Trip report to the east. The good, the bad, and the ugly
Thanks for everyone's contributions to help me get this vacation planned. I took over a year and a half to budget and plan for this trip; it was much anticipated.
Our background: we are in our late 30s and our children are 12, 10, and 6.
Our original plan was to take 16 days and visit Gettysburg, DC, Baltimore, Norfolk, Assateague Island, Philly, and NYC. I had lots of potential activities in mind, but I have learned that sometimes the spontaneous stops bring the most joy. That served us well for this trip!
Day 1: We headed out after work on Friday night. We wanted to stop at Gettysburg en route to DC Saturday so we needed to leave on Friday night to make it before the visitor center closed on Saturday.
We were delayed for about an hour of our 3 hour trip due to an accident. We rerouted with our gps and were 1 mile from the campground and the road was closed. Ok, it's after 10pm, and my 6 year old is exhausted and my 12 and 10 year old boys are hitting each other......let's find this place! 40 mintues later, we arrive at the campground. That 3 hour trip took us about 5.5 hours and we were toast when we arrived.
Day 2: We all slept well from Friday night. The drive to Gettysburg wasn't too far, 4 hours or so, so we slept in. We woke up happy and energized and ready to get the party started.
11:30am on Saturday on the Pennsylvania turnpike a car approached us and said, "Your camper tire is smoking!" Whoa. Ok, thanks to the person that alerted us. We pulled over hoping to fix a flat and continue on our way. No big deal, we have a spare and plenty of tools. Nope.
The bearings on the axle failed and when we stopped, it actually caught fire. Thank goodness for the fire extinguisher! We needed an entire new axle.
I made lunch and the kids were able to use the bathroom while we called and waited for a wrecker. Smart phones proved to be worth their weight in gold for this trip!
We arrived at the shop at 1pm only to have the mechanic tell us that he won't be able to look at it until Monday, then he'll have to order parts, then he'll have to fix it.........
That's life. I get it. I've had my share of broken furnaces and unexpected car failures while getting to work. But there's something so much more profound about having a poorly timed repair disrupt your only vacation for the entire year. If it had been Monday instead of Saturday, we would have been on our way that evening. But because it was Saturday, we were basically SOL.
I called every repair shop and camper store in a 2 hour radius and they all said the same thing, "Sorry, it's 1 on Saturday. We're all leaving and we don't work on Sunday." Let's just say that the kids all learned how to swear that day.
The first big day of our trip and now we're down for a few days at least. There is no pushing back the trip, our work schedules won't permit that. This is it, our only available time off. This is the only chance we'll have this summer.
We've decided our new family motto is, "Go big or go home!" We didn't want to go home, so we went big. We ditched the camper, went to Walmart for a cooler and totes for clothes, and headed off to stay in hotels.
This was not what we had planned and it cost a fortune. But having raised our kids in a camping environment, they knew very little about hotels and it was a fun experience for them.
Our background: we are in our late 30s and our children are 12, 10, and 6.
Our original plan was to take 16 days and visit Gettysburg, DC, Baltimore, Norfolk, Assateague Island, Philly, and NYC. I had lots of potential activities in mind, but I have learned that sometimes the spontaneous stops bring the most joy. That served us well for this trip!
Day 1: We headed out after work on Friday night. We wanted to stop at Gettysburg en route to DC Saturday so we needed to leave on Friday night to make it before the visitor center closed on Saturday.
We were delayed for about an hour of our 3 hour trip due to an accident. We rerouted with our gps and were 1 mile from the campground and the road was closed. Ok, it's after 10pm, and my 6 year old is exhausted and my 12 and 10 year old boys are hitting each other......let's find this place! 40 mintues later, we arrive at the campground. That 3 hour trip took us about 5.5 hours and we were toast when we arrived.
Day 2: We all slept well from Friday night. The drive to Gettysburg wasn't too far, 4 hours or so, so we slept in. We woke up happy and energized and ready to get the party started.
11:30am on Saturday on the Pennsylvania turnpike a car approached us and said, "Your camper tire is smoking!" Whoa. Ok, thanks to the person that alerted us. We pulled over hoping to fix a flat and continue on our way. No big deal, we have a spare and plenty of tools. Nope.
The bearings on the axle failed and when we stopped, it actually caught fire. Thank goodness for the fire extinguisher! We needed an entire new axle.
I made lunch and the kids were able to use the bathroom while we called and waited for a wrecker. Smart phones proved to be worth their weight in gold for this trip!
We arrived at the shop at 1pm only to have the mechanic tell us that he won't be able to look at it until Monday, then he'll have to order parts, then he'll have to fix it.........
That's life. I get it. I've had my share of broken furnaces and unexpected car failures while getting to work. But there's something so much more profound about having a poorly timed repair disrupt your only vacation for the entire year. If it had been Monday instead of Saturday, we would have been on our way that evening. But because it was Saturday, we were basically SOL.
I called every repair shop and camper store in a 2 hour radius and they all said the same thing, "Sorry, it's 1 on Saturday. We're all leaving and we don't work on Sunday." Let's just say that the kids all learned how to swear that day.
The first big day of our trip and now we're down for a few days at least. There is no pushing back the trip, our work schedules won't permit that. This is it, our only available time off. This is the only chance we'll have this summer.
We've decided our new family motto is, "Go big or go home!" We didn't want to go home, so we went big. We ditched the camper, went to Walmart for a cooler and totes for clothes, and headed off to stay in hotels.
This was not what we had planned and it cost a fortune. But having raised our kids in a camping environment, they knew very little about hotels and it was a fun experience for them.
