1.
Pack
plenty of activities to keep kids busy in the car. Our family vacations were pre-video players
in cars. So we had to carry LOTS of
things to do. Tip: Crayons melt in hot cars in the
summertime. Once I bought a lot of
small, inexpensive toys and placed them in brown paper lunch bags, stapled
shut. When the conversation in the car
became “She’s looking at me” and “Mama, he is touching my car seat”, it was
time to open another bag.
2.
Pack plenty of snacks and liquids to drink in
the car. Tip: Chocolate melts in hot cars in the
summertime. Jimmy always wanted apples
and chewing gum. Small packages of
crackers with cheese or peanut butter were great. Bottled water was not a staple back then, so
a thermos of ice water or lemonade and cups with lids were the rule to quench
thirst. Jimmy also liked for his mom to
make him a bunch of her “smush burgers” for him to eat. When he was a kid, the family packed a stalk
of bananas and a 3 lb. pack of hot dogs to eat on the way to Chattanooga. Yes, you could buy bananas still on the stalk
back then.
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| Rock City, Lookout Mt., TN |
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| Wading at Cades Cove, Great Smokey Mountains |
3.
Take plenty of rest stops. I wonder if
John, Anne & Kathryn realized that those jump ropes and Frisbees that we
took on the long ride to carry Kathryn home from Mississippi to Ohio were to
wear them out at the rest stops on the interstate so that they might want
another nap on the way.
4.
Be prepared for disagreements between the
driver and the navigator. Now days it
is the GPS that gets the blame for a wrong turn. Back then the person in the front passenger
seat kept a paper map that could never be refolded properly to navigate the
path to the vacation destination. Inevitably,
turns would be missed and the kids in the back seats were able to add new words
to their vocabulary.
5.
Pack for every possible emergency. We must have believed that vacation
destinations did not have pharmacies, grocery stores or general merchandise
stores. We packed our suitcases on the “what
if” principle. That made packing the car
a challenge that even Einstein would have wanted to avoid. Two items that Jimmy
always insisted on packing were a roll of paper towels and a spray bottle of
window cleaner. He couldn’t stand having
bugs on the windshield. Paper towels
also came in handy with kids’ messes.
6.
Families with more than 2 children or with an
older teenager need a van with at least 3 rows of seats. The back seat is the only place for a
teenager on a vacation. Space from the
rest of the family is necessary for the coexistence of family members related
to a teenager. The back seat needs to be
outfitted with a pillow and blanket and some form of sound emanating from a
device that uses earphones.
7.
Take lots of photos. The photos will be necessary to embarrass your
children years later when you blog online.
Be aware that the willingness of children to be photographed on family
vacations decreases with age. That is
the reason that the older sibling appears less frequently in vacation photos.
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| Disney World |
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| Kennedy Space Center |
