Travel Tales

How wonderful is vacation? It is great to get away and at least try to relax. My family just returned from our family vacation and took a new travel mode...we actually drove! For us, that is huge, we are really plane people when we get past 3 to 4 hours. However, we thought it was wise to save the cash and pack the mini van for our ultimate road trip. I am happy to say we made it...12 hours down and back to Hilton Head. Wow!

To my surpirse the travel was not as bad as I thought or feared it would be. It was actually kind of fun. Check out how we made it happen:

1. Leave at the Crack of Dawn: We left at 4am...which must be illegal! However, by the time we actually woke up and realized what we were doing, we were already 2-3 hours into the trip.


2. Lots and lots of Snacks: Food always makes things go faster, right?


3. Videos: A good movie helped the kids get through 1-2 hours of time


4. Play-Away Books on Tape: Our family loves the library, and now we really love to use their books on tape via play-away. This is a recorded system (similar to an iPod) that you borrow from the library. All you need is your own headsets. Everyone had their own books on tape to listen to. It helped us escape from being truly annoyed by each other. The kids loved having their own headsets and felt very grown-up.


5. Satellite Radio: XM Radio was great to listen to for everyone. The kids had Disney, my husband had his hour of sports and I tapped into Oprah throughout the trip.

At the end of the day, I actually had more activities than time. Once again, I over planned but better to be safe than stuck on I95 with screaming kids. We had more than enough to do to keep us occupied and we would definitely do it again.