Road Trip

The wedding date has been set - October 18th. We are heading to Phoenix for the weekend. At the moment, we are thinking a road trip would be fun.

The airfare isn't that bad - but there's 4 of us. That right there makes a 'reasonable' fare close to $1,000. And it's really not the money - 'cuz if we wanted to do that, we certainly could. But it will take us 3 hours of 'time' to get to the airport - an hour on the road (if we're lucky - could be closer to 2 depending on the time of day), 2 hours ahead of our flight time. Then a two hour flight. That's already 5 hours and we could be 1/2 way there by then - or pretty close. The kids are older and will just listen to their iPods, play a video game, read, look at scenery or sleep. There's 3 drivers in the family now (though I doubt I'd be able to handle the lack of control with B. at the wheel - he's a great driver. I'm just too much of a control freak) so there's plenty of people to 'share' the driving. And a road trip sounds kind of fun. It's an excuse to drink slushies from 7-11. An excuse to map out every Starbucks on our route for potty breaks and refreshing iced tea. With J's hybrid car, we'll only need about 4 tanks of gas for the entire round-trip - even at $3.80/gallon (which is what I paid yesterday), we're only up to $300. Add in $100 (tops) for food along the way, drinks, etc. And we're still spending less than 1/2 what we'd pay to fly.

Flying was a pain. We wasted so much time waiting in lines. Checking bags. Picking up bags. Undoing everything going through security. Redoing everything after security. Tracy to Phoenix is probably around 11 hours. It's a long drive, but do-able.

We are planning to make it a 4 day weekend - taking the kids out of school Friday and Monday. We shouldn't do that but there's really no other way - even if we flew, it would be a whirlwind trip and we'd really like to have two full days there. So even flying, we'd still need Friday and Monday off.

When the kids were little, we took a couple road trips - drove once to Prescott, AZ for a week's vacation. I packed travel bags for them that I didn't let them see until we left for the trip. Little toys, paper, crayons, etc. Small 'easy' video travel games. We just recently rediscovered those bags up in H's closet and gave a lot of the contents to their cousins, who are younger and appreciate the distractions. It'll be kind of nice to have the boys old enough to entertain themselves. We'll still have the 'are we there yet?' or 'how much longer?' to deal with, but they can look at a map now and figure out where we are and about how much further we have to go.

I'm so looking forward to the wedding - and to the drive itself. It's a pretty time of year to be driving through California and Arizona. It'll be fun. I can't wait!