How Do We Plan Our Road Trips?!

If 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 like that to a minimum.

Once we know how many days it will take, we look into where we’ll be stopping each night to break up the drive. After that we start looking into hotel options in the area. We’re not hotel snobs, but at the same time we want to something that is clean, close to the interstate we’re traveling on, and is affordable. The kids also enjoy a pool, too.

As we get closer to the trip, we look into free, or low cost, things to do once we get to our destination. We like to start driving early, we’re talking three am, so that we can get a lot of the driving done before the kids wake up for the day. Letting them sleep while we’re driving makes things easier for everyone. Since we start driving so early, we normally arrive at our destination in the later morning or early afternoon. This gives us a lot of the day to work with to do something fun with the kids! And to let them run around and enjoy themselves after being in the car for so long.

About a week before the trip, we make a packing list based on what we’ll need along the way, what we’ll need at our destination, and what the weather will be along the way. Like we mentioned in the beginning of the post, driving allows us to have more with us than we would if we flew to our destination. This worked out really well for our trip last January/February. We were able to have our things separated for the road trip, the Disney Dream cruise, the in between days, and the Disney Wonder cruise.

That’s pretty much how we plan our trips!

What road trips have we taken in the last few years?!

2011 – 2016 Multiple trips from Rocklin and Wheatland, California to San Francisco, CA, Lompoc, CA, and Anaheim, CA

2016 – Wheatland, California to San Angelo, Texas (Stops in Anaheim, CA, Phoenix, AZ, and Deming, NM.)

            San Angelo, Texas to Galveston, Texas

2017 – San Angelo, Texas to Galveston, Texas

           San Angelo, Texas to Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

2018 – San Angelo, Texas to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (Stops in Lawton, OK and Fort Leonard Wood, MO.)        

            Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to San Angelo, Texas (Stops in Louisville, KY and Little Rock, AR.)

2019 – San Angelo, Texas to Orlando, Florida (Stops in Beaumont, TX and Pensacola, FL.)

            Orlando, Florida to San Angelo, Texas (Stops in Tallahassee, FL, Layette, LA, and Fort Hood, TX.)

            San Angelo, Texas to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (Stops in Little Rock, AR and Louisville, KY.)

            Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to San Angelo, Texas (Stops in St. Louis, MO and Oklahoma City, OK.)

2020 – San Angelo, Texas to Orlando Florida (Stops in Beaumont, TX and Pensacola, FL.)

           Jacksonville, Florida to Baton Rouge, Louisiana

           Baton Rouge, Louisiana to San Angelo, Texas (Stop in Fort Hood, TX.)

2021 – San Angelo, Texas to Palo Duro Canyon State Park, Texas

 

Do you have a favorite road trip that you’ve taken?!

 

Check out our other Road Trip Posts!

The Whitakers' February (2019) Adventure 

Road Trip Trips

Our Summer Road Trip 2019

Whitaker Family Trip 2020

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

We Used Genie+ for the First Time. What did we Think?!

Dinner at Royal Court on the Disney Fantasy

What We're Most Looking Forward to at Epcot's Food and Wine Festival