Preparing for the Ultimate Family Road Trip

Sean and I began the greatest adventure our family had ever set out on… a 32-day trip from Atlanta to the Northeastern United States and Canada. Sometimes when vacation planning, things fall into place.

One thing that completely fell into place was an invitation to the wedding of our dear friends in Maryland near the end of June. Sean and I decided that Maryland was a great starting point for our road trip, so all of our travels were planned around the wedding date.

It was on this particular trip that I learned how great Sean was at travel planning. He began organizing our trip about six months in advance to make sure we had enough time to make arrangements, plan activities, and research exactly where we were going.

We were pulling the camper behind us because it was our most economical way to lodge away from home for such an extended period of time. Sean researched campgrounds and read reviews until there were none left to read.

All of our campground reservations were booked before we ever left home because we wanted to ensure that we had a place to stay each night. The reservations also kept us on track as far as when we should leave one destination for another.  

We purchased many of our major expenses in advance. This freed up our budget and let us focus on the daily expenses we would have rather than focusing on reservations and other major activity costs. We had our Six Flags Season’s Passes that got us into the parks in the United States and La Ronde in Montreal. We also pre-purchased GO-City passes, our National Park Pass (actually Lucy was in 4^th grade so we got the pass for free, we just had to sign up), and Niagara Falls.

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In Cooperstown, New York, at the Baseball Hall of Fame, we practiced one of our money-saving travel tips which is to buy an annual family pass versus individual tickets for entry. The annual family pass was $5 more than entry for the entire family, but there were many perks that we received as annual pass holders.

It just so happened that on the evening we visited the Hall of Fame, they were having an all-star game viewing party. We were able to eat, win prizes, and participate in all of the festivities because we were now annual pass holders. When traveling, if you consider buying an annual pass, even if you are only going once, check out the member’s only events that are taking place around that time. It may just so happen that you can plan your visit on one of the perk days.

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As far as expenditures, with all our major expenses out of the way, we budgeted about $100 per day. Some days we spent more, and some days we spent less, but we tried to balance these out with each other. We were prepared if we needed to spend extra, but it was important for me to stick closely to the $100 per day since we were gone for such an extended period of time.

As I mentioned in other posts, national parks and theme parks for which we have seasons passes are important elements of our traveling. Sean made sure that our trip included many national parks (we could not visit all of them, that would have been impossible in 32 days) and all of the Six Flags that we were passing. He also made sure that we visited both the Vermont and New Hampshire Norman Rockwell museums, family in New York, the Amish in Ohio, and the Louisville Slugger Factory in Kentucky.

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In preparation for our trip, we watched Ken Burn’s documentary, The Roosevelts. I love studying about the Roosevelt family. Franklin and Teddy were both from New York, and since we knew that we were visiting the area, we wanted the family to have as much knowledge on the Roosevelts as possible.

Along with our preparation, we also knew that we were visiting Canada, so we researched all we needed to know in order to travel between the two countries. It was in this preparation that we decided to camp in the United States only, and not in Canada because there could be possible difficulties pulling the camper in and out of another country. We would camp close to the border and drive into Canada when visiting.

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On this trip we over-planned our activities…this is a reoccurring problem we have. We had over planned on previous trips, and around every third day of activities on this trip, we were exhausted. Whatever we had planned every fourth day usually got canceled. This happened in Boston. We had purchased the Go-City Passes where you can complete as many activities as you want in the time frame that you purchase the card. This pass saved us so much money, but we tried to work in too many activities in five days and it was impossible to do everything we wanted in that time frame.  

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One thing we had learned on this trip was to expect the unexpected, but not to let it ruin our travels. We surprisingly had no issues living in such small quarters for such a long period of time. The camper we had then was about 214 square feet, but thank goodness, we all got along.

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However, on such a long trip, and not owning a mansion on wheels, there were issues. We were not expecting these issues when we set off, but we now have learned to keep our minds open to things that can potentially happen.

By the time we left Georgia and made it to Virginia, Jackson had caught a 24-hour stomach virus. Two days later, Lucy caught the virus. In Connecticut, on day five, I realized that my storage solution for towels and clothing was not that great as it tore the shower off the wall. When we got gas in Vermont on day 14, Sean hit a red pole while pulling into the station, and we had a nice red streak on our camper. We also learned on day 17 that when you get lost in Montreal, you need to know what your cell phone data plan entails in case you must use it when everything is in French and you don’t speak the language.

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We have since changed over to an international cell phone plan so that the issue never happens again. I would also be remiss if I did not mention the lightning storm that we were caught in during the middle of the night in Java, New York on day 27. The storm was scary, but it forced us to learn about lightning and camper safety.

In New Hampshire, I also learned how important it was to prepare for the unexpected good as well. We were camping in the Hampton Falls/Hampton Beach area of the state, and to date, it is one of my favorite places that I have ever visited. Each year they have the Master Sand Sculpting Classic and we unexpectedly wanted to spend a great deal of time in the town.

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I would not trade our 32-day excursion for anything. We prepared as well as we could, but we have now learned to prepare for the unexpected!

Would you like to rent an RV for your next road trip? Click HERE to learn about Outdoorsy’s selection of available RV rentals!

Do you have some money-saving tips and tricks for traveling? We would love to hear from you! Please drop us a line in the comment section below.