We just got back from a two week trip with our two boys (9, 11). We covered over 3000 miles going from San Antonio, TX to St. Augustine, FL, then Savannah,GA and finally Charleston, SC before heading back to TX. The idea of extra spares is good, we had to buy two tires on our trip. We tend to drive long days to get to our destination (it takes a day to just get out of Texas!). A 500+ day is not unusual for us, but you have to know your limits. Both of us share the driving and that helps.
I usually pack as much meals as possible, but we usually have to hit the store halfway through the trip. We tend to eat breakfast and dinner at our camp site and we are usually away during the day.
We pack a weeks worth of clothing. I ended up doing laundry twice on our two week trip. It isn't bad when most camp grounds have several washers and dryers available. I just do it on a slow day and the kids play in the pool. Loads ran from $1.25-1.50.
As far as camping in St. Augustine. We stayed at Bryn Mawr (www.brynmawroceanresort.com). I would recommend it if you want to be on the beach. We had a blast there! We also bought a 3 day pass for the Ripley's Red Train (kids are free this summer). They had a shuttle that picked us up each day and took us into the historical area. It was great letting someone else do the driving! Hope this helps and reaches you before your trip!
Gin & Mike
2001 Jayco Qwest 265
2001 Ford F350 crewcab 4x4
You are probably back by now, hope it was a great trip. My addition was to take snacks/ peanut butter/ jelly etc to have own lunch stuff for the road, junk food is the only eats found on the road. Don't need too much other than short and bathing suits in St Aug, lots of beach towels. Don't forget the sunscreen and limit sun exposure time for first few days. You guys are not used to the intensity of sun here, keep hydrated. Have a great vacation, lots of fun stuff in St Augustine.
TXcampingfamily wrote: We just got back from a two week trip with our two boys (9, 11). We covered over 3000 miles going from San Antonio, TX to St. Augustine, FL, then Savannah,GA and finally Charleston, SC before heading back to TX. The idea of extra spares is good, we had to buy two tires on our trip. We tend to drive long days to get to our destination (it takes a day to just get out of Texas!). A 500+ day is not unusual for us, but you have to know your limits. Both of us share the driving and that helps.
I usually pack as much meals as possible, but we usually have to hit the store halfway through the trip. We tend to eat breakfast and dinner at our camp site and we are usually away during the day.
We pack a weeks worth of clothing. I ended up doing laundry twice on our two week trip. It isn't bad when most camp grounds have several washers and dryers available. I just do it on a slow day and the kids play in the pool. Loads ran from $1.25-1.50.
As far as camping in St. Augustine. We stayed at Bryn Mawr (www.brynmawroceanresort.com). I would recommend it if you want to be on the beach. We had a blast there! We also bought a 3 day pass for the Ripley's Red Train (kids are free this summer). They had a shuttle that picked us up each day and took us into the historical area. It was great letting someone else do the driving! Hope this helps and reaches you before your trip!
Thanks! We were planning to stay in St. Augustine but now we will still outside of there. Some friends of ours just moved down to FL last month and they are about 20 minutes from St. Augustine so we are going to stop there and stay the night and visit with our friends
Winnie the Poodle wrote: You are probably back by now, hope it was a great trip. My addition was to take snacks/ peanut butter/ jelly etc to have own lunch stuff for the road, junk food is the only eats found on the road. Don't need too much other than short and bathing suits in St Aug, lots of beach towels. Don't forget the sunscreen and limit sun exposure time for first few days. You guys are not used to the intensity of sun here, keep hydrated. Have a great vacation, lots of fun stuff in St Augustine.
We don't leave for a couple of weeks so any info is appreciated
Oldest made a menu for the trip and the travel days she wrote Burger King and the 2nd day McDonalds LOL I think we are going to stop and make sandwiches. We can skip all the fast food places and save the money for nice dinners in Florida.
I would recommend that you stop on the road at some campgrounds with pools and limit your Walmart stays. It really helps my boys to burn off some excess energy swimming or biking after a day in the truck. They sleep much better and in turn we do too!
Use a vacuum food saver if you have one. If not, ask your friends to borrow one. It is an excellent way to save prepared foods and takes less space in the freezer than containers. For casseroles I would prepare and freeze them at home. After it is solid cut into serving portions and bag separately mark with a sharpie if you have more than one casserole (they all look alike when frozen). This too saves space in the freezer of your camper. To cool down our frig I always put the items that will need defrosting for our first few meals. I know you said your hubby doesn't want the extra weight of food, but your frig runs better if it is full not empty. Also, it is easier and faster to shop at your home stores than in a strange one out of town or state.
I am excited for you! We have been only RVing for a few years and have loved our long summer trips. The boys picked up a national parks passport in Yellowstone in '06 and are quickly trying to fill it with stamps from all the national parks!
I'm no expert, but learn by trail and error. If there is anything I can help with let me know...food, car entertainment, making up bunk beds, storage. All issues we tackle every trip.
TXcampingfamily wrote: I would recommend that you stop on the road at some campgrounds with pools and limit your Walmart stays. It really helps my boys to burn off some excess energy swimming or biking after a day in the truck. They sleep much better and in turn we do too!
Use a vacuum food saver if you have one. If not, ask your friends to borrow one. It is an excellent way to save prepared foods and takes less space in the freezer than containers. For casseroles I would prepare and freeze them at home. After it is solid cut into serving portions and bag separately mark with a sharpie if you have more than one casserole (they all look alike when frozen). This too saves space in the freezer of your camper. To cool down our frig I always put the items that will need defrosting for our first few meals. I know you said your hubby doesn't want the extra weight of food, but your frig runs better if it is full not empty. Also, it is easier and faster to shop at your home stores than in a strange one out of town or state.
I am excited for you! We have been only RVing for a few years and have loved our long summer trips. The boys picked up a national parks passport in Yellowstone in '06 and are quickly trying to fill it with stamps from all the national parks!
I'm no expert, but learn by trail and error. If there is anything I can help with let me know...food, car entertainment, making up bunk beds, storage. All issues we tackle every trip.
I am not into staying at Wal-marts ever LOL. I have never driven the truck while towing the camper. I think on this trip I might give it a try.
The vacuum saver is a great idea and my SIL has one. As a matter of fact she is leaving Monday for over a week long cruise and my nephew is staying with me. We leave a few days after they get back so I can prepare everything while she is away.
There is only so much the kids can do, but it helps if your kids have special interests. My kids watch movies on a small DVD player and play Gameboy. As I'm sure you already know headphones are a must! My oldest son is a mystery and history reader, so I usually pick up new books for him and hand them out as he needs them. My youngest is into sports, so I bring sports books and issues of "Sports Illustrated for Kids" for him. Magazines are usually pretty good and old back issues don't seem to bother my son. This last trip I gave them a book about all 50 states. Every time we crossed a stateline one of them would read to us information about that state. For DVD's instead of buying new ones why not borrow from friends for the few weeks you're gone. Also Redbox $1 rental is good and you can return to any location. To find locations check out their website at www.redbox.com. If you have any vacation flyers or information about your destination, let them have it. When the boys were younger and we took long car trips one of their favorite toys was a cookie sheet and magnets. I even took matchbox cars and small plastic toy soldiers and glued magnets on the bottom of them. Now that they are older they just tend to read, watch DVD's or play video games. Oh, of course don't forget snacks!
We travel. Our most recent trip was nearly 1400 one way. This was not our longest trip. We have 4 kids; 12, 9, 6, and 4.
My suggestion is to pack clothes for only a few days. At some point, you are going to run out of room for the dirty clothes. When it's time to wash, you would have to find some place to do a lot of loads to cut down on time. This last trip, the one campground I had planned on washing turned out to be a bust, so I spent several hours in the laundromat doing 5 loads of laundry. I pack my soap and my quarters with me.
Summer is easier than winter, because you can physically pack more clothes.
We plan our travel according to our time line. We do not like to do more than 500 miles a day, and usually prefer 200 to 300 miles. We have done about 560 one way home so we could stay an extra day, but we would not normally do that. When we stop on the travel days, we look for campgrounds that have playgrounds and full hookups. It's lest costly to run with empty tanks, although you could dump on your way out. At the very least, we like to leave enough time for the kids to ride their bikes and get some energy out.
One of our bigger things was always having to get to a store to get milk. We can fit 3 gallons in the fridge, which makes a little over 3 days. We have a deep square cooler that can fit another 6 gallons (it's deep enough to stack the gallons on top of each other) so, for example, when we found milk on sale, we were able to stock up. Having an extra cooler along (we usually take that one and another larger cooler) are good to have on hand, imo.
We plan the meals depending on the daily agenda, and fill the freezer with meats, although you could choose to go shopping along the way more frequently. When we get to the destination, we stock up on the heavier/bulkier items.
I don't recommend mapping software or the use of GPS.
I have to say I heartily disagree. Our GPS is wonderful, and has all the nav points and campgrounds and gas stations and Cracker Barrel, and museums etc etc etc. You can set it to not use toll roads or to use the most direct route. There is a lot that can be done.
I'd say keep shopping until you find a nav system that does what you need it to. It's taken us around heavy construction in huge cities, and that alone is worth the piece of mind when on the road. You really don't want to get crammed into a busy city without time to change lanes, particularly while there is construction.
My personal experience is that a good nav system is worth its weight in gold.
I don't recommend mapping software or the use of GPS.
I have to say I heartily disagree. Our GPS is wonderful, and has all the nav points and campgrounds and gas stations and Cracker Barrel, and museums etc etc etc. You can set it to not use toll roads or to use the most direct route. There is a lot that can be done.
I'd say keep shopping until you find a nav system that does what you need it to. It's taken us around heavy construction in huge cities, and that alone is worth the piece of mind when on the road. You really don't want to get crammed into a busy city without time to change lanes, particularly while there is construction.
My personal experience is that a good nav system is worth its weight in gold.
Tikki
I have to agree with Tikki. DH bought a Garmin Nubi 200 right before our last big trip. I grumbled about another expensive "toy", but it turned out to be a life saver. We had some tire issues and the GPS (we call her Schotsie) easily found us locations and phone numbers for help. Having the phone number allowed us to call and see if the automotive shop could help us before we even headed their way. This was a great time saver! "She" also found attractions, food and fuel in areas that were not well marked. Even though I hate to admit I was wrong, that GPS was a good idea.
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