Tips to Make Traveling with Kids More Enjoyable
For the past decade we have been traveling to national parks with my cousin and her family. We’re a a party of 10 – 4 adults and 6 kids (now aged 20-13).
We’ve gotten pretty good at traveling as a group. We do a good amount of planning ahead and usually have accommodations reserved ahead of time.
We have a shared spreadsheet that we can all edit that allows us to brainstorm ideas and sketch out a rough itinerary that can be refined as it gets closer. We also add all our reservation confirmations so they are all in one place, including the cost and who reserved it.
One thing we learned early on is that the kids are hungry! We pack or buy lots of snacks to keep in the car. We try to picnic for lunch as much as possible. We usually stop at a Walmart or grocery store to get lunch meat and bread.
When we had a travel trailer, we had a fridge and a cooler. Since now we’re traveling in two cars, we bring or buy a cooler and keep it stocked with ice so we can keep drinks and food cool on the road.
Essentials we like to have on hand:
- Paper Towels – we put down several for a clean surface if needed, great for spills of all kinds, serve as napkins
- Baby wipes or WetOnes – sticky fingers, clean up spills
- Hand sanitizer – good for cleaning hands before eating, after the occasional nature pee, and takes sap off hands
- Trash bags – trash obviously, but also wet clothes or shoes, dirty laundry
- Sandwich bags – mostly to make sandwiches ahead or portion snacks, but also good for small wet items
- First aid kit – you can make your own or buy one pre-made, but always good to have bandaids, antibiotic ointment, and ibuprofen at the ready
Top 5 Travel Tips
- Have a plan but be flexible. Sometimes there are things beyond your control that require you to pivot. On our California trip, we had wildfires to contend with when we were supposed to go to Lassen Volcanic National Park. We ended up going to San Francisco instead which worked out great and we got to see Shauna’s brother and his family.
- Know that something will go wrong. As my father-in-law says when things go wrong, “It’s a memory.” Could be someone getting sick or a reservation is messed up or traffic delays. If you don’t expect things to go smoothly, it’s a lot easier to recover. On our way back from watching the eclipse in the Great Smoky Mountains, there was a fatal accident on the highway. Of course, we didn’t know it at the time. We just knew we were stopped for hours. We canceled our hotel reservation and found a hotel off the highway once we got moving again.
- Build in some downtime. The kids are generally good sports and up for anything, but a couple of a times we like to have extra time at the pool (or playground when they were little). Ensuring there’s enough sleep and movement to balance out the hiking and sitting in the car helps ensure everyone is in a good mood. This also means staying in some locations two to three nights.
- Do something fun. We usually plan to go to an amusement park or some other activity that’s just fun. The kids love roller coasters so we often plan around amusement parks. Of the amusement parks we’ve been to so far, I highly recommend Dollywood. The park is clean, well organized, and has plenty of thrill rides plus an eagle sanctuary … and of course, musical performances.
- Make lots of good memories. We have a few traditions the kids look forward to. John’s a big fan of pie so we’re always in the lookout for homemade pie. The kids each have a National Park passport to collect stamps. If we’re staying somewhere for a while we’ll do a puzzle.
We feel so fortunate that we can take these trips with our kids. Do you have tips to make traveling with kids more enjoyable?
