Road Trip: Connecticut to Texas

"You're driving to Texas alone?"

More than one friend asked me this question when I told them my plans. It's usually followed up by, "Doesn't that concern you?"

This summer was the second time my family and I have driven from Texas to Connecticut. Our plan was to spend several weeks visiting family and friends who were spread out across the state. My husband could not take the entire time off from work, so I drove there by myself, and then he flew out to join me for the second week and return drive home.

I was actually less stressed on the half of the trip that I spent driving alone. If we were both in the car, there was a 50-percent higher chance that one of us was going to be tired or irritable. One thing I missed, though, was that he likes to do all the driving, which means I get to do all the reading and napping.

You may ask, why drive when you can fly?

Well we had the time, and we looked forward to the flexibility that having our own vehicle would give us, in addition to the bonus of showing our kids the highways and byways of the southeast United States.

Want to take your own extended road trip? Here are some guidelines that helped us:

Plan (loosely)

We preferred to arm ourselves with information about hotels in a couple of the cities along the route, instead of making a reservation too far in advance. That way we could be flexible about driving another hour or turning in early.

Practice Restraint

We are a family who appreciates fast food both for the fast and the food. But day after day of road food is unhealthy and actually gets tiresome. We usually opted for a fast food lunch, and a real sit-down dinner.

My kids came armed with two iPod Touches and a Nintendo DS, but I declared the first day on each side of our trip to be "gadget free." Each day also had gadget-free hours, which encouraged the kids to read and observe the world around them.

Promote Learning

We discussed state capitols as we drove, and if we passed through the city center, we tried to find the commonly domed capitol building. We brought books to read – of course – and I declared Amanda, 11, our official trip scribe. 

She had to record the money that we spent each day, our mileage, and time on the road. Each morning, I made her add up our expenses and figure out total miles – the old fashioned way.

She could use her calculator to check it and then to figure our average miles per hour, both with and without stops (our best time – 70 miles per hour on a day when we drove through a whole lot of nowhere).

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We tried to make the journey itself fun – not just a means to an end. 

We had many opportunities to exercise our family tradition of counting down to the state line and giving a whoop and shout when we crossed over. 

The most impressive and heartfelt was the, "Wooo!  Connecticut!!" which signaled the final hour or so of our long journey.

One night we treated ourselves to a fun hibachi steakhouse dinner. It was the first time Kyle, 6, had eaten at a place like that, and the only one Amanda remembers.  It's a highlight for both of them.

We stopped early enough to enjoy a hotel pool a couple of times. Ice cream breaks in the afternoon were a given.

Prepare for the Worst

There's always going to be something.

Last year, a kid was throwing up on one day of the trip (Apparently this is a type of baptism for road trippers.  It will happen at some point to some child along the way if you choose this mode of travel.)

This year it was more costly than caustic.

As we pulled into the resort where we were going to stay for three days with friends, my husband noticed a fan that continued to blow once the engine was turned off.  He pulled out the fuse so that it wouldn't run down the battery, and we called the Chevrolet dealer that we had seen on the way into town.

It could have been worse. It could have happened on the way home when we only had one night, but as it was, other than an unexpected expense, the timing couldn't have been more perfect. The repair was made (to the antilock brake system) before we left.

I couldn't be mad at "Old Faithful," my 2003 Chevy Suburban that has 129,000 miles on her. Including that costly repair, we haven't spent more than $2,000 on maintenance on her over her lifetime.

The numbers:

Total miles driven: 3,400
Total number of states traversed: 12
Total cost: $1,280 (car repair excluded)
Total days on the road: 16

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