I am driving long distance w/kids?

Question

My mom has time share booked for our family in florida she is really looking foward to us going down with her but we are not the highest paid individuals I have searched for affordable plane tickets but they are not in our price bracket. We are thinking about driving to florida from philadelphia pennsylvania me my husnaband and our for kids 1 , 3, 7, and 9 will this be to hard you think? its 15 hours

Answer 1

you will lose a couple of days on the road but the money you save will make you feel so much better after the fact. Take frequent stops. find points of interest along the way. It always helps to get out and stretch. At rest stop the kids can actually run around since there is always grass at them. have alot of toys in the car and invest in a portable dvd player. You will use it over and over. Have a good time I wish your mom was my mom lol.

Answer 2

We travel every year with several children in tow. We make sure we have rested well the night before and have packed the day before our trip. That way we are starting out fresh. We eat light breakfast and bring snacks that are travel friendly. We stop to stretch every few hours and make our "pee" stops while we are there. The kids take their gameboys, dvd players, or anything else to keep them occupied. (Don't forget the Headphones) We play games on the way that we have planned before the trip, depending on where we are going. Sometimes we count barns, pilot stations or license plates from another specific state, and then as we get farther away from home, we try to find cars from our own state. The children pay attention to the other vehicles and try to find other travelers doing unusual things. I once saw a woman knitting while going down the interstate. We try to play each game for no more than an hour. That way they don't get bored with them. Try to plan the last part of the trip so the children can sleep. This helps the trip seem a lot faster for them. Switch drivers each time you stop at a rest area and try to catch some shut eye between your turns. This will help you make it through the night driving, supposing you are going to do all the driving in one day. This I really don't recommend unless you just absolutely cannot afford a cheap hotel. If you are planning on staying in a hotel along the way. Call first and get directions and plan this ahead, so you are not driving all over looking through who knows what kind of neighborhoods for a place to stay when you are already tired. Let the kids bring a cell phone if they have one. They can talk to their friends. We all know they can talk for hours on those things without realizing it. Have a safe trip.

Answer 3

I found it easier to start out about 7p.m. where the kids are still awake. That way they will be up for a couple more hours, then they will go to sleep for the night. You drive through the night, and you will get there at about 10 in the morning. Maybe earlier since there won't be any traffic at night. We got a radar detector so that we could go a little faster than the speed limit. Also a dvd player is a good investment for traveling with kids.

Answer 4

i did that trip when i was little!!! ( i was 5 at the time, my bro was 1, my cousin was 4) i used to live in GA and the rest of my family lived in NY way back when... it was a long drive, i remember, but we split the trip into two days i believe.

now, as an adult, i love road trips and don't mind 15 hours in a car, but with kids, i'd reccommend splitting the trip into two days. i dunno what kind of car you'll be driving, but the bigger the space, the better. if you are working with small space, then make sure you make a lot of pit stops. bring a frisbee or soccer ball and stop at a grassy rest stop here and there and play, run around... and then hop back in the car. in the car, keep some fun things like coloring books, hand held video game stuff, music for the whole family... that sorta thing.... lotsa blankets and pillows for the kids to roll around in when they get cranky and tired. imagine the back seat of the car as though it were a child's fort and equip it as so. keep snacks and stuff, the healthy filling kind. that can be cheap.

i dunno if you can do this, but when my husband and i took our cross country road trip, what helped save us a lot of money was camping instead of hotels. it's like 10 bucks a night. pitch a tent and voila. it's a lot more stuff to pack in the car, but if every night my husband and i had to pay 30-100 bucks, we would have been broke in no time! camp site signs can be found all along the highways you will be driving on, just keep an eye out for little signs with teepees on it. i have a road atlas that even marks a lot of state parks and all with camping locations. my husband and i wouldn't even plan where we'd stop that night, when ever we were ready to call it a night, it was always within another hour or so we'd find a camp ground. and we wouldn't even ask people. if you asked people, i'm sure you'd find a place faster!

hope some of this was helpful. good luck on your trip and i hope its a lot of fun!!!

Answer 5

Depends a lot on how broken up it is, 15 hours straight may be a little bit taxing on all of you.

If you can break it up a little bit it will really help.

They'll sure remember it their whole life though that you all went on a long trip together. Those are some of my favorite memories about being a kid when we did that (usually more like 3-5 hours tho) we all got tired and grouchy and argued I'm sure, but that's not the part of it you remember in the long run.

Answer 6

It might be a little hard on the kids because they may get tired and cranky. If you do, bring a portable dvd for them and some games and stuff and snacks if you can. or check out these sites for very cheap plane tickets. Good Luck for the best!

Try these sites:

Answer 7

No just make some sandwiches get some drinks for the kids and some chips and you can eat on the way when you stop for restroom breaks make sure they all go to the bathroom and give them time to stretch their legs. My ex was military and we were forever traveling and we had 2 small children and it wasn't that bad we did what i wrote and told you to do..Some of our trips were over 20 hours.

Answer 8

Leave early morning or late at night when kids will sleep. Get yourself a portable DVD player so the kids will watch movies.

Answer 9

leave at night when the kids r asleep

Answer 10

It would be much simpler to just stay home.