Our First Road Trips with Kids

My husband and I are no strangers to road trips. Throughout our 12 years together we’ve criss-crossed the country from one side to the other and then back again. We’re drivers. We’ve made road trips to move and to go on vacation.

With so many miles under our belt, we’ve had road trips both good and bad. Though, as you can imagine the more difficult road trips tend to stick out in one’s mind.

Well, we thought we did. Then we adopted dogs. And had kids. That definitely complicated things more than we could have ever imagined.

When we were living in Colorado and my husband saw dark clouds on the job front, we drove to Texas for his job interview. We drove at night when Cakes slept most of the trip and everything went really well. So we thought we were prepared when we made the big move down.

In preparation of our move to Texas, I took two separate trips alone with Cakes (with connections) to house hunt. Since she was another month older than our first road trip and things got a little more difficult but not unbearable. Take 30 days for closing on our house and another month older for Cakes and our road trip to Texas was definitely memorable. And not in a good way.

Even leaving at night and traveling during non waking hours for the majority of the trip, 16 hours on the road isn’t fun for a 10 month old baby. Being mobile and confined to a car seat for extended periods does not make for a happy girl. Things reached a pinnacle as we reached Waco and the nonstop screams continued until we hit our interim home in south Austin.

Three hours of nonstop crying and screaming. Imagine a baby with colic. In a confined space. Not fun.

Fast forward 2.5 years later and we relived a similar incident with our youngest daughter late this spring. Our annual road trip to Florida took a turn south when Cupcake decided that she had had quite enough road time as we hit Houston – 3 hours from Austin. Now with each of our girls we have endured three hours of continuous wails, screams, pleading, and crying from our babies while on a road trip.

Will this stop us from road tripping with our daughters? Definitely not. And now that our family is complete, we’re hoping these early infant outbursts are miles behind us and we’ll have more pleasant memories filling our minds as our girls grow older and our scope of possible destinations expands.

What was your most memorable road trip?