As of this week I am a veteran of a two thousand kilometer road trip with three kids under seven (and one is a baby). Writing this I am trying to wipe a cheesy, huge grin off my face because I am quite proud of myself. We took a punt you see, using ten days of my husband’s precious vacation days to set off on our road adventure and I had psychologically prepared myself for it to go terribly pear shaped. Pear shaped it wasn’t though, instead being an exciting, sometimes challenging journey that can only be called a resounding success.

Our reasons for a road trip vacation were three fold. Firstly, my husband and I used to love road trips pre-kids.  Our epic adventure as younguns saw us drive from Melbourne, through the Red Centre to Darwin and then down the east coast of Australia to Sydney. It’s been six years since we took a major road trip together and we just wanted to give it a go with the kids. Second was price. My husband’s family lives in Sydney and in January school holidays flight prices for our family of five go through the roof. Driving up to NSW saved us considerably, both on airfares and the cost of car hire as our destination. Thirdly, while our primary destination was Sydney road tripping allowed us to explore two other regions of Australia – the NSW Central Coast and the ACT.

As a consequence of this road trip I have garnered a few gems of road trip wisdom so that when we next set off in our family wagon again things should go smoother. As usual it was only by the end of the trip that the pieces started fitting together such that I really understood what worked for our family of five. It all has to do with kid’s energy levels. I have two high energy boys and one chilled out baby girl.   I was nervous about how our baby would cope with the road trip but shouldn’t have worried – the boys were my major cause of angst.  I have previously shared on this site tips for keeping kids safe and occupied on road trips – this article isn’t about that. What it is about is managing high energy kids at the same time as forcing them to sit still in a car for hours at a time.

Road tripping the Hume Highway – not exciting scenery

Set a limit to your drive time each day.

Okay, admittedly there is a little trial and error involved here, and things can be tricky if you are working to a tight schedule. What became clear on our trip was that driving more than five hours a day just didn’t work for us. The kids went nuts in the car, they went nuts at the hotel after we arrived at our stop and I went nuts trying to manage them. If you know your kids have a limit, don’t push it.

Grant them extra time to burn off energy at your destination.

We are sticklers for kid’s bedtime in our home. I made the mistake of thinking the kids should go to bed at their normal bedtime when we arrived at our destination. Big mistake! The boys clearly needed extra time to burn off their energy. Our major holiday meltdowns were all from Bub 1 after about two hours of me trying to unsuccessfully enforce bedtime. I learnt to give him a couple of hours grace to stay up later after a day in the car.

Pools are your friend

I’m not talking about hotel-motel pools at your destination here, although they are also very much your friend. We struck road trip gold when we hit on the idea of breaking up the drive with visits to local pools. Most country towns have a local pool and they are reasonably priced for a casual visit. Particularly when driving on hot days the idea of an hour or so in a playground to allow the boys to burn some energy just wasn’t appealing. By stopping at the local pool on our route our break refreshed us all. The boys also anticipate a swim more eagerly than a play at a playground, particularly if the pool has a waterslide.   If you have a smart phone local pools are easy to locate on the fly.

Divide and conquer

In the olden days of un-ethical primate research monkeys were observed to deliberately heckle and annoy each other if under-stimulated (or so my highly intelligent professor Dad told me). On this road trip my boys were very much under-stimulated monkeys. We started out sitting all three kids next to each other in the car until we realized that all hell broke lose at hour three of driving. They would start hitting each other, annoying the baby, throwing things into the front of the car. Just moving our eldest into the back seat solved many of our problems.

Okay they don’t look thrilled with the situation but at least they are not trying to kill each other.

Talk up the roadside attractions.

The Australian countryside is littered with unusual, often tacky roadside attractions which fortunately my high energy kids love. In this case it was the Giant Merino which impressed them even more than the Giant Gum Boot they had climbed in Tully North Queensland. The Giant Merino is a huge sheep with a giant concrete scrotum that has resided perhaps since time began in the NSW town of Goulburn. From my perspective giant roadside attractions always put a smile on my face, but climbing round their fiberglass insides for an hour is less appealing. For the two hundred kilometers until we reached Gouburn though talk of that Giant Merino and anticipatory excitement on behalf of the kids kept the metaphorical wheels turning on our family road trip.

Goulburn’s Giant Merino

Technology is your BFF

If pools are your friend then technology Is your BFF. We have purchased Ipad minis which our kids are only allowed to use when we are travelling. They are loaded with age appropriate games, tv shows, audiobooks and movies. God bless her my good friend Sam Lee who contributed a post to this site earlier in the year about her Great Griswaldian road trip in the USA shuns such technology in the car.   I can’t imagine the road trip without it. I don’t think we would have made it past Albury.

Finallly parents, have realistic expectations. My husband and I discussed prior to our road trip the likelihood that the holiday would be in no way relaxing. We were right – the child wrangling that was necessary coupled with the later than normal bedtimes that the kids required meant there was minimal quiet time for us. That is one of the reasons that our next big trip is to a resort with a kids club so that other people can deal with our high energy kids while we do get time to relax. It is after all about swings and balances.

Bubs on the Move provides tips and advice for parents traveling with small children including attraction and accommodation reviews. I’d love for ya’ll to join us on our adventures by either signing up for the newsletter, joining us on Facebook,  Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram to receive updates.

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