Tuesday, November 16, 2010

How do we travel with such young children?

Many people ask me, "How do you travel with such young children THAT far? Lots of movies?" 
When I tell them that we don't have a DVD player, then I really see the disbelief.

Are we really a dying breed? Us families who travel without all the luxury's of modern technology? The majority of the time we don't have the music playing either. And really, although the DVD player would give small relief, how is that supposed to entertain an infant?

Now if you are one of those families who do travel with a DVD player, please don't think that I am faulting you for it. I am a firm believer that many things can be good in moderation.  Our family just has not had the luxury of owning a portable DVD player, nor does our van have one installed. I have most certainly been tempted to buy one, or borrow, however my husband whom has done all the travelling since he was young strongly discourages it. So, that leaves us with coming up with creative and fun ways to keep the "troops" occupied during what can be long hours "stuck" in a van.

The first thing we do, in order to have a somewhat I say somewhat as there are many factors to consider when travelling long distances with kids, toddlers and babes... eg. traffic successful, carefree road trip is to remind ourselves that this is not going to be a successful, carefree road trip. And that it is not going to be a "relaxing, restful" vacation either. I have come to the conclusion, that once we started having children, my "time off" vacations went out the window. I would have to say that most times I enjoy this MUCH more, and the rewards are often far greater travelling with children, but there are certainly times I miss that "do nothing" holiday.

The next thing we do is plan beforehand. This may seem very straightforward and obvious, but for my husband and I this was a tip we could have used a few trips ago. Sure, the travellling down, and back up, were usually planned out. A visit to the CAA/AAA was usually in order, getting a TripTik to show us our route and where we may have wanted to tweak it abit. However there have been an occasion or two where we did not end up following the triptik to it's entirety if not at all.
But we are a "fly by the seat of your pants" type of travellers and so doing the full plan ahead was not really something we thought necessary. Now that we have done a few trips, we know better.

Join me next time as I give some tips and ideas on what could and/or should be planned ahead.

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