What It's Like to Travel with Four Kids

The short answer: It is amazing. In every possible way one can be amazed. By joy, by discovery, by time spent together; by sunsets and nature and adventure. And also by whining and chaos and uber-closeness and vomit. Really, truly, amazing.

Last year we embarked on a new life journey that we are still exploring and figuring out and touching tenderly like when you have a sore spot in your mouth you keep poking with your tongue. Part of that journey is a family mission to spend the night in all 50 states. These are our own arbitrary rules, but all 6 of us have to spend the night and do something iconic for the state to count. So, my layover in Minneapolis does not count as having been to Minnesota. That time I drove a snowmobile on a frozen river in Alaska counts for me, but not the whole family. When the whole family camped in one 4-man tent in Yellowstone and managed to suffocate a small rodent under our tent at night, that felt like we pretty much covered Wyoming. You get the idea.

In the last little-more-than-a-year (we started in February, 2015), we've been to 35 states including Georgia. And it really has been amazing. I get a lot of questions about how we "do that with four kids," but honestly, I do everything with four kids so you just kind of get used to it.

I know what people mean, though. They want to know what it's like to schlep through the airport or ride in the car for hours every day or to be in a new hotel every night. They want to know how we keep that many personalities happy and relaxed on vacation (we don't, so don't expect that miracle piece of information). They want to know if it's something they might be able to do (or want to do) with their own kids. So, here's what it's been like so far. I'll let you know what it's like again after we get those last 15.

Really Inconvenient
Everything about having children is crazily inconvenient. It takes for-freaking-ever to get in and out of cars. And in and out of hotels. And in and out of restaurants. If we fly, we travel with car seats that we take through security and onto the airplane. People sometimes groan out loud when they see us coming. Strangers will comment on our children--sometimes with "you're doing such a good job with them" (usually from old people) and sometimes "are they ALL yours?" (usually from anyone else).

Kids get hungry and tired and irrational and don't always get the significance of what they're doing.

This is the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia. See how thrilled the kid on the left is?

Where the Wright Brothers Invented Flight. Nailed the family photo. 

It is totally inconvenient to schedule and go and shake up anything about the systems in place to function that we have at home. We go anyway. With children who are at times irritable and ungrateful and grumpy--because we are a family team and life wasn't going to be much more convenient at home anyway.

Unpredictable
Travel is kind of unpredictable no matter who you take with you. Hotels are not always as great as they seemed online. The new town you're in may not have anything your kids like to eat. We never know when someone might melt down, need to go potty, decide they're having a terrible time, or just plain rebel against an activity.  There's more crying in the airport than when we go places without kids. There're a lot more bathroom stops. We also don't know where we're going a lot of the time and that makes the whole thing unpredictable.

Instead of being a negative, though, I think it's good for the kids. They see us have to make decisions based on new information and new problems. We've changed hotel rooms while driving down the freeway because we realized we could get further than we thought and we'd rather drive less tomorrow. We've had to use real, actual maps because cell service doesn't work everywhere in the nation (especially near national parks).

Actual map of Montana--see how there's no blue dot for my car?

Life is unpredictable and this is a pretty fun way to practice making decisions on the fly and negotiating with loved ones and communicating when we're tired and hungry and stressed. Jay and I get frustrated, but we're stuck in the car or the hotel and the kids get to see us work it out without ruining the day.

Gross
Children are disgusting. For that reason I travel with an elephant's worth of Wet Ones and hand sanitizer. This is so ingrained in my daughter that she pulled hand sanitizer out of her purse at church today when they got a snack. We've had vomit in the car more than once (different kids, different trips) and diarrhea in the car once. That was not good.  We have had children with enough sand to start building a hurricane barrier in their shorts and a flight to catch in an hour (poor parent decision making there--and also why I wound up in an outdoor shower with a Russian man and a naked toddler). We have had loveys left in horrible places, rubbed all over hotel room floors, and then kissed profusely when they were found. Seriously. Super gross.

Aah-Aah the Monkey was found in the parking lot of The Big Texan Steak House (home of the 72oz steak) underneath two guys smoking in the parking lot in Amarillo, Texas. At least as gross as it sounds.

Embarrassing/Conspicuous
We do not enter any location unnoticed. We take up the entire escalator at the airport. And the entire elevator in hotels. We are not quiet. We are not stealthy. We were asked to leave the tour at Independence Hall, laughed at (good-naturedly) by retirees in line at the National History Museum in D.C., and directly addressed by TSA agents in Atlanta, Seattle, and LA. So many people comment on our four kids (it's not like it's 40, people) that I don't even notice it most of the time anymore. A Japanese man and I had a conversation in broken English outside Yellowstone Lodge about how I did, in fact, give birth to them myself. Mostly I find this hilarious, but it certainly takes more bravado than I expected.

What we take on an airplane. Not subtle.

Sometimes it's our own fault. It was really funny to have an Elvis wedding (actually a vow renewal--we have been married for quite a while) in Vegas. I did not, however, anticipate how much courage it took to walk through the lobby of Paris Las Vegas wearing my veil and followed by the children. I was told congratulations, so that was nice. But definitely not low key.

Headed to our Vegas wedding in a rented KIA minivan. It smelled better than our own minivan, so that was luxurious. 

Terrifying
Sometimes, where we go is just plain terrifying. There's a fence at the Grand Canyon, but it's made out of chain link like the one we had that couldn't keep our dog in when I was growing up. And there are gaps. Giant, child-sized gaps. The Tidal Basin in DC has no rail or fence and it was really crowded with wall to wall people down to the very edge. Crater Lake had a thin guide wire strung between two trees that was the difference between standing on actual rock and standing on snow cornices. The ranger there said, "Be careful here because it slopes downward before the rope. If you start sliding, you will die."

View from Hoover Dam. See how we did NOT get the kids in this shot?

New Orleans has lovely trolleys, but they are located in the middle of the street so there's about a 5 foot gap between child-killing traffic and child-killing trolleys. We've driven on roads that had us white knuckling the steering wheel and drugging the children with iPads to ensure silence. Hoover Dam...yeah, both sides of that were horrifying. So, it's frightening. And I kind of like that.

Walkways with absolutely no rails over the geothermal features in Yellowstone. Some also have water in them, not just earth fire.

Educational
Sure it is educational in the actual history way. We've learned a crazy amount about Lewis and Clark and the Civil Rights Movement and the American Revolution.  We've learned about Westward Expansion and Pilgrims and the Civil War. But we've also learned how other people live and how big our country is and how much of it still doesn't have people in it. And yet, at the same time, how many other people there are living lives parallel to our own thousands of miles away.

Fort Sumter, where the Civil War began. Our kids are wearing gloves (that they would lose five minutes later) because it was the one day in Charleston that it got cold. Also, can you see the 4th kid? Another perfect pic. 

We learn about each other and what we find interesting. We learn our children's personalities in new and unusual circumstances. We learn how to communicate with each other better because there's no where to escape and the children can always hear us. We learn how to entertain ourselves for hours on end of driving and staring out of the window. We learn...and for my teacher soul that is so very satisfying.

Very, Very Precious
For all the embarrassment and inconvenience and uncertainty and vomit, I am so very glad we are on this silly mission. It is so much fun. Life itself is one very big adventure filled with all of these qualities--what an amazing way to get to teach our kids how to roll with it. What an amazing series of moments to share. This past week we took another rented KIA minivan 3 miles down a dirt road off a crazy curvy highway in California to find a stand of redwood trees. We were the only people there when we arrived--it was about 5pm and getting dark and misty. The sunlight filtered through the giant trees and the rain chilled us a little and the only sounds were our kids (of course) and the nearby river. We found a spot where giant logs lay in a semi-circle underneath towering trees and I could not help but think that it looked like the kind of church that God himself had made. So we made our own family circle and prayed in that sacred place...thanking God for the sky and the trees and the river and the rain and the chance to see them all together.

Boys and a giant tree. KIA minivans can go anywhere.

This is why now, with my jet-lagged children irritable and grumpy and picking at each other after the let-down of home again and back to routine, I'm already planning the next trip.  No matter what happens on our trips, what lives up to our dreams and what doesn't, it was always absolutely worth it because we are on the adventure together. I can't wait to see what the next one brings.

50 States Trip #1: The Carolinas

So I mentioned in my last post that we are going to spend 2 years visiting all 50 states. It will probably take us 2 years to get the lower 48 and then two separate, really expensive, trips to hit Alaska and Hawaii. Even knowing from the beginning that we will need to be flexible to achieve our goal, it was awfully surprising that the lesson was learned so very quickly.

We planned our first trip last month to head up to some mid-Atlantic states and see Washington, D.C. Unfortunately, the weather did not agree with us and one of our kids barfed in the hallway on the new carpet the week we were supposed to leave. The recovering barfer and the frost-bite inducing cold forced us to reevaluate our plans.

We decided, days later than we had originally planned, to just head to the Carolinas so that we could at least begin our adventure instead of cancelling altogether. We had no reservations or pre-planning, but since it was February we figured we'd be able to find a decent hotel and packed anyway. We got the car loaded up and all the kids buckled in and then realized we had a flat tire.

So then we went to Discount Tire and got two new tires. The children thought it was awesome, they gave us money back on our two tires still under warranty, and they were done in 30 minutes. Yay, Discount Tire. 

Giant machinery is always cool

Finally, we were on the road and headed to Charleston, South Carolina. Charleston is lovely. There are Spanish moss covered trees and old cobblestone streets and a gas light district that smelled a little too much like natural gas for me to completely relax. We stayed right next to the market that opens every day and were able to walk everywhere we went. Hotels in that area are expensive, but we only stayed two nights so it wasn't too terrible.

Our first day we visited the Old Slave Mart museum, the Old Exchange and Provost, and Fort Sumter. I apparently fall far into the camp of "stark truth-telling parents" because it really didn't occur to me that I might traumatize the children with the history of slavery until someone mentioned it on Facebook. Anyway, we looked at photographs of small children in chains and actual whips and listened to personal stories that have been recorded by actors and it was painful yet enthralling. The children were most interested in the fact that families were broken up as children and parents were sold to different owners.  

It was also painful because we have a 2-year-old and he is incapable of somber reflection. I don't have any pictures of this because human beings were sold like animals in that spot and it didn't seem like an appropriate photo-op for small white children. 

I don't have Old Exchange photos, either, because that included a guided tour and during guided tours Jay and I spend all of our energy and focus keeping our children from destroying historic artifacts and knocking over strangers. It is like taking a litter of 3-foot-tall tiger cubs everywhere we go. Still, the history lover in me enjoyed both of these locations and I am glad we went.

We spent the afternoon at Fort Sumter, the site of the start of the Civil War. To get to the fort you have to take a 30-minute boat ride, which was a big hit with everyone. There is an indoor area on the boat so even though it was cold we didn't freeze. The fort itself is exactly the kind of place we like to take the kids. It is outside, there is plenty to look at, and it has historical significance. You're only allowed to stay about an hour because the boat will leave you (the park rangers actually rode back with us) so we didn't get to spend much time inside the museum on the actual island. Also, my son may be the only tourist ever to have left his winter gloves on Fort Sumter. He had owned them for one day. 

Cannons are amazing

Family Ft Sumter selfie-may need a selfie stick

The next morning we visited the market and said "don't touch that" 147 times and "no, you may not buy that" 412 times. The market is interesting for adults and apparently sheer torture for small boys. We also ate an amazingly delicious breakfast at the Dixie Cafe, which was on Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives from the Food Network. You should go there. 

From Charleston we took this awesome bridge over to Sullivan's Island to go run around on the beach for a few minutes.

This wasn't really planned, but we were headed from Charleston to North Carolina and it looked like a fun detour to drive over the bridge. Once we were over, Jay thought we should see the Atlantic because our children either don't remember it or haven't ever done so. It wound up being one of my favorite activities.

Boardwalk to the beach

We literally just drove around until we found a place to park near a public beach access point. We ran down this wonderful boardwalk, past a sign that said to watch out for coyotes, and down to the beach.

The path was surrounded by marsh and grasses and it looked like a secret passage to the sea. I'm sure it's a totally different world in the summer, but in February it was like we had our own personal ocean. Definitely worth the detour.

Here is where we totally short-changed North Carolina. I really love North Carolina. Jay and I lived there for a year and there are many places worth seeing. Asheville, the Outer Banks, and the universities near Raleigh-Durham (University of North Carolina, North Carolina State University, Duke, and Wake Forrest) are all fun. Unfortunately, they were all getting snow and crazy weather, too. 

We also were kind of run down from the terrible barfing of earlier in the week and we spent an extra couple of hours on the highway due to a horrific fatal accident that we passed on the way. It resulted in an RV on its roof with a car resting on top of it. I've never seen anything like it.

All that to say, we chose to go to Charlotte, North Carolina because it is close to Charleston and about 3 1/2  hours from our house. We also assume that we will spend the night in North Carolina during other trips to places further away. That turned out to be a good decision because another kid started barfing in the hotel room that night.

But before the barf, we went to the NASCAR Hall of Fame.

Full Disclosure: I am not actually a NASCAR fan. Growing up in the South, you kind of can't help but hear about races or big names in the sport, but I was totally surprised when my college roommate from Delaware told me her brothers were huge NASCAR fans. I learned that auto racing is actually quite a popular sport, beating out basketball at both the professional and collegiate level for "favorite sport" among Americans for the past several years. 

We decided that a giant NASCAR museum was certainly unique to North Carolina and something that might be fun for the kids. And, honestly, it was a great museum. You get to climb on examples of how the track tilt has changed over the years from flat to over 30 degrees. 

Hanging on at 33 degrees

We got to sit in a race car and pretend we were in the winner's circle.

See how happy I am at winning?

And I got a Dale Earnhardt hat because it was awesome.

Turns out that the NASCAR Hall of Fame is incredibly kid-friendly. It is already loud and you have to try pretty hard to break a car museum. Plus, there are several interactive video-game-like simulations throughout the whole thing. We finished up our evening with some really great Carolina BBQ, but then regretted that when the barfing began.

The next morning we limped home with a garbage bag in front of the poor sick kid, two new tires on the faithful minivan, and two more states crossed off the list. Next stop: the Mid-Atlantic states.