Yellowstone for next summer and your oldest child insists that you have to go to Utah every summer because that's what you've done since he can remember.  But I just don't think I can handle another road trip next summer.

In all seriousness, I did prepare a bit.  You can go a head and Pin this if you want.

First, I borrowed a bunch of DVDs of movies that I like.  If I'm going to be in the car and listening to this stuff, I might as well enjoy it too.  I recommend most Pixar movies.  Except Up.  That is the saddest movie in the world.  I can't watch it.  Also, let's be honest, my kids were sitting on the butts for 30 hours, just let them watch movies.

Next, I downloaded a few audio books for myself (I typed books on tape the first time.  Haha).  Nothing like a man droning on about who-knows-what you lull you to sleep despite the baby shrieking next to you.

My kids do get bored of movies after the third or fourth of the day.  I bought them each a new toy they could play with in the car.  Rex got maze balls and Alice got a latch board.  I also loaded up a box with crayons, dry erase boards, coloring books, regular books, cars, clippy girls, My Little Ponies, and any other toy that didn't have a ton of small pieces.  Rex and Alice didn't touch any of them.  I take that back: Rex played with his maze balls a bit and Alice got the clippy girls out one day, but mostly we watched movies or looked out the window.  Driving, even if it is through Kansas, just makes you feel weird and it' hard to play while feeling wierd.

For Henry, I tried cut up pipe cleaners in an old spice jar, an electronic tooth brush, crayons, finger puppets, cars, animals, books.  All of which entertained him for a bit.  But let's face it, we drove to Utah and then to Idaho and then home again.  With toddlers, it's just best to pray that they sleep a lot.  We also sang silly songs and Greg let Henry play with the Go-Pro for a while.  And then we just fed him lots and lots of M&Ms one at a time.

#3: Break the trip up.  My kids can handle 9 hours of driving time a day, which takes about 11 hours to complete between gas/pee/food stops.  I also like to leave around 6 am so we arrive around 3 and have time to play and don't feel like we've been in the car all day.  This becomes difficult as the days progress and we get sick of waking up at 5 and like to chat with the family we're staying with past 6 am, but it's nice when it happens.

Lastly, eat breakfast before leaving.  I used to try to sneak the kids in the car in the morning to get a few mores hours of sleep out of them.  Yeah right.  Just wake them up, get them dressed, and feed them.  That's one less meal at McDonald's (barf).

Now really lastly, pack one "driving" bag for the family.  This way you only have to unpack one bag each night as you drive.

Here's how we did it:

We left Friday, July 31st at 6am and arrived in Princeton, Kentucky around 2:30.  Then we hung out with Nana for a while and put the kids to bed early (another plus of waking them up at 5:30).

Day 2 was my birthday and started with a birthday cake from Greg's aunt and grandma.  We left around 7:30, made a wrong turn at some point and arrived to cheesecake in Wichita, Kansas sometime around 6pm.

Ahh, a screaming baby.  Henry last half way through the first day rear-facing like a good little 17-month old should be.  We turned him around at lunch to keep from killing him.

With cousin Randall in Kansas

We went to 9am Sacrament on the Sunday the 2nd, then left for the 12-hour drive to Vernal, Utah.  We arrived in at our hotel around 2 am, got the kids settled, then I walked Henry up and down the hallway of the hotel while reading Conference talks for an hour.  He finally fell asleep only to wake up when I tried to put him in his crib, so we walked some more.  He didn't fall back to sleep.  Eventually, I decided hotel rooms are pretty baby proof so I went to sleep while he walked around a pitch dark hotel room.  I found him asleep on the floor with Greg's phone in his hand around 5 am.  He woke up at 7 am.

Coloring for about 15 minutes.

Never such a beautiful site as this.

Somewhere in Kansas--our entire country is really beautiful.  Even Kansas.

But mostly those glorious mountains we are about to enter.

The next morning, we ate a leisurely yet mostly disgusting hotel breakfast followed by a dip in the freezing pool.  Then we got dressed and headed to Dinosaur National Monument.  That was #15 on our bucket list.  It wasn't as great as Greg remembered it being when he was 8.  It was about the same as I remembered from when I was 14.  So I'm sure the kids thought it was amazing.  We stopped by the Vernal temple on our way out and arrived in American Fork around 5.

Vernal Temple

We then spent two weeks (ish) all over Utah and Idaho

We were going to leave on Monday, August 17th and drive straight through to Kansas, but that's 14 hours, and when it came down to it, we just couldn't do it.  While at church on the 16th, we decided to leave that day.  So I left my kids with my parents in Primary and went home to pack.  We left around 2 and arrived in Cheyenne, Wyoming around 10 that night.

Monday we drove to Kansas, leaving and arriving late again, just to repeat the next day in Kentucky to finally arrive home to Charlotte on Wednesday the 19th around 8pm, 3 weeks to the day after we left.

People often comment on how  lucky we are to take such a long vacation.  Really the vacation only 2 weeks.  We spent 8 days driving!  And while I'd really like to go to Yellowstone with my sister next summer, I think a National Park a little closer to home might win.  It's just so much driving.

But we had a blast.  Those posts next.