We love road trips and our secret was always to leave at about 4 in the morning. Ideally, kids will sleep for at least 3 and hopefully first five hours of the day. Then you stop and get everybody a good breakfast, then 2-3 more hours in the car until a rest stop of some sort. I love petting zoos and those safari parks that you drive through in your car. My kids have really warm memories of car trips. If you don't have a DVD player, however, it would be worth it to rent a mini-van with a DVD player. BEtween the big nap before breakfast, and two movies per day, you really won't have that much free time where they just sit in the car and yell.

With kids maybe. With dog no way.

This sounds like hell. Seriously, it possibly sounds worse than camping.

Why do people think they need to take their dogs everywhere?

Noooo. Why would you do that, especially if you ate able to buy a plane ticket? They sounds like absolute torture.

I prefer road trips to airports. If the boys are pretty good, I'd do it--but lose the dog. Plot out an interesting place to go every day. Take a ball to play with at rest areas. Teach the eight year old to read a map. See if you can find a license plate from every state (quite possible with that trip!)

not a good idea. That's a long, hard drive for one person without another adult to trade off with. Plus managing 2 smallish kids. Maybe when they are older and can keep you company in the front seat and entertain themselves better.

Op here. They're 5 and 8. Good for an hour or so at a time with books/sticker books/other games. What if I left dog? Leaning toward it being a stupid idea...

Anonymous wrote:The dog could be a problem. Many interesting/fun things along the way might not be pet friendly and you can't leave him in the car during the summer. I'd do it in a second with my two boys, but wouldn't take our dog unless I had to.

I agree with this concern about the dog.

Also, how old are your boys? Do they like to read? I would do it with kids who would alternate between reading and electronic games/videos and conversation, and I think it would be fun. I wouldn't do it with anyone who would be buried in the portable DVD player or on his phone the whole time, or having a tantrum on a long expanse of isolated highway where I couldn't really do anything about it.

I don't understand why you would choose to do this if you can afford to fly there.

The dog could be a problem. Many interesting/fun things along the way might not be pet friendly and you can't leave him in the car during the summer. I'd do it in a second with my two boys, but wouldn't take our dog unless I had to.

I don't see why that would be fun for you. Just fly!

We do stuff like this all the time only we have three kids and a dog. We don't always stop overnight, but if we do, we always get a hotel with a pool. Also, we try to come up with interesting things to do for rest stops. Once, coming back from Detroit (15 hour drive that I did alone with the kids), we took a day and a half in Cleveland to go to Kalahari Water Park and the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame. Going to Florida, there is always a stop at South of the Border.

We get lots of Subway and fast food and eat in the car so we can use our rest stops for fun.

Have never traveled to Idaho, so no specific ideas for you.

You Nut!

DH says I'm nuts and would rather splurge $2k on plane tickets and keep the dog. We're headed for southern Idaho. I figure if I allow time to be relaxed about this and split the drive up among 4 days/3 nights it could be an adventure. Boys and dog all pretty great in car, but I imagine after 20 hours we'll all be getting crazy and then there will still be 15 hours to go! But, if I leave early each morning and plan for long mid-day breaks, we stay and pet-friendly hotels (with pools?) and plan some fun things to see, we can do it without killing each other. Thoughts? Am I insane? If you've done it can you recommend a route and some fun stops along the way?