Georgia on My Mind
I don’t know where these ideas come from: they just come!
In the summer of 2017, I decided I wanted to take a road trip with our four oldest grandchildren. They were 9, 8, almost 6, and almost 5. Fun for us, and fun for the kids because this would be the first “cousins’ trip” of any real length. This wasn’t just any road trip, because I had decided I wanted to visit my husband’s two sisters who live south of Atlanta, Georgia. Traveling from our home in West Michigan through Pittsburgh to pick up three of the four and continuing on to Georgia would involve covering 2,750 miles and spending 40 hours in the car.
Yes, you read that correctly. Over the course of eight days, we would be spending 40 hours in the car with four kids under the age of 10.
Obviously, we survived – because here I am writing this post! I still chuckle whenever I remember my husband’s comment to me just before we left: “Honey, I want this trip to go well, but not so well that you ever want to do it again!”
The first hurdle was convincing my husband we needed to return to our mini-van days (he had been so happy years earlier when we had retired our last mini-van). Now I was telling him we needed to return to those days, not just for this trip but for lots of future shuffling around of grandkids. With great reluctance, he blessed me swapping our smaller car for a mini-van, complete with DVD player, and I began to happily plan the heck out of this trip. I knew I would have to exercise A GREAT DEAL of creativity to keep them all entertained in the car for that length of time.
I started by preparing a color-coded basket full of games, books, and art supplies for each child. I am most proud, however, of the flash of inspiration that led to my “secret weapon”: a color-coded plastic case with 20 matching popsicle sticks. I told the kids they could ask, “Are we almost there yet?” and “How much longer?” whenever they wanted – but it would cost them a popsicle stick each time. Fighting with others in the car, whining, tattling, and disobeying would also cost a popsicle stick. The deal was, I had a little present for each of them at the end of the trip (I held up each wrapped package for visual motivation) but they would have to have at least one stick left to redeem it. I know that smacks of bribery, but I say all’s fair in love and road trips with young children!
Success: all of them had at least one popsicle stick left and redeemed their gift. (I confess, the youngest one had only one stick left, and that was by grace, but still, she was not quite five years old and it was a long trip!)
Along the way, we stopped for boating on Lake Norman…
…and visited the awesome Discovery Place Science Museum in Charlotte, North Carolina…
We read stories, sang songs, and told jokes. The scenery on the way down and back was simply gorgeous!
While in the Atlanta area, we made a side trip to Alabama to pan for gold (a complete bust)…
…and paid a visit to Roosevelt’s Little White House in Warm Springs, Georgia. (The tour books told us to skip it with kids our grandkids’ ages but we went anyway and they loved it – the nerdy little history buffs!)
In Georgia, we stayed with my husband’s oldest sister who lives in Peachtree City, and most of the rest of our time was spent swimming and relaxing around her pool.
There were a few incidents, as there always are. One granddaughter hit her head on the diving board and gave us a real scare. Another grandchild had a series of “digestive” issues. Oh, yeah – and my husband got a speeding ticket in West Virginia. The grandkids thought that was pretty interesting! Other than that, everything went smoothly.
So would we do it again? Well, my husband got his wish: the trip did go well but no, we probably won’t ever do it again. I would do a grandchild road trip again (and have). I would even do one with up to four grandchildren again. I just wouldn’t do one quite so long. Even the kids, who had a great time, agreed that 40 hours in the car was maybe a bit too much!
It wasn’t until two years later that I discovered that what we had done is called “skip-gen” travel: traveling with grandkids without the parents along. Who knew? I have been doing it for years with our nine grandchildren – by car, by plane, by train; I just never knew it was a “thing.”
Not only that, but that it’s a hot new trend in travel, one that is increasing in popularity year by year. And no wonder: whether individually or in “bunches,” there is simply no better way to bond and make precious memories with your grandchildren than through skip-gen travel!
Summer’s comin’ and I’m getting that itch again…