Traveling with Twins - Part 2

Our twins did great on our family road trip so I thought I would share some of the things we did that helped make things go smoothly. In the last entry I talked about books on CD and DVD’s. Here’s a few other items to help with traveling.

It’s amazing how boredom drives hunger (although my boys are always hungry so go figure). It was also amazing how food was able to distract the boys for awhile. I packed little boxes of raisins and gold fish crackers and apples and mini rice cakes and just a few cookies. My goal was to bring items that traveled well and didn’t get the boys all full of sugar. The drinks we packed were flavored waters. We picked flavored water for three main reasons. First, they are low in sugar. Second, the boys will still drink them even if they’re not super cold (the cooler did get low on ice a couple of times), and finally since these drinks are clear in color (water), any spills that we had didn’t stain the carpet in the suburban. This was a BIG deal for my husband.

From a schedule perspective, we planned our driving so that we were always done with our daily travel by dinner time. If we had a long day of driving ahead of us, we would just make sure we got an early start so we would be sure to arrive by dinner time. We always booked a hotel with a pool and then had the boys spend some time in the pool burning off energy after dinner. After a long day of driving, a good dinner and an hour or so splashing around in the pool, the boys slept great even though the hotel room was an unfamiliar place. As you know, a good night sleep is priceless for everyone in the family!!

Traveling with Twins?

Now that we’re back from our summer vacation and getting back in the swing of things, a number of folks have asked me how our twins and our older son did in the car for all those hours on the road trip. They did GREAT and I realized that there might be a few hints and tricks that could help other families who are still planning on heading out on summer vacation.

First, we went to our local library and got a bunch of books on CD. I was able to find quite a few that were appropriate and engaging for the fairly wide age range of our boys (6 to 10 years old). In fact, my husband and I enjoyed them as well and it made the time go by faster for all of us. We alternated between books on CD and movies and it made for a good mix.

Second, we have a DVD player in our suburban so of course we took advantage of that luxury. Again a few new movies checked out of the local library helped freshen up our usual DVD inventory and kept things interesting. Since our trip was going to take us to Mt. Rushmore and Devil’s Tower, we brought the movies National Treasure 2 and Close Encounters with us. The kids got a BIG kick out of watching the movies that were focused on places we were actually going to see. And finally, my kids had been begging me to see the movie Star Wars. I had been telling them no, but we brought it in the car as a surprise for them and one of my twins actually told me it was a “dream come true!!!” The element of surprise has huge appeal for little ones so I say use it to you advantage.

Making the most of the home stretch....

This morning we left West Yellowstone and started heading home to Oregon. On the way we stopped at the Craters of the Moon National Monument. Lots of lava flows and lava tubes that created caves. Again my rock climbing monkey boys had a great time. Then it was back into the suburban and on to Boise. We have a great hotel here tonight and the boys enjoyed some exercise in the pool before bedtime. Tomorrow we have a long drive home, but I think we're all looking forward to sleeping in our own beds tomorrow night. It's been an AWESOME trip!!!

Whitewater Rafting on the Gallatin River in Big Sky Montana

What a day we had.... We started off this morning with a drive up to Big Sky, Montana. Again just beautiful winding rivers and gorgeous scenery. We drove up to the Big Sky ski resort. It's quite an impressive place with lots of neat shops and restaurants and ski in / ski out chalets, etc. Dave was in his glory!!! (although he would have preferred it if there was still snow so he could ski....) We had lunch up there and then headed back down for our rafting trip.

We don't have many pictures today because we spent the majority of the day on a raft and couldn't bring the camera. But there was plenty of excitement. The raft behind us got stuck on a rock and 4 of it's passengers were floating down the river. I ended up pulling one of them out of the river and into our raft. Dave went with the raft guides to figure out how to free the raft that was now like a taco around this big rock. The boys all did great. They were very patient and stayed calm throughout the whole endeavour.

And it paid off big time in the end. Once they got everything and everyone back on the river, we had a GREAT trip. Check out all the photos at; http://www.bigskyphotos.com/ (password; 070209abc) (as of 10pm PST they haven't posted the photos on their website yet - but maybe by the morning. you need to click on the 7/2/09 Geyser Whitewater link and then Carl - he was our guide) Erik says now he wants to go whitewater rafting every summer!! They must have had a great time. Both Erik and Adam fell asleep on the bus ride back to the raft shop. Great fun.

Tomorrow....we head to Boise Idaho. We're on our way back to Oregon.

Yellowstone

We didn't get an early start today. I think everyone needed to sleep in a bit. But when we did head to Yellowstone we almost immediately ran into a traffic jam. We thoguht it was road construction - which there is plenty of that - but in this case it turned out to be a whole bunch of cars slowing down to take a look at the bald eagle. It was pretty neat, but didn't justify a huge traffic jam.

Then is was off to the Mammoth Hot Springs. It was pretty neat, but we didn't see any water. Not sure why that is, but the pictures in the gift shop look much more colorful than what we saw in person. Adam and I counted 130 steps back up to the parking lot. That earned us a big dish of ice cream at the Mammoth hotel.

After that, we made our way back through the road construction zone and over to Old Faithful. There are two lodges there, which are both really neat and we arrived about 30 mins before the eruption of Old Faithful so it was just the right amount of time to look around and get a good seat to watch the water flow. It was pretty amazing to see hundreds of people lining up on the benches to watch it.

As luck would have it, we met up with the Richards and the Benning families who are also from Oregon. We did the 3 mile loop hike around Old Faithful and then ended up with a take out pizza dinner at our cabin. Lots of fun for everyone and the boys REALLY enjoyed seeing some other kids for a change. Tomorrow we're headed for Big Ski Country!!