Sara's Blog: The Road to Maine

So, I figured I'd post about one leg of the trip at a time, but in case you are anxious to see all the pictures at once, you can skip the grueling detail and see them here.

Ok, I'll start with the drive out. We decided that our best bet for such a long journey would be to leave at the boys' bedtime and haul through as many miles as we could while they were sleeping. Since we had four drivers (our moms came along), we didn't think each shift would be too bad, and then during the day we would just try to entertain and stop as needed. I loaded up on a bunch of "surprises" for the boys, a bag for each of them filled with toys and miscellaneous activities to get us through the trip.

Rewind to Thursday night before we left......Caleb wakes up with a fever, go figure. He had his MMR shot the week before, and I remembered the doctor saying something about him maybe getting a fever a week later. So on Friday I called the dr. office and they felt that's probably what it was - still OK to leave and it should be gone in 24 hours. So, we went. However, the fever went with us as well, for about 48 hours. He was pretty fussy and cranky for parts of the trip, sleeping off and on. Gabe didn't sleep great either, so we had to sort of improvise during the night time hours and I'll just leave it at that, lest I confess breaking any laws.

Also on Thursday, our van decided not to start. We had gone back and forth about renting a vehicle, but decided to take ours since it's a Grand Caravan (more space in the back) and had the two captains chairs in the middle - more comfy than the bench seat in the rental. Another "go figure" moment, but we were able to drop it off at the mechanic's Thursday night and by 9 a.m. Friday, he had already installed a new starter and we were ready to go! And still for less that we would have paid for the rental. The van did great both ways, so we were VERY grateful for that.

We left Chicago around 7:30 central time and made it to Buffalo, NY (about half way) by about 6:30 a.m. or so. Since we were right there, we decided to make a stop at Niagara Falls. It was a little bit off the beaten path, but worth it and it was good to stretch our legs a little bit. We made several other lengthy stops throughout the day to eat, gas up, freshen up, wash bottles, change diapers, etc. I'd say all the stops must have added up to maybe 5 hours or so. Long story short, the total trip out was around 26 hours. Let's just say it was good to make it to our final destination and get out of that van for a while! All things considered, though, it went very well. The trip back was even better. The boys slept for about 10 hours straight when we left, and we got home in about 4 less hours! They both did great during the day as well.

We invested in a few pieces of travel gear before we left. One was a double umbrella stroller from Craigslist for $30 (pictured below). Defnitely more compact that the huge double we had, and we really wanted to have something along that would seat both boys, if needed. We also borrowed my sister's portable DVD player and purchased this mounting system, which worked great. It attached to the metal bars on the headrest and suspends the player between the two seat. As it turned out, our front seats didn't have that kind of head rest, but the middle ones did, so the boys sat in the "way back," which worked out well for a number of reasons. We also packed almost all of our movies and rented some new ones before we left. LIFESAVER. I also purchased this little travel tray, which came in handy for snacks and activities (mostly for Gabe).

Here are a few pictures from the trip out, and there are albums for The Drive and Niagara Falls.

Here are the boys all ready to go as we loaded up to leave Chicago Friday night: