6 Simple Family Vacation Traditions
Four years ago this summer, I drove across nearly the entire country (North Carolina to Phoenix) on my own with the three older girls while Bart drove our moving truck towing our other car.
As I drove, I remembered how a few years ago, I could barely work up the courage to drive down to Houston with Ella to meet Bart while he was working there for a week.
A three hour drive with one child? Apparently that was terrifying to me.
I think it’s safe to say I’ve gotten better at traveling with children.
I’ve learned a few things that make traveling with children easier, like prepping them beforehand about what we’re going to see and do, staying in rental house instead of a hotel room (unless you enjoy lying completely silently in the dark listening to your audiobook for three hours after your children go to sleep two feet away from you – which we did multiple times in Europe in 2014), and loading the iPad with a bunch of new apps. Also, a lot of mini-marshmallows.
I’ve been thinking too about the traditions we’re developing around family vacations, now that our girls are getting slightly older. Bart and I both come from families that are big into travel, so we’ve definitely stolen some from them.
With summer travel just around the corner, I thought it’d be fun to share some of our favorite traditions on our family vacations.
6 Simple Family Vacation Traditions
- Audiobooks. Oh, you’re so shocked! When I was a child, we often stopped at the very last library in our library district about thirty minutes outside of Las Vegas. It was a teeny library but it had a big collection of audiobooks (on cassette!) and we’d pick out a stack for our road trip. I clearly remember listening to The Pelican Brief with my mom on one trip up to Utah with just the two of us when I was a high school senior, and my family still quotes lines from The Wolves of Willoughby which we listened to in 1994 on a camping trip across Colorado. A few years ago, all my dreams of traveling with my children came true when Ella and I listened to Beezus and Ramona and Ramona Quimby, Age 8 as we drove from one coast to the other. That Beverly Cleary – she can write. In Bart’s family, his mom read aloud during long road-trips, and they all have great memories of the books she read to the whole family. (I wrote a whole list of favorite audiobooks for the whole family here!)
- Ice Cream. Ice cream is my absolute favorite dessert – possibly even my favorite food – and it’s a fun end to a vacation day. In Europe, we ate gelato many many nights in the various cities we visited, and we do the same when we visit cities in the US on our family vacations, looking up local ice cream places and making sure to fit them in. My all-time favorite ice cream vacation memory was visiting Salt & Straw with my mom in Portland a few years ago. We all get different flavors and try them out, comparing and rating them. What’s not to love?
- Local libraries. Are you so surprised to see this? (Not even one bit, right?). I love scoping out the library wherever we visit, whether it’s a tiny little one in Fredericksburg, Texas or the impressive downtown San Francisco library. I love seeing what books they have displayed, what kinds of collections they have (the San Antonio library has a huge Braille collection!), and what cool extras they have, like the giant jeep in the front of the Georgetown library’s children’s department. I also love visiting a local bookstore.
- Visiting the same spot. I like visiting new places, but there is also something so great about returning to the same beloved spots over and over again. Bart’s family visited Lake Powell many times throughout his growing up, and he’d love it if we did the same thing with our kids. My family stayed in a vacation rental in Long Beach, California a couple of times, and it was so fun to have our own little apartment, walk across the street to the beach, make dinner and eat it on the patio, or borrow games and movies from the front office. There’s something so delightful about returning to that same place over and over again.
- Sunday picnics. All the time I was growing up, we didn’t go out to eat on Sundays while we were traveling, so we’d visit a grocery store on Saturday night and then have a little picnic on Sunday (this is one of those things made WAY easier with a vacation rental instead of a hotel because you have a fridge to store your food in – probably better than the time my dad filled an entire bathtub with ice to keep the milk, yogurts, and lunch meat cold over night).
- Amusement Parks. This is another tradition we’ve stolen from my parents. Because my parents are big history buffs, our vacations often involved lots of historic sites and museums, so we’d break it up with a day at an amusement park. I specifically remember a day at Busch Gardens in the middle of a huge Civil War trip we took in 1997. We did the same thing with our girls in Paris and England – and, no surprise, those are their clearest memories of the trips.
- seeing a matinee (what feels more vacation-y than that?)
- making a special breakfast when you stay in a rental with a kitchen
- choosing a book to read aloud on the trip while you wait at restaurants or before bed
- visiting state capitols (my cousin and his wife have a goal to visit them all – they’ve visited us twice in the past few years because we’ve lived near both the Texas and North Carolina capitols)
- having board or card games you play only while traveling
- renting a fun car to road-trip in (as I write this, Bart is looking up how much it would cost to rent a Lamborghini for a day; I was thinking more like a minivan with a DVD player).
About the only tradition I remember from traveling with my family when I was young–which was mostly when we moved, because we were a military family–was the Hogan Hunt before we left each hotel room or rental or whatever. Hogan was my maiden name. The hunt was for whatever little things might have been left in drawers, under beds, etc. Many a hairbrush was recovered this way.
I don't have any traditions with my own family yet, because we don't travel much. And frankly, I'm not into it until I don't have a small baby to manage. Of course, then I'll have three hyper boys, which is probably even worse.
You're much braver than I am.
I love all of your ideas! The road trip tradition I remember best from my childhood was getting to pick out 'special' drinks for the road. My mom was always frugal and planned and packed all our meals to avoid fast food. So our last trip to the grocery store before we left my brothers and I would pick out personal sized bottles of fruit juice and chocolate milk. This was a huge deal for children of a mama who always bought in bulk!
I love all of your ideas! The road trip tradition I remember best from my childhood was getting to pick out 'special' drinks for the road. My mom was always frugal and planned and packed all our meals to avoid fast food. So our last trip to the grocery store before we left my brothers and I would pick out personal sized bottles of fruit juice and chocolate milk. This was a huge deal for children of a mama who always bought in bulk!
I love all of your ideas! The road trip tradition I remember best from my childhood was getting to pick out 'special' drinks for the road. My mom was always frugal and planned and packed all our meals to avoid fast food. So our last trip to the grocery store before we left my brothers and I would pick out personal sized bottles of fruit juice and chocolate milk. This was a huge deal for children of a mama who always bought in bulk!
This is great! I remember lots of these growing up. Also, I used to be terrified of taking Fox to the grocery store. Now he has been on buses, metros, airplanes, in many French cities and the grocery store is looking so easy.
For our kids we go to the dollar store before hand and get each of them a few prizes (depending on how many hours we will be in the car.) and wrap them up. Then every few hours if they've been good they get to unwrap something. Usually a coloring g book, small toy, a snack, etc.
You're a champ handling three kids solo like that! I would never have survived! But I totally want to steal some of these vacation traditions from you guys 🙂
I just finally got audiobooks for my son and I to listen to the last time we drove to Minneapolis. It was so fun!
When the three of us go on a road trip, my husband and I take turns sitting in the backseat with my son so we can read, play games, color, build Lego, or watch a movie. It was the ride more enjoyable for him and gives the driver some quiet time to put headphones on. 🙂
I always loved listening to audio books on our travels as a family.
Kristi | Be Loverly
We used to buy a bag of soft pink mints (weirdly specific, I know) and see whose would last the longest. Think tootsie pop contest or something. I always lost, but it bought my parents 15 minutes or so at a time of silence.
If you ever go to Kansas City, you HAVE to go see their library. The building looks like books lined up. I didn’t go inside, but that exterior is so neat.
I insisted on a can with a DVD player. Our kids love road trips because I mostly just let them watch movies nonstop. If we have more than one day of driving, I try to make them break it up with some audiobooks. I also fill them a gallon size bag each of various snacks. THats their snacks for the day. When it’s gone, it’s gone. Then I’m not passing snacks all the time.
Growing up, I remember listening to audiobooks with my family. Also, my mom made trail mix (with only things we liked) for road trips. And we bought “special” cheese like Brie or Gouda to eat in the car. One summer we traveled a lot, we joked that our car stopped at all Dairy Queen’s. We ate a lot of ice cream.
Hmm we haven’t done enough trips to establish any traditions yet, but we do like to explore new playgrounds along the way to my mom’s house. And ring pops usually buy us 30 minutes of silence.
Awww, I work at Busch Gardens! I’m sure you mean the Williamsburg one since you noted it being a Civil War trip.
Yes! It was that one and it was one of my favorite travel memories!
One of my favorite traditions is to make a playlist just for the specific trip. We used to go to Arizona every spring, so we’d listen to the playlist (or CD) on the trip and then we’d keep listening to it all summer. It’s so much fun because now those songs feel like the soundtrack to times in our lives. It’s so nostalgic to listen to them.
On the subject of ice cream–have you been to Brooker’s Founding Flavors in Orem/Vineyard? It is the BEST, especially for the history buffs in your family.
Oh, that’s a really great idea!
And I haven’t been there but immediately adding it to my list!
It feels so much easier to me to travel with lots of kids than it did with one baby because the older kids can take care of the baby! I dont know how I went anywhere with just Hannah (well, I do know: I didn’t, because it was too daunting). Often I am sure that Merry has fallen asleep, but nope, shes just being handed cheerios one by one and watching the big girls next to her!
My favorite vacation tradition is letting the kids pick out one thing at the grocery store when we arrive and shop for the trip, any food item they want. Last time Hannah picked Honey Nut Cheerios, Emily got a bag of Hershey kisses, and Alice picked ice cream cones. And then I picked ice cream as my special thing because she wouldn’t believe me that the box didn’t include rainbow ice cream when there was a PICTURE of rainbow ice cream RIGHT THERE.
Ha! Can you imagine if you hadn’t bought the ice cream? (THE TEARS!)
We are vacation soulmates. Ergo, this list is brilliant, because I have verified all of these on my own family.
We always listened to audiobooks as a family, for some reason it often ended up being westerns, usually by Louis L’Amour (maybe my Dad insisted?) I remember driving across the Western U.S. listening to the westerns and thinking it looked just like the book we were listening too. Also, one time we were in two different cars but were listening to the same book by swapping out the cds when the other car finished with them. The book got so exciting that we had to make an emergency stop along the side of the road in the middle of a pass in the Rocky mountains to swap cds because those of us waiting for the next cd couldn’t wait for the next real pit stop.