Kristin's Opening

So now that you've heard from Greg and how the trip evolved I thought I'd share some of my perspective.  First let me just say I'm excited about this trip, but I'm also scared.  Scared that we won't plan well enough, scared that will all drive each other crazy, and a bit scared that I might never want to come home.  Mostly though, I'm excited and I think that's because as much as this is for the kids, it's also for us.  Greg has done a bit more travel throughout the country than me; but overall neither us have seen most of the places we are going.  I like to joke that growing up my Mom thought living in Florida was vacation enough so we really didn't travel.  Also, I spent most holidays with my father in Michigan and with 4 kids between them my Dad and Step Mom couldn't afford to take us on trips around the country.  I did get to spend some great summers up in the U.P. of Michigan but that's about it.  So, I'm truly excited to see all the National Parks and drive through the heartland and over all those mountains.  It is truly going to be an adventure for us all!

Ice cream after a hard day of travel

So how did we decide a month long trip in an RV would work for all of us? Since the kids were born, we've done quite a bit of traveling.  We are lucky to have family in cool places (New York, Florida, and California).  Several years ago we did Northern California, Oregon, and Washington by car for two weeks. We learned then that our kids are great car travelers. We flew out to San Francisco, which is a tiring trip itself.  The next day we plopped the kids in the rental car and drove 7 hours into the redwoods.  Amazingly it wasn't until about hour 5 that they got cranky.  After a break and some ice cream we managed the last 2 hours to our hotel.  So, it wasn't hard to imagine going cross country with them in the relative luxury of an RV.  I'm sure we will talk more about our test runs but in brief, we did a week long trip to Key West and a two week trip to Maine and Canada that were both relatively successful.  The month in the RV was starting to be easier to imagine.  

So with lessons learned from our prior trips, and lots of time spent planning, we hope to make this trip as fun and memorable as possible for all of us.   There still lots to do before we are ready to go but so far everything seems to be falling into place.  The itinerary is set, national park campgrounds are booked, now we just need to start filling in ALL the details.  Wish us luck!