Travel with the Whitakers

Last week we shared how weplan a road trip , and it was a lot of fun to look back at trips that we’ve taken in recent years. We’re looking forward to our next road trip, too! We’re just not sure where that road trip will be to, other than where ever we’re moving to in the spring. It also got me thinking that you might be curious to know what we pack for our trips. We’ve shared our cruise packing list before, but today we’re going to talk about what we pack for a road trip. As we mentioned in last week’s post, driving to our destination allows us to pack more than we could if we were flying. Not having to fit everything into one suitcase (for our family of four – yes, we do it when we cruise), and with our destination, and the path to get there in mind, we sit down to put together a packing list at least a few weeks before a big trip – like a road trip to Disney World, to a cruise, or to Pittsburgh. If we’re going to be somewhere that we can easily to laundry (Pittsburgh, Disney Wor

I f you’re a regular here at Travel with the Whitakers, you know that we like to take road trips. We’ve taken quite a few in the last five years, and we’ve taken them with at least one child. So, how do we plan our road trips?! The first step is to plan where exactly we’re going. If we’re heading to Disney World, especially Disney World followed by a cruise from Port Canaveral, we’ll drive so that we can take more with us than if we were to fly. The real deciding factor in whether we drive to our destination is how much time we have. This is normally determined by how much time Howard is able to take off. (I can work just about anywhere since I work from home.) So, we’ve decided that we have enough time to drive to our destination. Now what? The next step is to plan out how many days it will take for us to drive to our destination. We try to keep our days to about seven to eight hours of driving. We have done one day that was eleven hours of driving before, but we try to keep days

  We’re a week and a half into 2021, and normally at this point in the year we would be getting ready for a big family trip. In a world without covid, that would very much be the case. We had a cruise booked for February 2021, but switched to a different one for November of this year. Our fingers are crossed that it gets to happen, but all we can do at this point is wait and see. So, with no plans for a little while, and no big travel for most of the last year, what have we been up to? Most of our time lately has been spent getting the house ready to sell. It’s a daunting task, but we’re up to the challenge. Over this past summer we started to replace ALL of the floors in the house, bit by bit. We only have two rooms left to do, and we’re planning on getting those done in the next week or two. Outside of that, we’re just living our normal life. Work (Howard going to work, and me working at home), homeschooling, reading, writing, and enjoying each other’s company. I am thankful th

  Happy New Year! We hope that your 2021 is off to a good start. We ended 2020 with a family trip and made memories that will last a lifetime! We camped at Palo Duro Canyon State Park for three nights, and loved it. If you’re not familiar with Palo Duro Canyon, it is a huge canyon in Canyon, Texas. When we arrived, I obviously excepted a canyon, but it was HUGE! We started our drive down into the canyon to get to our campsite and the views were amazing. It is actually the second largest canyon in the United States! The biggest, of course, is the Grand Canyon. We were only able to explore half of the canyon, because the other half of the park is currently closed for hunting, but it was still huge, and so beautiful. On the first day of our trip, we drove from San Angelo to Lubbock, about three hours away, to pick up the RV that we were renting. Howard and Christian took the RV while Bella and I took my car the remaining two hours to Palo Duro Canyon State Park. We did check-in