It’s difficult to know how to write a blog post about your family summer holiday, the day you get back from it, without seeming like a complete arse.
The dangers are that you’ll look like you’re gloating to your colleagues, that you’re being wholly self-indulgent or that you’re just banging on about what you did like a tedious bloke at a slideshow evening in Purley.
I’ll attempt to avoid all such banana skins.
I’m back today from a three-week road trip holiday in the US with my family. So this is one for the parents, given I’ve had lots of questions from clients, contacts, journalists (yes, I still talk to lots of them, unlike some agency MDs), friends and others. Most have fallen into one of these categories:
- Why on earth did you decide to do that?
- How did you keep them entertained in the car for that long?
- Did you get even a minute to relax?
- Are you an idiot?
So what information can I usefully provide to other parents here? Well I suppose the best way to do this is to cite the things I learned from it. Mostly what surprised me, what was just as I expected and how we tried to overcome some of the inevitable difficulties. First though, here’s a bit of background.
I have three kids. The eldest, my daughter, is six-and-a-half. The boys are (nearly) four and two. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I also have a wife, who shall forever remain two months older than me, and she came on the trip too. We decided a few months ago to do a summer holiday that the kids would remember, that is something we’d always wanted to do, and that would be a three-week megatrip. And so the plot for the US coast-to-coast drive, with substantial doses of Americana and natural wonders at each end, was hatched. Best laid intentions and all that.
For those who’re interested and like this sort of detail, here’s the day-by day itinerary:
- Fly to Miami from London, drive to Orlando, stay at the Nickelodeon hotel where dawn breakfast is served colourfully by a 12ft Spongebob Squarepants and a motley crew of accomplices
- Magic Kingdom at Disney World
- As above
- Kennedy Space Center (corr..), then Flagler Beach then Jacksonville
- Memphis (after 750 miles)
- A log cabin , The Ozarks in Arkansas
- As above
- Oklahoma City (nostalgia value, I lived there before I started school)
- Holbrook, Arizona (the Wigwam Motel on old Route 66, inspiration for Disney’s film Cars)
- Sedona, Arizona
- Los Angeles, to change the car for a monster campervan
- Sequoia National Park
- As above
- Sacramento river delta
- San Francisco
- Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park near Santa Cruz
- Big Sur
- As above
- Santa Barbara
- Leo Carillo State Park, Malibu (think back to those episodes of CHiPS)
- Night flight LA to Miami
- Another night flight Miami to London
What did I learn? Lots and lots. But here are 30, yes 30, points that stick out:
1. Country and Western radio stations provide enough in-car amusement to entertain two adults for 4,521 miles. And you thought ABBA had exhausted the rhyming couplet.
2. Just because you’ve paid off a chunk of America’s national debt to get into Disney World doesn’t mean toddlers won’t fall asleep for the best bits.
3. With sufficient forewarning, enterprising toddlers can look remarkably tall when fronted by minimum height signs at the entrance to rollercoaster queues.
4. One kids meal in America will feed three kids. Scientific fact.
5. Never underestimate the fascination that is engendered by the fact that every Hampton Inn room has the same little plastic coffee-making machines
6. Similarly, lobby ice machines are primarly for the amusement of sub-four-feet humanity.
7. In Memphis, kids are welcome in pubs. Even at 10pm, after a 15-hour drive, with them heckling the band.
8. A good question to ask when booking a log cabin is ‘is this a dry county’? It avoids the need for two hours of driving across a county line, in a desperate bid to find a liquor store before closing time, in such a way that doesn’t make you look like a raging alcoholic.
9. While you can tell kids that snakes can be dangerous and what to do if they see one, it’s difficult to plan for a three-year-old being frozen to the spot and laughing at it when he actually comes across one.
10. If you plan to rely on an in-car DVD player to keep the kids quiet while you drive coast-to-coast, do check that it’s not about to conk out. Euro DVDs won’t work on US players, and I Spy has its ‘D is for desert’ limitations.
11. If you look a day under 90 you will be asked for ID in bars in Oklahoma, even if you have obviously produced three children, and that makes going back to the hotel room for it a bit tough on your parched family.
12. The ‘look guys, wow, this is cowboy country’ line wears thin at about 7am, but Dennys will remain attractive forever.
13. In America, all trucks were made to scare you and adequate road surfacing is not necessarily a prerequisite.
14. Just because a historic hotel inspired a Disney film with which your toddler is obsessed, it does not mean that he will understand that when you arrive and he has been in the car through two time zones that day.
15. Wearing just your pants and a faux cowboy hat in public is not yet on-trend, but it may catch on.
16. Paying a lot of money for a Cessna trip over the Grand Canyon is money well spent, but your two-year-old will fall asleep just as the plane nears the majestic view of the south rim.
17. Before the same trip, you should remember to go the the loo.
18. If there is somewhere fitting to mark your completion of a mammoth coast-to-coast road trip, it is not necessarily the Travelodge at LAX.
19. Driving a 30ft motorhome is like driving a crap truck with screaming kids in it, with worse steering and far less power.
20. Adults are far more scared of bears than kids are.
21. Mountain hikes with grumpy kids can be transformed from sorrow to joy with the introduction of stout walking sticks and the ruse that ‘you are the hike leader who will take us to the giant trees’.
22. If your wife offers to help you back a 30ft motorhome into a campsite pitch, do agree suitable signals and verbal instructions with her in advance.
23. A two-hour wait for a cable car to take you about a mile IS worth it if you’re six.
24. Some campsites have rules banning the possession of open containers of alcoholic beverages. Parents, remember The Pirate Code.
25. The Pacific Ocean has waves bigger than your toddler, whichever way you look at it.
26. The much-photographed bridges of Highway 1 are indeed scenic, but do not try to fit a 30ft motorhome and an oncoming pick-up across them simultaneously if you value wing mirrors.
27. A very small brook can entertain three children for four hours if you tell them that these are The Raging Rapids of Big Sur.
28. Toasting the perfect marshmallow has everything to do with art and nothing to do with science.
29. Despite your extensive planning, exhausting driving and happy belief that they’ll treasure the memories forever, that $5 miniature puppy in a plastic cage bought from the campshop may end up being the highlight.
30. Back-to-back night flights without sleep with three hyper kids is the perfect way to prepare for a Monday back in the office.
