Family travel fun on the road.

Family travel fun. On a recent trip to Orlando, we decided to drive down and make it a fun road trip as we hadn’t done a trip of that length in a while.
I was excited to do the road trip…I know the prospect of being cooped up in a car for 20 some odd hours doesn’t seem like a lot of fun for some people… but it can be a great experience!
Another reason I wanted to road trip…I could be more in control of what we ate driving down so we would enjoy the trip more once we actually arrived.

One of my must have essentials for all our road trips is a plug in cooler, this makes packing pre-made meals up easy, along with yogurts and cheese and other snacks that need refrigeration. I made sure that I packed more than enough snacks for us and a couple of meals as it isn’t always easy finding a place to have gluten free meals along the way. Plus, having your meals in the car cuts down on valuable driving time spent in a restaurant and if you are on a budget, this is an easier way of keeping it in check.

When you take flights from one place to another you don’t get to see the incredible country between one-stop or the other. That was another reason for wanting to take the road trip… I wanted to be able to see this beautiful land of ours and take pleasure in it.
Of course, we didn’t stop everywhere but just driving through so many of the places and seeing some of the many beautiful landscapes was incredible. I also enjoyed seeing the changes and differences from one state to another, the changes in the temperature and the difference in vegetation that it made.

We have a teen and to be quite honest, she spends a lot of time on her mobile devices. So I was quite surprised that she spent a lot of the time actually taking pictures or just looking at the countryside and just talking to us. This was something else I was looking forward to on the trip – If you have a teen, you know that doesn’t always happen! A road trip can always be a great experience when you know you have some quality time together, no one is going to go anywhere [because you can’t]. And you can actually talk in ways you don’t do always do on a day to day basis.

Along the way, we played a few of the standby car games, but one of my favourite things… she read to us – a book that is very special to her and that she wanted to share with us [John Green’s The Fault in our stars}. By the way, I highly recommend reading this, it is a wonderful and powerful book.

Stopped overnight in Chattanooga, getting an early start the next day as we were told the drive through Atlanta can be a bit of a bottleneck if you get caught in the traffic. Maybe we were lucky, but we had no problems with traffic, it was a great drive through that area.
We saw some of the cool buildings and architecture through Atlanta; even driving through you get to see some great landmarks and architecture.
I loved being able to see the cotton fields of Georgia. Something that I have never seen before so it was actually quite neat for me to see… the mounds of white fluff in the distance – somehow I had never pictured it that way.

Entering into Florida, you see all this lovely Spanish moss hanging from the trees, it is so beautiful! Seeing it along the highway, in the trees is just spectacular [in my opinion]- I have seen it on tv and in pictures; it does not compare to the real thing.

It was nice when we finally made it to the resort home where we were staying for the week. Nice to unpack, grab a glass of wine have a refreshing dip in the pool and relax. But it was a great family fun trip getting there!

My recommendation for family travel fun is that if you are going to be going anywhere, and you can, try to do road trips. It is less expensive but more time-consuming…but you get an experience along the way like no other. You see so many incredible things, and you get to spend some quality time with your family, which in my books is always a great thing!

Do you and your family do many road trips?