Episode 003: Tips for Family Road Trips

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What is more classic than the great American family road trip? Today, Shannon Entin from 100 Routes Across America dishes about her favorite family road trips, including one that was coast-to-coast. We also chat about our best road trips tips, how to pack for a road trip, our favorite road trip gear and best road trip apps!

ON THE PODCAST

:50 Tamara gets a new car

2:55 Kim’s road trip from Seattle to Disneyland

3:50 Tamara’s road trip from San Francisco to Cambria, CA

9:10 Seattle to Missouri

9:37 Talking road trip with Shannon Entin

10:17 Tamara & Shannon’s adventures flyboarding

11:15 Shannon’s ski season – Utah and Steamboat Springs, CO

12:30 Denver to Moab & Arches National Park to Ogden, UT

13:15 National Parks in the winter

14:30 Shannon’s favorite road trip

17:45 How to plan a road trip

19:13 How much drive time per day

20:15 24 hours in a car with kids

22:18 Road trip horror stories?

24:38 Road trip packing tips

25:53 Planning tips

26:00 Roadtrippers.com

27:16 AroundMe app

28:00 Car maintenance tips

31:00 Car cooler

32:15 Driving Route 20 / Lincoln Highway

33:15 Shannon’s favorite travel gear

33:40 LUG travel bag

34:40 App of the week — iExit

35:25 Next week — talking Australia with Erin from Travels with Bender

About Shannon Entin from 100 Routes Across America

Shannon Entin is a New Jersey-based travel writer closing in on 50, but adventuring like she’s 20. She’s a homeschooling mom who loves skiing, running, hiking, and road trips, and she shares her family’s travels and adventures at 100RoutesAcrossAmerica.com. You can also find Shannon on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest.

Shannon and her family, including two kids, have taken numerous cross-country trips. Each winter, she takes a road trip out west to spend a few weeks skiing. She tends to plan everything out in advance, including stops and accommodations along the way.

Shannon’s Favorite Road Trip

Shannon’s favorite road trip was from her home in New Jersey to Lake Tahoe and then out to San Francisco. Along the way they stopped at many quirky roadside attractions, like Cadillac Ranch in Texas, where cars are buried in the sand and you can spray paint them. They also toured pueblos in Mexico and stopped at the Grand Canyon and Hoover Dam. That trip took about twelve days on the way out and eleven days on the way home. They took a northern route on the way home, stopping at Yellowstone and Mt. Rushmore.

Shannon’s Road Trip Tips

Plan ahead — Shannon maps out where they are going to go, where they will stay and what they will see along the way in advance.
Count on only doing half of what you have planned — you need to be flexible when on a road trip so as much as you have planned, recognize that you are going to have to skip some things along the way.
Share the driving if you can and push through for longer days when you can to leave more time for other stops.
Pack smart — Shannon recommends packing a small bag with just what everyone needs for the night when traveling a long distance with an extended stay at the end. However, if making multiple stops along the way, Tamara and Shannon both find you end up needing to bring everything in each night.
Do laundry on the road so that you can travel light. Think about what you need and cut it in half.
Use Roadtrippers.com to plug in your destinations and it will show you attractions and points of interest along the way.
Pack a map! Sometimes the GPS doesn’t work or you are out of cell coverage.
Find local places to eat using the Roadfood book or TV Food Maps app.
Keep an emergency kit with extra water, jumper cables, kitty litter, windshield wiper fluid and other necessities.
Bring a cooler — Tamara recommends bringing a small cooler for drinks, snacks and to keep food cool when visiting attractions. Kim and Shannon both recommend a plug-in travel cooler like the Wagan cooler.

Shannon’s Dream Road Trip

Shannon would like to drive Route 20, which is also known as the Lincoln Highway, which covers the length of the country and passes through many small towns along the way. She would also like to road trip through the Pacific Northwest someday.

Favorite Travel Gear

Shannon loves her LUG travel bag because it has a lot of pockets and fits everything that she needs to squeeze in for her road trips.

App of the Week

Shannon likes using the app AroundMe to find stores, gas, and restaurants wherever they are. Tamara recommends iExit, which shows what services and restaurants are available at rest areas and off exits on major U.S. Interstates.