RV road trip with kids......

We're hoping to do an rv trip in a few years too. Our plan is to leave NJ go to Walnut Grove, MN (Little House on the Prairie) then Mt. Rushmore then final stop at Grand Canyon. DIdn't check the mileage. We'll have only 2 to 3 weeks to do it all so we won't be sightseeing too much along the way. Just want to get to those stops I mentioned and tour the areas. Good luck planning, I hope your dream comes true:)

Hmm, not sure how far the Grand Canyon is from the Black Hills, but it sounds like you're going to be doing a lot of hard driving to pull that off. I think it took us about 8-10 hrs to get from Yellowstone to the Black Hills, through the Big Horn mountain range. :scared1: The Big Horn mountains are nothing to trifle with, bu they were beautiful.

I agree with the other poster. Maybe you want to keep your trip to a Little HOuse theme. My mother did the Laura Ingalls Wilder trip several years ago and she loved it.
 
Definitely consider flying somewhere and renting an RV once you get there, if you can afford it. Black Hills would be great, you could easily spend a week-10 days doing this and Wyoming. Or the SW, as someone else suggested.

Terri
 
We actually did a cross-country trip with our kids 3 years ago. 6000 miles in 60 days. Some days we drove a lot, some days we didn't even move. THe longest we ever drove was 450 miles in one day and it was exhausting. We had to stop for 3 days to recover. Coming back from Yellowstone to Atlanta took 5 days of hard driving--we HAD to be home by a certain date. By the time we got home we were totally spent. (of course, after a few days rest we were raring to go again :goodvibes)

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Can you tell more or where you went and what you did?? My daughter and I are planning a cross country trip in just over 2 years-- its my retirement present to us both. We are not doing the RV thing we are just going in the van and will stop at hotels. We are going to take off as soon as school is out that year and want to start out by driving from here to Washington (state, not DC)...down the west coast and across to New Orleans and then back up to NY. I know my daughter wants to stop at Mount Rushmore and Yellowstone. We only have to be home for the start of the next school year so it can be from 4 weeks - 10 weeks. The two of us have driven non stop from Disney to Long Island in the past.
 
Can you tell more or where you went and what you did?? My daughter and I are planning a cross country trip in just over 2 years-- its my retirement present to us both. We are not doing the RV thing we are just going in the van and will stop at hotels. We are going to take off as soon as school is out that year and want to start out by driving from here to Washington (state, not DC)...down the west coast and across to New Orleans and then back up to NY. I know my daughter wants to stop at Mount Rushmore and Yellowstone. We only have to be home for the start of the next school year so it can be from 4 weeks - 10 weeks. The two of us have driven non stop from Disney to Long Island in the past.

Sure~ Originally we decided to go out to Yellowstone for 5 days and were going to stay in one of their hotels. Then we bought a travel trailer and pretty soon we started thinking about taking a couple weeks, maybe see some stuff. Then it morphed into a "what if we just kept going" kinda trip.

We started our trip by hitting the Florida & Alabama Gulf Coast, to see the grandmas. Then over to New Orleans for a couple days. Then, off to San Antonio--very fun. The longest leg of our trip was SA to Carlsbad Caverns. It's about 450 miles, much of it through hill country and desert. Beautiful, but 10 hours of it, not so much. We were exhausted and had to stay 3 days to recover. Roswell, NM, is an hour or so north of Carlsbad so we HAd to go there! From there, over to Grand Canyon. DH got altitude sickness there(he has severe lung disease) and had to make a mad dash to Las Vegas for good medical care. Spent 5 days in Vegas letting him recover. Las Vegas is about a day's drive from Anaheim, CA, and we alllll know what's there. :banana: Disneyland! AFter that,we headed north to Seattle--took us 4 days. I had no idea California was so big. And had mountains. Where was my head?:sad2:

We took about 10 days in Seattle, visiting my sister. It was good to get out of the travel trailer and into a real bed. Then, we headed over to Yellowstone for 10 days. At that point, we needed to be home in time to start school so we made a mad dash for Atlanta. By way of Devils Tower(WY--Close Encounters of the Third Kind) and Mount Rushmore. 6 days later we were back in Atlanta.

This was a dream trip. When I was in 1st grade a man came to my school with a film strip he & his wife made of their trip west and was completely taken with it. So, in 2007 all the stars aligned--we had the time, the money, and the health. Our kids were 12 & 14 (other DS declined to go when he found out there was no cell coverage in Yellowstone.) One important part of the trip was family meetings. Every time we stopped we asked each other, "do we keep going or go home?" Every time it was unanimous--keep going until we run out of money or get sick of each other. The other thing we did was decide what we HAD to see and what would be NICE to see. Each person got to have input and each person got at least ONE of their choices. For me it was Carlsbad Caverns. For DD it was Disneyland. For DH it was the Grand Canyon. We ended up hitting 12 national parks and monuments.

We really learned a lot about each other living in a 19ft trailer for 2 months. And if we never get to do it again, we did it once. The memories sustain us in the rough times. It cost a lot of money, but it was worth every dime. :thumbsup2 Best of luck to you on your future trip
 


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