Taking 2 kids under 5 on a long ass road trip is either an act of madness or the coolest thing we’ve ever done

Every person who one day wants children envisions what kind of parent they will be. Just like every person who does not want children envisions spending their 40s and 50s rich as hell drinking mai tais not having to worry about their financial future because they are not, in fact, plunging their spare dollars into the black hole that is called “daycare”. Anyways, I guess I mean we all daydream.

Before my kids arrived, I thought to myself “TJ, you’re going to be one of those rad dads who takes their 6 month old to Iceland to experience a volcano up close and personal!” or “TJ, your children will eat sushi at 15 months old and will know the difference between sashimi and a California roll!”

Alas, when our oldest was 6 months old we did a 5 hour car trip that was such an epic disaster that we halted any future travel plans until we could convince her to not lose her damn mind anytime we buckled her into a car seat. And needless to say, she has a steady diet of mac and cheese and chicken nuggets with some occasional broccoli thrown in.

But as our kids got older, we became more adventurous as a family. We solved a few critical transportation hacks with young children like liberally using a boba wrap when they were younger than 15 months (who don’t like being carried around like they were Kuato from Total Recall). We realized that if we starved our children of iPads most of the time that when we’re in the car they’ll cling to them like they were holding a precious stone. Having snacks always at the ready was a clutch move towards keeping tantrums at a minimum. Once we sorted these simple fit suppressing tactics, we started to set out on trips of various lengths, some over the air, some in the car, some on foot to see what would work. Air travel seemed to be the easiest; the airplane + window seats + the bustle of the airport kept the kids entertained. Road trips were still a little dicey, however. We had planned a 1,200 mile road trip for November, 2020 (a warmup of sorts for this trip) and as we hit the fall of 2020, we decided we need a few “warm up” trips.

We set out for a 3 hour drive to the North Cascades near the Canadian border where we’d find a Diablo Lake — I encourage you to look it up on Google because it is in fact cool as shit.

It’s a lake we never actually made it to.

We left at 7am on a saturday morning. This would be a good “training run” (seriously, this is how I looked at it). We packed snacks, change of clothes, iPads stocked with all the shitty netflix shows our kids ingest like cotton candy, and a few backpacks. About 30 minutes after leaving, we hear Nora, our then 2 year old make some weird gargling sounds. Is she choking?!? IS SHE DYING?!?

No, she’s puking. This is when we were introduced to her getting carsick.

We pull over, change her, clean things up and laugh it off as the one blemish in our training run. We snapped a few pictures.

Another hour or so in, she pukes again. When adults barf, it’s a goddamn catastrophe. But when 2 year olds do it, it’s like nothing happened. Onward and upward! Except now we were out of clothes and praying that nothing else would happen. We continue to drive, agitated that we’ve had to pull over a few times and that we’re “running late” (this is my neurosis, not my wife’s for what it’s worth).

Exactly 52 minutes after puke incident #1 we had puke incident #2

At this point we’re somewhere between “middle of goddamn nowhere” and “are we in Canada”? The North Cascades are breathtakingly beautiful but they are dense, the cell reception is non-existent, and roads mysteriously close for no reason at all (ok ok, they close b/c trees fall on them. fine, whatever). As we were starting to bicker about whether trip was worth it, we came across, you guessed it! a closed road!

Well shit

We had a pukey kid

Another kid getting crabby in the other seat

And two parents wondering why they weren’t just sitting at home drinking coffee watching ESPN.

We turned around and ventured down another road for about 15 minutes until it turned into a dirt road. I’ve driven down many a dirt road in my life. They’re fun and usually lead to some kind of adventure. But today was not the day for exploration. We had a 1/4 tank of gas and decided to bail out on the day trip. We hung our heads low. The car went quiet. And we started to head back to our home outside of Seattle.

But before we got to the highway, we pulled over for gas and regrouped. We found a short scenic hike near where we were that lead to a nice playground. Maybe we could salvage this trip after all. We headed over and found this perfect hike along a smoky emerald color river. We got out of the car and roamed around for a few hours. The kids got to jump off of a few tree stumps. Throw rocks in the river. My wife even taught our oldest the sacred act of “popping a squat” (a much needed skill if you’re going on massive roadtrips). We ended up at the park where the kids rode their scooters as we gawked at the mountains in the background.

I guess our takeaway from this day trip was this: traveling with kids is hard. You never know when they’re going to puke (and puke again), you never know when roads are gonna close. But if you stick with it, there’s always a playground, a short hike, or both around the corner.

Naturally the first thing we did when we got home.