We have been caring for my grandma (in her 90’s with Alzheimer’s) for the past 3 years. It’s been wonderful having all that time with her, but hard in a lot of ways. She has about a 1 minute short term memory and could no longer entertain herself or make even simple decisions. She was beginning to get up in the middle of the night, confused and anxious (which meant little sleep for me), as well as need more personal care. So I was tired and distracted all the time. The kids were working almost fully independently on their own home school work and spending a lot of time doing their own thing, not together as a family as we had previously. We did have family that would come help and give us breaks once in a while, but it was still difficult not having the freedom to up and go whenever and wherever needed, especially while raising and homeschooling kids.
Our entire lives revolved around Grandma’s needs. Our relationships at home had become a bit strained and everyone leading separate lives. So now that my mom has retired and Grandma went to live with her, oh, freedom! We’re definitely ready to go have some adventure and reconnect as a family.
We live in California and have been invited to be part of a wedding (my step mom is getting re-married) in Louisiana. I assumed we’d fly there, but then I had a crazy idea. Having been studying geography all year in our homeschooling, what better way is there to learn U.S. geography as well as U.S. history, than by traveling to it? I brought my mad idea up to my husband and we made a somewhat irresponsible, spontaneous decision that we would take a road trip all the way there.
For this long of a trip, we want more room than sitting in the truck for hours and hours and we’ll need to make sure our Celiac son can always have safe gluten free food. We went out that very weekend and purchased a used motorhome (not going anywhere or doing any extras for 3 years is good for savings). Now we have a mobile hotel with a full kitchen!
Woops, the couch bed I intended for my son is not going to work. I forgot he is man sized now. Sleeping arrangements will need to be adjusted.
So, we’re getting ready to travel across the U.S.!
The more this plan sinks in, the crazier it sounds.
Where to even begin with this type of planning?
We started by looking at the map together of all the states we’ll be going through and making a list of all the places each of us wants to see. We have some friends in Alabama, which is not far from Louisiana, we’d love to go visit them. Not too far north east of them is the Great Smokey Mountains, which I’ve always wanted to visit. And then just a couple more hours north is the Creation Museum and life size Ark. What if we could go see that?! We ended up making a list of everything we want to see in the entire U.S.
My husband and I conferred again- Our kids aren’t getting any younger, they’re teens already! When will we ever have the chance to travel all together again? And while we’re homeschooling, there are so many places for learning. I always wanted to do an American History road trip. This may be our only chance. If we’re thinking of going north, how could we not go up the east coast for all the wonderful historical sites in North Carolina, Virginia and even as far as D.C.? My daughter had just spent her 7th grade year learning about the constitution and she is asking to go see it. My son is now begging to go to New York. Is this even a possibility?
This little idea of mine is getting completely out of hand.
We came up with a maximum length of time we could realistically be gone, 2 full months, including the week we’d be in Louisiana for the wedding. As well as a maximum budget for this madness. I was able to open a new credit card that gave us zero interest for a year and we’ll use that for the entire trip. The max on that card would be our budget (which we’d pay off once home), but that way, we couldn’t over spend.
We then handed the reigns over to the children.
They will plan the route, choose where we’ll stay, what to see, looking at mileage and driving time between stops to make sure it’s reasonable, budget for the museums and attractions, include something for everyone – a variety of interests to everyone’s liking – museums, historical sites, national or state parks, etc. They’ll need to include when we’ll make longer stops to do laundry, dump the RV, re-supply, rest, etc.
The catch? No cell phones or electronics the entire time.
Are they in agreement? Oh, heck yes!
Let the adventures begin!
Want to come along with us? I’ll be updating all along the way.
