Joyful Family Travel

Back in 2018, our family was preparing for an epic 2-week trip to Europe with 4 kids and I got a lot of comments and questions that showed how intimidated many people felt by family travel. There were questions about how to finance such a trip (because people know we aren’t a wealthy family and that we shop at Aldi and our house is cheaper than most of our friends’ houses). They also questioned our sanity in bringing 4 kids to Europe, 3 of whom still needed car seats or booster seats, and we got more than one suggestion to leave the 2 year old behind with grandparents so we could enjoy the trip. I thought it would be helpful to share some of our experiences and intended to write about our thinking, planning, budgeting, and experiences. Then the reality of 4 kids prevented me from doing that, so we found out we were having a 5th the day after we returned from that trip and it never happened. Then, I thought I’d have time this year when I took off another year from work with our youngest, but the pandemic keeping the household home all year didn’t allow for that either,so here I am in the car with nothing holding me back, so I’m finally able to share. For the short-term, my main goal is to document our current adventure, a 37 day cross-country trip with our camper. Here’s the who, what, where, when, why, and how: 

Who:

Our 4 youngest kids (all boys ages 2-10), us parents, and my dad (he will fly home after 2 weeks though). Our oldest child is 20 and about to go off on her first independent living adventure (and our no-frills style of adventuring isn’t as enticing to her anymore - she’s more of a Bahamas-style girl). 

What: A cross-country adventure taking us from NY to California and back passing through various National Parks. The first leg of the trip takes us along a similar path my mom had hoped to take with my dad in the summer of 2020. She passed away in November 2019 and we still wanted him to experience the beauty and were eager to experience it ourselves. 

Where: We will drive through parts of 24 states as we drive to the Pacific and back and hope to visit 13 National Parks (Cuyahoga Valley, Indiana Dunes, Rocky Mountain, Grand Teton, Yellowstone, Glacier, Redwood, Yosemite, Death Valley, Grand Canyon, Saguaro, Carlsbad Caverns, and Mammoth Cave) and also experiencing Chicago, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Tucson, Dallas, and Memphis. We will camp in 8 of the parks. 

When: July-August 2021 for 37 days 

Why:

We are embarking on this journey for the sense of adventure, to expose our kids to the beauty of nature, and to honor my mom who gave me my love for experiencing the magic of God’s creation and taught me to find rest and healing in those places. 

How:

Last year, we purchased our tow vehicle, a 2003 Lincoln Navigator which we named Gryffindor due to its very unique custom leather job (which, rather than being continually disgusted by its Weiner-Mobile or McDonalds color scheme, we chose to embrace and make our own) and our camper (a 2018 Jayco 26BH) and enjoyed some travel throughout the northeast United States during the pandemic. We put some money into the car to get it cross-country ready and added lots of baskets and hooks to get the space we need for 7 of us to live in the camper. We will stay in the camper for 35 nights and spend 2 with family in Chicago. 

As far as how we are getting the time to do this- I’m a teacher, so I have the summer off (though am doing some online training along the way) and Ryan is an engineer who has been working remotely due to the pandemic. He is taking 4 weeks of vacation and spending a week working remotely full time near San Francisco from our friend’s home during the middle of the trip (while she takes the week off and we run around with our combined 6 boys ages 2-10).