Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Car Trips

I love car trips. I was not a huge fan growing up but then we did not do many car trips when I was a kid. Ninety percent of my family lived local growing up so there was no 7 hour car trip to see grandma.

As I have gotten older I enjoy getting out on the open road and cruising to my destination. When my wife and I got married we went on a car trip touring southern plantation homes all through Louisianna and Mississippi. To this day that is still on top of my list of fun car trips. As the years 1-4 clicked by we pretty much covered Texas. We even got up and decided over breakfast one morning that we wanted to go to one of our favorite places to eat that day for lunch. That favorite place is on 6th street in Austin. We piled into the car and drove to Austin for a late lunch and turned right around and drove back to Dallas.

When kids came along that slowed the car trips down a bit. We have still done a few by ourselves and we have taken the kids to Austin by car a couple of times but car trips with kids can be a bit more stressful. The kids have been on car trips that typically at the most last 4 hours. I must say that a built in video system has been nice to keep the calm but the kids are also getting to the age where they have their video games and activity books to keep them busy. Believe it or not they actually take time to talk to us as well.

So far I have found that when the kids get restless a simple stop at a gas station or rest stop takes the ants out of the pants.

In May I would like to take Jack to Houston to see the Battleship Texas. I think he would really like that.

In June or July if all goes well I may take Jack to Corpus to see the USS Lexington. That is a good drive there so we will have to see how it goes.

As a kid I think the longest car trip I went on as a family is down to McAllen Texas to see family. That was a good 550 miles one way.
With family and friends we drove to Cloud Croft New Mexixo to ski. That was a bit of a haul. Coming home with the worst hangover of my life (still to this day)made the drive home seem like we traveled over 1,000 miles.

How far have you gone on a car trip as an adult? Kid?

2 comments:

Shari B said...

Didn't go on many long trips as a kid, but LOVED them since my college days.
Drove across country from NJ to CA to go to college; took the loooong southern route through TX.
Drove back to NJ with the kids since we've lived in Tx, visiting Civil War battlefields along the way.
My next trip will be this summer when I drive to visit friends who live in the mtns of NC.
I love an adventure!

MJP & SJP said...

Cloudcroft...whoa boy. It's something else how you & Todd weren't constantly puking on the way back.

As for my car trips. Been to Chicago & back twice.