And so it begins! Addie is in her car seat, ready to begin the long drive back to Minnesota. That thing in her lap, by the way, is a bathing suit (or bathing soup, as she calls it) that she wanted to hold. I guess even less-than-two-year-olds have a hard time saying goodbye to summer!
Yes, my friends, I DROVE to North Carolina. That's right, I tackled an 18 hour drive by myself with a toddler and a pregnancy. I can't decide whether I'm heroic or nuts. If you're wondering why, I didn't really have a good reason. Plane tickets were perfectly affordable. It just boiled down to " I wonder if I can do this".
And guess what? It was great. Really, it was. Addie was a star. She watched DVDs contentedly and ate snacks and doodled on her MagnaDoodle and slept VERY briefly in her car seat. She only cried twice out of a total of four driving days. She was such a good little travel companion. I was honestly delighted with her behavior in the car.
When she was released from that handy five point restraining harness, she was less well behaved, but I guess that is to be expected. She was WILD on our stops. She ran non-stop, refused to listen to a thing that I said, and was too busy to eat. So of course, I didn't get to eat much either. She also dumped a whole Coke on my lap on our first lunch break during a tantrum. That was awesome.
I quickly learned that stops needed to be about letting her exercise. She could always eat in her car seat when she was calmer. Granted, her once pristine Britax Marathon is now slightly less than clean. But we'll deal with that. And I also learned that stops needed to be "do it all" stops. Get your gas, go the bathroom/change diapers, get your food, get your trash cleared up, and re-boot before you started the next big push. Then don't stop again until it's time to do all of those things again.
Now is a good time to note that I am sincerely thankful for a hybrid vehicle. My little 14 gallon tank took me nearly 500 miles each time. Not bad for a small SUV. I highly recommend the Ford Escape hybrid. And no, I'm not getting any sponsorship.
We stopped in Indiana, roughly halfway, on each trip. I always chose an inn with a pool, so that Miss A could swim and get some exercise and we usually stopped fairly early each night, around 5 or 6. I just didn't think that she'd tolerate more than 10 hours or so in the car, and I didn't want to push her ...or myself...too hard.
Of course, the whole thing didn't go exactly as a I planned. I thought I'd take a lot of pictures and really record "Addie's First Road Trip" at every suitable point. That was a massive fail. The pictures you see? Yes, those are the ONLY pictures of her road trip that I took. I feel pretty disappointed in that, but honestly, it was enough to navigate and keep everyone fed and happy and reasonably clean. Making a scrapbook collection was a little too ambitious, though it would have been nice. If I'd had another adult along, I could have fulfilled that goal.
And here's Addie on our trip, ready to start Day Two of the drive down to NC. Well, except for being in her car seat. And you can see that she's already whining because I won't let her tackle the 9 hour drive in front of us by herself. Details.
It's really too bad, because we saw some awesome sights. We left at about 5:30 AM on Thursday morning under the auspices of the most gorgeous sunrise I've ever seen. I thought Addie would go back to sleep (wrong!) but she was very interested in everything and was obviously taking in the sunset. I noticed her watching the sky intently and when I asked her if she thought it was pretty, she calmly said "Painted." And yes, it really did look painted! Pretty astute little girl.
I'll spare you a state by state description of all the scenery, and just note that we live in a spectacularly beautiful country. Addie and I appreciated the chance to see it all. I still wish I could have/would have taken more pictures, but on the whole, the road trip was great in both directions.
And I've learned that I really like the flexibility of driving. I like being able to take as much with me as I want to take. I like being able to set my own schedule. I like being able to respond to Addie's needs as they arise. And I like that she can shout with glee or excitedly tell me that sees cows or fields (that wore off pretty quickly!) without me having to hush her because other passengers are around.
Long story short, I think driving is going to be the way to go for this family, provided that we're not on a tight schedule. Flying is definitely more efficient, but it's less fun and more stress. And as our family grows, driving will be cheaper for us. And it's more interesting. Hard to top that!
No comments:
Post a Comment