I'm packing up my minivan and driving the wife and kids (7-yr-old girl and 1.5-yr-old boy) to southern California this weekend (will be there for two weeks). I hope to drive straight through to Cali, only stopping for meals and breaks. That's about 21 hours, plus break time..... so about 24 to 26 hours. My wife thinks we should leave Saturday at around noon. Reasons: She can spend Saturday morning packing up the car, and she thinks traffic will be lighter (she says traffic will be heavy on Friday night because of the holiday weekend. I don't like this idea because we'd arrive on Sunday afternoon very tired and won't really be able to begin our vacation until Monday. Also, we do all the daytime driving first, and once we're tired from that, we have to do the night driving. I feel that we should leave Friday evening at around 8:00 pm. That's the kids' bedtime, and I'm thinking we can put them in the car and let them fall asleep. We get the night driving done first and behind us so that the remainder of the trip will be driven in daylight. And I don't believe the traffic will be heavier Friday evening. Also, we'd arrive Saturday night (tired), get some sleep, and could start our vacation on Sunday. What do you think?
Oh my gosh. You're going to drive straight there? I took a road trip to Cali, but we spent the night in El Paso. It takes forever to get out of TX. I would leave Friday. It's going to be busy on Saturday at noon too probably.
We did cross country trips for years with the kids in a minivan. We always left in the early evening and drove straight thru. The kids will sleep at night (and not bug you) and you don't have to stop as often. Be careful and change drivers often, every 3 hrs or so. My husband and I have different sleep cycles, so he would drive from 11-2 and I would take the 2-5 shift. Buy the Harry Potter books on cd and listen to them while everyone is awake. The little one may be too young, but everyone else will enjoy.
The drive between San Antonio and El Paso is the worst leg, Esp when you press SEEK on the radio and it constantly scans all frequencies nonstop.
Leave Friday night. Driving at night is better if you are well rested. Also the kids will sleep through a good part of the trip because that is the time they are use to sleeping anyway.
Not even a psycho astronaut in her "prime" could drive that far nonstop. I guess you and the wife are sharing driving chores. to answer the question, Memorial Day weekend traffic leaving Houston will be there on Friday at 8pm. But Sunday morning/afternoon traffic entering LA will be much more of a b****. Everyone will be going to the beach. You do not want to be in beach traffic on Sunday morning/afternoon. What traffic you avoid going West out of Houston on Friday, you will encounter much more entering Sunday. You better off entering LA when traffic is low. Tell her that. I'd leave Friday.
i made that trip 2 years ago. nothing to see for 14 straight hours. made a stop in tombstone which was pretty cool.
4 tha real...Are you guys stopping anywhere near the Grand Canyon, or other touristy spots? You won't be taking too many of these trips after hauling the wife and kidos once...How much are you allocating for gas? $1 million dollars? I'd leave friday night...
I know I couldn't do it. Good luck to you, drox. I have a 2 yr old and couldn't begin to imagine 24 hours in the car with him. He'd go nuts. Of course, I don't have a dvd player in my suv.
Hola, droxford. I drove the SwoLy-Family to Califas to DisneyLand resort back in July of 2006. duwende has it right. That stretch between San Antone and El Paso is the shiznit. Nothing for hours and hours and hours on end. Try NOT to fall asleep going through that desolate place. It will be about 12 hours from Houston to El Paso... and that's going between 70 and 80 mph. I actually hit 95mph at some places where I knew there were peeps going faster than me (I figured the coppers will stop them before they stopped ME). Good luck. I'll see if I can post some interesting pictures of our trip. EDIT: Phoenix in the summer was ~114°F. Frikkin' HOT bissssh! p.s. - if you reach Phoenix during the daytime, get off the car and ask anyone: "Do you know where American West Airlines Arena is? I hear Clutch City was born there. " RUN.
++. Most women don't understand about driving long distances. When I was a kid we always left at night because of the 3 hellraisers that would create a ruckus in the car nonstop for hours. After about 45 minutes on the open road, they're asleep and you've got the rest of the night to cruise on down the road. I've driven from up near Santa Barbara to Dallas on 3 separate occasions. Once in 26 hours, only stopping for food and gas. West Texas sucks but at least you can pretty much do 95 MPH to get through there.
SA>El Paso is a beatdown of epic proportions... i've made that trip dozens of times. God speed, drox.
In the van, we will have two portable dvd players (which will also play mp3 files for me to listen to books-on-cd at night) and a Playstation 2. My daughter has her Nintendo DS. Over the past week, I've been dvd-recording Teletubbies, Spongebob, and various Playhouse Disney shows for the baby. We'll have a cooler for drinks and snacks.... hmmm.. anything else we should bring to pass the time?
