Our First Family Road Trip
Spring Break!!!!! We survived our first family road trip to Texas! We went to Space Center Houston and the capital city of Austin. We planned the perfect amount for this trip. We spent some time reading travel blogs from other families about destinations in Texas and travel tips. One big take-away from those blogs were the number of families who regretted planning too much in advance.
Packing for a family of five seems like a daunting task. Keep it simple and know that you can always stop at a Walmart or Target to pick up almost anything you might have left behind. One of Ryan’s co-workers suggested using packing cubes. After a little bit of research and some browsing on Amazon, we chose a set that came in a variety of colors, so each family member had his/her own set of cubes. This was hands down the best purchase we could have made before this trip. I was able to pack a family of five, for a ten day trip, into two regular size duffel bags and a beach bag for towels. Each kiddo also had a backpack with a stuffed animal, a small lunch box with some Lego pieces, coloring books with colored pencils, and books to read. Limiting this stuff was important as we didn’t want to be searching for the beloved lost toy or having to keep track of a mass amount of things the kids decided to bring. I also purchased new coloring books and books before the trip as surprises in their bags. New stuff is exciting and holds their attention longer than something old from home would. You might think taking colored pencils in the car would be a pain as they have to be sharpened, but this worked out great! We knew we didn’t want the mess of markers or to have dropped crayons melting in the hot Texas sun into the van seats or flooring. Each kiddo also had a small pack of tissues and sunglasses near their seat to grab as needed. We also brought along wet wipes to clean hands after snacks and a pack of Take-n-Toss cups with lids and straws to make those larger bottles of water or juice picked up at the gas station kid friendly.
Before we left we had our reservations for the Airbnb houses in League City and Austin. We knew we would split the 17 hour drive into two days, but chose not to book the hotel for the drive days until we were already on the road. We did this for several reasons. Most importantly, traveling with kids is unpredictable. Snacks, potty breaks, meals, meltdowns; anyone with kiddos knows this stuff can come up at any time. Also, you never know what you can encounter on the road. Car trouble or traffic jams can change your drive time dramatically. We didn’t want to put ourselves in a situation where we were stressing about making it to a hotel on time, having had the chance to go farther because things were going well, or having to cancel and find a new reservation, potentially losing out on money and time. We decided to wait until our lunch or dinner stop to look for and book a hotel for the current night. A hotel with a pool was a must to keep the kids entertained for the few hours we were there. They were able to work out some of that built up energy from sitting in the car for about 9 hours and slept great!
Our house in League City was very cute! We didn’t spend much time in the house as we had planned to visit the Space Center Houston. The kids loved the exhibits and learning about all things space. We took a tram ride to tour the campus and stopped to see a rocket. The humidity was very high, which made it difficult to breathe in the afternoon heat. We hadn’t expected this. Due to the local beach being closed and the humidity, we chose to leave the Houston area first thing in the morning and get to Austin early.
We were not able to check into our Austin Airbnb until late afternoon, so we drove by the house to scope out the location, and took the kids to Barton Springs to swim and play until the house was ready. We had a BLAST! Barton Springs is a natural spring fed pool in downtown Austin. The weather was perfect and the water a bit cold, but the kids never mind that. This unplanned pitstop was the perfect way to get out the wiggles from another car ride before unpacking our bags in the Austin house.
The house was within walking distance to downtown, so we didn’t do much driving and chose to walk into the city each day. The first night we walked to Torchy’s Tacos for dinner. We fell in love and walked right back for breakfast tacos in the morning. Then we walked up South Congress, visited a few shops, stopped for a snack at Amy’s Ice Creams and made it into downtown for some more sightseeing and shopping. The kids did great! We made sure to stop and sit or grab water or snacks when they needed, and they didn’t once complain about the amount of walking we did. That night on the way back from downtown, we stopped to see the bats that congregate under the South Congress bridge. For the number of people who showed up to watch, we were expecting A LOT of bats, but we really were not that impressed. Maybe it wasn’t the right weather, or people were making too much noise, but there were not nearly as many bats as everyone claimed there would be.
While in Austin, we also visited the Hope Outdoor Gallery, the graffiti wall on Baylor Street. Super cool spot in the city covered by large graffiti murals. It was fenced off by the time we were there to see it, which was a bummer. A hotel, or condo, project is planned for that spot. The Hope Outdoor Gallery plans to create a new space for graffiti artists on Dalton Lane near the Austin-Bergstrom International Airport. We hope we will get to leave our mark there some day after it opens in the summer of 2021. The kids got new skateboards at No-Comply, a fun local skate shop near a skate park. This shop often features collabs with different brands and local artists. They were just about sold out of their Vans and Daniel Johnston shoes. Cool little shop and the kids got to test out their new boards and watch some skaters at the near by park.
The ride home went well, but as expected, not as well as the ride down to Texas. Everyone was tired and just ready to be out of the car and back in our own space. We made a pit stop at a Dukes travel stop and Kinsey got her beloved purple Dukes trucker hat. Again, we did not book our hotel until that afternoon, because we were unsure how far we would be able to drive with the kids. We made it to West Memphis to swim and sleep then finished our trip home the next morning.