Road trips

I've concluded that road trips are my current favorite way to do a family vacation. I know we are lucky that our boys are good car travelers otherwise we would have never attempted our 2008 cross country drive and we would never drive to Pittsburgh and DC annually for holidays. But given that the boys are good car travelers, I feel like that opens up a whole world (or country) of vacation possibilities and even more family memories. Some places I'm eyeballing (and I welcome suggestions/recommendations!): a southern PA tour (Philly, Amish, Hershey, Gettysburg, etc.), a Virginia tour (Shenandoah, Luray, Williamsburg, VA Beach), Blue Ridge, Tennessee, Carolinas, Montreal/Quebec/PEI, Catskills/Finger Lakes.

In the meantime, while our travel style evolves as our kids get more independent, here is a snapshot of our road trip in 2011:

• Stopping Short ;-) - We make pretty good time on our PB/DC car trips because we are able to make short stops. If we pack our lunch/snacks right (sandwiches, etc.), we can survive on just 15 min. bathroom stops instead of hour long meal stops. We can get to Pittsburgh in 9.5 hours and back from DC in 8, even when stopping 3-4 times. It was not always this way though, especially when Eli decided to potty train while we drove x-country and we did not have the luxury of having him hold it for 20 min. until we could combine a bathroom + coffee stop.
• Caffeine + Sugar - Speaking of coffee, Tom is fully dependent on soy mochas on these road trips which means the only dependable coffee joint w/ soy for him is Starbuck's. You know how you complain how there's a Starbuck's on every corner around town but when you're in the sticks of PA, a Starbuck's can never show up soon enough. The downside of Tom's mocha dependency: more frequent bathroom stops, not because of the kids but because of Tom! My theory: he needs to sip, not chug, the mochas and maybe we wouldn't have to stop for a bathroom 1 hour after we already stopped for the coffee.
• In-flight Dining - I (strangely enough) like to pack and I like to "cook" so packing a good snack stash for me is fun and key for a happy car trip. This time, I also let the boys get their snacks out of snack bag themselves, letting me completely konk out on the NJ Turnpike and not have to wake to be flight attendant. I think they had fun and had a sense of empowerment (and therefore less whining) since they had access to the snack bag. Even when I said to pick a healthy banana over chips, there were minimal complaints.
• Onboard Entertainment - People ask us the most: what do the boys do in the car for so long? Tobey is pretty happy reading books. Eli, who doesn't read yet, is fairly content sucking his fingers and napping. After numerous trips of packing them individual backpacks with all these toys and activities, I've realized that they don't need as much entertainment as I thought. So now they each pick a stuffed animal, a few books, and a small toy or two and that's about all we need. Put in a basket between them in the van, their middle row is so much neater than before too. The exception to this was that many of the little toys/surprises our friends gave us for our x-country drive were extremely helpful. The boys were younger then (5 and 3).
• Everything but Bingo - In addition to their self-entertainment, we try to do fun car/family games. A Chang favorite (meaning Tom and his brother) is the ABC game where we find words on signs that start with each letter of the alphabet in order (this can be competitive or collaborative). We used to also play a car tally where each of us picks a color and we have a contest to find as many cars of our color. Or 20 questions for random items in the car. One game that Tobey made up this trip was finding cars that have LED headlights at night, which was surprisingly entertaining. And I titled this section "Everything but Bingo" but I forgot, we do have "Interstate Bingo" boards! And as if these games didn't make us geeky enough, the boys also love to just do addition or spelling problems!
• Making Stuff Up - This trip, the hit game was "Mystery". Remember those old brain teaser/5 min. mysteries where someone would give a situation and you had to figure out what happened asking yes/no questions only? Most of them when we were growing up were gross, violent or involved death. But Tom started making some up for the boys and they LOVED it. They even tried making some up. Among our family's favorites:
• There are two people in a house. If they leave the house, it is very, very dangerous. Why?
• It's a school day and all the lights are on, books open, computers on at school. But no one is inside. What happened?
• A bunch of people are sitting in a boat but they are not near the water. Why not?
• A grandfather, two fathers and two sons went on a fishing trip. But they only needed a 3 seater canoe. Why?
• A doctor is treating a boy and says, "This is my son, but I am not his father." What is the doctor's relation?
• I got in a boat and went around the world in less than 10 min. How?
• DVD Player - Folk often also ask if the kids watch a lot of DVD's in the car. Eli asks to watch a lot! But they only watch after dark, a random restriction we put on after we once made it from Boston to Harrisburg, PA in the daytime without a DVD player and decided to treat them to a DVD after dinner/dark for such good car behavior. Now we just say it has to be dark because it's hard to see the DVD player in the daytime (I don't even know if that's true) and to help fend off DVD requests all day.
• Music - The boys also like listening to music in the car. Usually it's some kid songs that after about 2 hours, Tom and I are ready to put ear plugs in. This time, surprisingly, the music of choice was the collection of choir songs I practiced to for our church's Christmas concert. They love it and so do we. Seriously, it was on repeatedly for our entire 8 hour car trip today (minus a 45 min. DVD). And no one got sick of it. Props to our choir director for great music selection! If the boys are asleep, we also like to listen to NPR podcasts. It used to be Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me but more recently: Stuff You Should Know or Science Friday for Tom. This trip I was hoping the boys would like listening to "Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe" on audio book but neither were interested and they eventually got scared when Lucy met Mr. Tumnus. Yes, that's very early in the book!
• As far as car vs. air travel, I'd pick car almost any day (except that it doesn't bring me to exotic locales!). So much easier to pack without space and security restrictions. And the flexibility on when to hit the road, so much less stressful. Tom and I have hit a stride and rhythm of who does and packs what, helping out where we can, so that I don't think we even got snippy at each other during this trip. That's always cause for a merry holiday!

Even though the four of us enjoy a good road trip, I won't give up other forms of travel. Still eyeballing London in the spring for my/Tom's 40th's, Yellowstone for the family and I need to see my newborn nephews in L.A. while they are still babies! My mother-in-law wants us all to go on a cruise and a friend posted some pictures of a train/Amtrak trip that looks like a unique/fun way to travel at least once in our lives (sleeper cabin w/ bunk beds, dining car with a great view). But now that we are east and have this half of the country to explore, thank goodness of the great family road trip!