A Little Bit About Road Trips With Children

Before we started this summer-long car trip, we loosely envisioned staying about five days a week in public campgrounds with the other days in budget hotels (to do laundry, etc). We realized pretty quickly, however, in some states (California comes to mind), it is hard to get a campsite in state and federal parks without reserving sometimes months in advance (not feasible on this type of trip). We also realized that, on some more off-the-beaten-path routes, campgrounds can sometimes be scarce.

Most importantly, though, our children, especially, our younger one, Lucy, (aged 5) are bored in campgrounds. Lucy is not yet a big fan of camping generally.

So, our travel planning has evolved on this trip. Camping will work in public campgrounds with a lot of activities/ amenities. (The national parks are good for this if you can get a site: there are usually ranger programs and often concessions where you can rent boats, etc).

We also learned that tent camping is tricky in some places: on the prairie, constant winds makes things a little bit of a hassle and the Southwest was too hot for us to camp.

Finally, there is a little bit of legwork in setting up camp, this is sometimes too much trouble if you're only there for one night.

So, what we learned: a good KOA can often be the best choice for our kids (emphasis on good,

they vary widely in quality). A tentsite runs about $25 to $30 for a night, camping cabins about $60 to $70. The camping cabins don't have bathrooms, you still use the shared toilets and showers, but they do give you some privacy (usually a problem at KOAs) and are easy if you don't feel like throwing up a tent. And, the big plus side of KOAs are the activities: pools, hayrides, gameroom (tv room), movies, structured activities, petting zoo, jumping pillow, mini golf, internet; the list goes on and on. They are our girls' favorite places to stay. Again, it's important to stay at a good one; you can check out amenities at the KOA website.

Towards the end of our trip, when we were just staying one night at a place, we would stay in a budget chain motel (with pool, tv and internet) or a KOA camping cabin if there was one around. At "destination" sites: Yellowstone, Redwoods, we would tent camp, though, here too it was often a KOA. We signed up for loyalty cards at all of the chains as well as with the KOA; this will give us a couple of free nights down the road.

If we do this trip again, we probably would try to plot out the itinerary a little more in advance and then try to reserve more campsites in more National Park and State Park campgrounds, because it is really nice to be right inside the parks. Many of them, in addition to providing campsites also have cabins and sometimes lodges, all pretty affordable; we would like to hook into those a little better next time around.

But it's been a nice learning experience this trip: trying to figure out an extended vacation that works for all four of us. We've definitely gotten much better at it along the way.

Above is picture of the inside and outside of a camping cabin in the KOA in Hayward, WI, as well as a photo of the girls on the jumping pillow.