Road trips

O.k. so I know there have been posts about this before but I can't be arsed going through all the old posts to find them lol.

At the end of the year we are doing 2 massive roadtrips with Hazel & Esme who will be just under 2 years old. The first we are spending 2 weeks over Xmas & New Year missioning in a campervan from CHCH to Wellington then New Plymouth back to CHCH. Then In Feb we are driving our car down to wanaka and then back to CHCH for a long weekend.

Obviously these are not short drives and to be honest I have no idea what to expect from the girls on how they will handle it. On the Xmas trip they will be around 19 months and the Feb trip they will be around 21 months. I would love to hear anyone else's experiences good or bad regarding toddlers on roadtrips and what you did to make it easier.

We went from Palmy to taupo, then taupo to waihi, we found the best time was to go about 11am, stop for lunch, then he slept for a while during his nap time and then drove for another hour so we had 4hrs driving roughly at a time and not a peep outta him, it was great

We have definitely picked the worst times for first adventure. We have our ferry tickets to Wellington booked for 2pm (the girls normally sleep between 1pm-3pm) So it will be an interesting day We will have to leave really early on that first day. I can already feel it's going to be a nightmare

Hmm, we are about to do a wee bit of a drive with the girls. My plan is to give them plenty of food and drink, plenty of stops, books and magnadoodles I am thinking of making up little bags of new and exciting things from the $2 shop.

I'll let you know how it goes...

We have a weekend to Dunedin at the end of November, I am in denial about it at the moment

I like that tray, think we might get one of those then Spencer can play with his cars and trains on top of it.

If I wasn't away over Xmas (23rd - 2nd) then I would happily give you our baby monitors for your trip as they're away in some box somewhere.

Have you got a laptop / portable DVD player?

Those trays are awesome! Weegee , I hope you remember where you saw them cheaper

Christy, I'll be interested in how your bags work out.

We've done Welly - Taupo and our motto was food, food and more food. I sat in the back with them to save me twisting around continuously.
Oh and we stopped at McDs so we could have sundaes and they could play in the play area.

Snap tishy on the DVD player

You could probably hire baby monitors Lisa? I haven't looked but maybe baby on the move or tots on tour (when you're in wanaka) would have them?

Oh yeah I'd forgotten about activity bags, that's a good idea Christy! I was thinking of putting some together, I saw this linked to on another forum.

I will put my thinking cap on about where I saw the trays

I'm glad someone asked this question. We are considering doing a trip to Chch in hoildays but last time we took our wee girl away(she was 5months old and screamed all the way from Dn to Cromwell then back again) so we are dreadin doing a trip at all. But since we havent been on holiday for 2 years and we have another one on the way we should do something this xmas.
I'll have to try some of these ideas I think and see how we go. If it turns to custard, I'm guessing we wont ever go away again

we drove up to aucks last week (4 hours away) and we only stopped once for breaky. They slept, played and annoyed each other! lol

We made sure we had alot of toys, food and their drink bottles.

And on the drive home we wipped out the portable dvd player and put ben 10 on for them and they were happy as larry.

Usually Astin is very antsy in the car (bcos he never keeps still!) and he was fine.

youl be fine! have fun!!