We Survived a Family Road Trip During Covid! Here's How...

Alright ladies, I know a lot of you had questions on our recent road trip to Sedona and The Grand Canyon so I’m excited to share all the details of how we survived. Obviously traveling with the full family always requires some skill, but throw on a pandemic and this trip was extra thought-out. I will say it was an awesome trip and everything went pretty well! The kids loved it and the adults had fun too. Here are some pointers if you’re planning a family road trip in the future.

Oh and as for the trip itself, I’ll be doing a full trip recap soon so stay tuned for that. Onto the road trip tips…

Let the kids plan: My bestie gave me this tip and it worked like a charm! A week before your trip, let the kids choose and research one activity they want to do wherever you’re going. This not only lets them get involved and feel part of the trip but it gave them a lot to look forward to on the drive. Dorian researched the animals of the dessert which was great because he was on the lookout for animals once we got into Arizona. (Once we got there, he was SO excited and petrified when we were on a hike and other hikers saw a brown bear…ha!). Harlow was all about the Native American arts and crafts so once we got to the Grand Canyon we stopped at a store so she could shop around. It would even be cool to have the kids research places on the route if you were taking a road trip that was longer than a day. This way they’d have stops to look forward to and you could break the trip up.

Safety! Obviously safety was a huge concern during this time. We knew we wanted to stop as few times as possible but were also trying to be realistic about a road trip with kids. So yeah, this is kinda cray but we actually packed Toilet Paper Wipes so we could stop and do our own thing without touching public bathrooms. Crazy times right? We also put hand sanitizer in each of the kids’ car door handles, had disposable gloves and masks for when we stopped for gas, and had all the disinfecting equipment. Do I sound paranoid?! It made us feel safe though so all good!

Pack lots of snacks and drinks: If you have kids ,you know that snacks are always an essential, especially on a 7+ hour car ride. We packed a cooler so that drinks and perishables could stay fresh. Lots of cut up veggies, snack packs, string cheese, that kinda thing. We also had full breakfast and lunches packed to avoid more stopping and fast food. The cooler also came in handy for hiking days or when we were out and about all day and same thing with reusable water bottles.

Audio books for the adults: Let’s be honest, a road trip can be boring for adults too. Since we are really trying to educate ourselves to be allies to the black community, we downloaded White Fragility before our trip. Highly recommend! It’s an adult book but it brought up a lot of good convos with the kids on the ride too!

Entertainment for the kids: We pre-downloaded a couple of movies to the iPad and also stocked up with scratch pads so they had a couple different activities to choose from. Don’t forget the headphones and charging cables!! We also brought our puppy which was added entertainment but I know that’s not always possible. And we actually didn’t mind stopping randomly in empty lots a couple times to let Clover go potty since we got to stretch our legs and get wiggles out. Stopping at random locations definitely cut down on times you’d usually wait for bathrooms, food, or whatever so that’s another tip!

Let the kids pack their car bag: This was one more thing we did before the trip which really helped us out. We let the kids pack a car bag with snacks, activities, a sweatshirt if they got cold, etc. We had to edit it down before we actually left because some random stuff got thrown in but they loved ‘packing’ and then having their stuff in the car.

Get comfortable: For the whole family, I recommend thinking of a few items that will make the trip more comfortable for all. Casual clothing, pillows or blankets, neck wrests, whatever it takes to make you feel good for the ride. I’ll link some of our faves below…

Alright ladies, any other questions? Let me know!