I'm currently traveling around New Zealand with my aunt, uncle, and three
cousins (ages 8, 4, and 18 months), as mentioned in a previous
post. About every 1-7 days we
drive another three-ish hours to a new destination. That grows into our
big-picture plan: drive from Auckland south to Fiordland National Park,
then back up to Auckland. We are van camping most of the way: their family
in a tent on top of the van and me in my hammock setup. Best of all, we
have enough bikes to head into town once camp is set up. So far, traveling
with kids can be a real challenge, but it's also filled with joy and
surprises.
Based on my first week of tagging along, here's an incomplete list of "rules" for traveling with kids.
Journey over destination! Every day is an adventure, and embracing the uncertainty can be liberating. Yesterday it took us three hours to drive five miles from our campground. Along the way we had a grocery trip, one enormous rainstorm, a search through the van for a misplaced phone, three bathroom breaks, and a quick quest for wifi. We all had a ton of fun, once we stopped focusing on making "progress" immediately.
Always have food handy! Healthy snacks are important. Distracting low-calorie munchies are important. And of course, some secret sweets are essential for when everyone gets cranky from being in the van too long. For us, staples include milk, bananas, cucumbers, and those squeezy fruit-and-veggie-purees. I'm sure every family is different here, but that's what works for us.
Have at least one adventure every day! An adventure might be watching a kiwi feeding, biking to the beach for an hour of body surfing, or hitting the playground for hours. It serves to center the day, and gives everyone something to look forward to.
Wrap up the day with a round of "one great thing," in which each person names one thing they thought was great about the day. This is nice for expressing gratitude about what went well, plus it helps plan more great days in the future.
That's it for now, but stay tuned for other things I learn along the way!
I'm also periodically updating a map of our stops and some adventures if you'd prefer to follow us in that way.