Navigating Family Travel With Kids and Pets: Stress-Saving Tips

by Ted Fernandez

Traveling with the whole family—kids and pets included—can be a challenging and stressful experience if not properly planned. But with the right preparations, your trip can be a wonderful and memorable adventure that will bring your family closer together. There are many factors to consider when traveling with kids and pets, from packing smart and limiting your travel time to reducing costs and finding family-friendly accommodations. Here are some tips to help you plan a fun family trip!

Take a Road Trip

When you’re traveling with kids and pets, taking a road trip is much more manageable than flying. You’ll have more control over your schedule on the road, with complete freedom to stop and stretch when everyone is getting restless. Road-tripping can also be more cost-effective than flying, especially when you have a large family. For pets and kids, being in a car can also be less stressful than flying. If you’re interested in a family road trip, consider renting a vintage camper bus from Vintage Surfari Wagons to make your adventure even more memorable!

 Find Ways to Reduce Stress

To truly enjoy your vacation, take steps to relieve stress before you leave. Try to leave your work behind and avoid responding to work-related messages while you’re away. If travel-related decisions are creating stress in your life, take a deep breath and focus on your priorities. Gather all of the information you need to make an informed decision, but remember to listen to your gut as well. And once you decide where to go, which hotel to book, and what tourist attractions to visit, try to avoid second-guessing your decision. Just look forward to your trip!

Choose Kid- and Pet-Friendly Destinations

 If you’re traveling with a pet, you’ll need to be careful about where you stay and what you do. Camping is always a fun pet-friendly activity. And your kids will love it too! If you’re embarking on a road trip and you’d rather stay in hotels, GoPetFriendly.com suggests private accommodations like Airbnb for more flexibility. Vacation rentals can also be more affordable, especially if you would like a space with separate rooms for you and your kids.

Bring Snacks and Activities

When traveling with pets and kids, everything will go more smoothly if you bring plenty of activities and snacks. Pack some interactive dog toys to keep your pup busy and mentally stimulated. Be sure to also bring training treats so you can reward good behavior on the road.

Activities and snacks can help your kids stay happy during long car rides and rainy days stuck in hotel rooms. Bon Voyage With Kids suggests magnetic road trip games, mad libs, audiobooks, Wikki Stix, word games, and sketchbooks. You can even get special crayons that your kids can use to draw pictures on the car windows!

Don’t Overschedule

Although you might want to pack a lot into your family trip, try not to overschedule your vacation. Don’t try to do everything. Instead, have everyone in your family list a few things they really want to do or see, and prioritize these activities. This will help you avoid treating your vacation like a big checklist so you can actually enjoy yourself!

 Make Time for Relaxation

Limiting your vacation schedule will also allow more room for relaxation, which is crucial if you want to return home feeling rested and rejuvenated. If you have very young kids, consider bringing some other family members along so you can all take turns watching the little ones. This will give each adult some uninterrupted downtime. You can also plan slow activities for the evenings, like movie nights, to encourage your kids to wind down after a day of fun.

Traveling with your kids and pets can be a memorable experience. Planning ahead will ensure your trip is memorable for the right reasons! Choose destinations that are accommodating of kids and pets, pack engaging activities, and prepare yourself for a stress-free getaway. By following these tips, you can enjoy a fun and relaxing vacation with the whole family!

Are you looking to take a road trip in style? Consider renting a camper bus from Vintage Surfari Wagons! View our rentals today to find your perfect wagon.

Seems it Never Rains in Southern California

What’s the real deal on California weather and reports of disasters playing out in the current media?

Currently California is in a weather pattern that comes along every so often, one that causes a lot of temporary problems, no doubt. But it also solves a whole bunch of other problems that pretty regularly also plague our great state. We are getting a lot of rain and snow that in turn replenishes our reservoirs and ground water basins with the run off, as well as with snow pack that melts off throughout the subsequent summer months. We desperately need this after close to a 8-9 year drought. Conversely, we’ll see weather related road closures, some mudslides and avalanche damaged roads in a lot of central and northern areas of our state. But most of that is going to occur far from where Vintage Surfari Wagons sends you out on the road.

What you’re probably not seeing reported is that about 99% of these somewhat extreme weather incidents are happening primarily in the 2/3rds of California north of Los Angeles. In fact the counties of Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, Imperial, and San Diego have been largely spared the deluges and floods that those other parts of the state are experiencing. This leaves a whole lot of California ripe for exploration in the midst of all the bad news.

The entire coastline of Orange County and south are open, and the beaches are beautifully un crowded. That's close to 100 miles of coastline to explore. And there are 6 wonderful California State Park system campgrounds along that coast as well as a dozen more regional and privately run campgrounds on down the coast. The areas east of those two counties (Riverside, Imperial, and San Bernardino) are largely situated in the dry deserts of the state and receive a small percentage of the precipitation that reaches the central and northern coast, so it’s almost always sunny and dry out that way. Top that fact with lots of spectacular and beautiful places out there to camp in solitude and watch the stars at night. It still gets some rain, but that only assures that the spring desert blooms will likely be abundant and incredibly colorful this year.

Bottom line? It’s not as disasterous as you may have heard, and there's still thousands of square miles of the Golden State to explore and enthrall you. Get in touch with us at VSW and we’ll be happy to suggest some routes we especially like that you might consider in, thru, and around these ‘roads less traveled’ topographies of Southern California.

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