Don't Call Me Midlife

☀️ Summer Road Trips

July 11, 2024 • Alix Mackey & Nicole Stassinopoulos • Episode 40

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Buckle up for a journey through the wild world of family road trips! From snack strategy to backseat battles, we're diving into the highs and lows of hitting the highway. Will you survive the endless "Are we there yet?" chorus, or thrive on unexpected adventures? Let's navigate the twists and turns of modern road-tripping, sprinkled with a dash of nostalgia for the good ol' days of station wagons and paper maps. It's time to decide: are we road warriors?

In this episode, we cover:
1. Road trips: planning tips, and pros/cons.
2. Family entertainment during long car rides.
3. Generational differences in travel experiences.

Mentioned in this episode:
Road Trip Tips: 9 Ways to Help You Thrive While You Drive
https://blog.nationwide.com/family-life/travel-outdoors/9-tips-long-drives/


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Speaker 1:

Welcome to Don't Call Me Midlife. This summer we're shaking things up a bit with our special series called Survive or Thrive. We know moms are extra busy during the summer, so we're bringing you shorter, bite-sized episodes focused on one hot topic at a time. Join us as we share tips, stories and laughs, helping you decide if you're just getting by or truly thriving this summer. Hi Nicole, hi Alex, how are you? I'm good, I'm excited about summer. Well, I'm glad one of us is. I'm just kidding. I like summer, you like it. Not love it, that's okay. I love it, I love it and I'm excited about our new series. So we are doing bite-sized episodes. Super excited about that because we know moms and women don't have a ton of time.

Speaker 1:

We're going to talk about one topic at a time. What is our hot topic for today? Road trips. Are we thriving during a road trip or are we merely surviving? Well, we're not going to say what we think, right, let's discuss the topic and then we'll. We're not doing unsolicited advice. We'll like say what we think at the end, right, okay, yeah, so we'll save that part. Clearly, I'm not used to this new format. Maybe the ladies will know our answer at the end, but we will keep it a surprise.

Speaker 1:

So road trips, this means like getting in the car and driving somewhere. That's it. Yeah, do you think a road trip is 24 hours or more, or is it within the day? What is your definition of a road trip? 24 hours of driving, heck? No, a road trip is you get in your car and you pack stuff in your car and then you go to your destination. So it could be an hour long, it could be 36 hours long, I think it's anywhere that you're going to drive.

Speaker 1:

I know some people, some families, love road tripping over like flying. So that's interesting. That's an interesting idea. My brother and sister-in-law will drive from South Carolina to Connecticut and I think they're bananas, but they love it because you don't have to be, as you can pack in a different way as opposed to flying, right. So there are advantages. Yeah, you can take your time. Yeah, you can take your time. And maybe, if you have an animal, road trips are a plus, right, if you want to bring your dogs with you, that is a plus of a road trip. I don't know how you do that, because I have to pee and poop or your cat, right? Or your gerbil, or your whatever, whatever animals you have, your fish I guess you can leave those at home. So so road tripping in the summertime is like a thing here, right Cause a lot of people in Northeast will drive a lot of places.

Speaker 1:

Is it a thing in Colorado? Honestly, I am not sure. I I know that we're planning a couple road trips because Colorado is so huge and like expansive that there's just a lot of rural areas that you have to get through to get to the next big area, like Vail. So Vail is probably like maybe two and a half three hours from where we are. So to me that is the perfect amount of road trip. That's a perfect. You're not like driving cross country, I'm like driving to Colorado to come see you. Like that is not happening. Yeah, yeah, but there are so many amazing places in Colorado that we haven't been to in the time that we've been here. I don't think road tripping is easy here just because of the mountains and the passes and the switchbacks, so like a five-hour trip is really taxing and exhausting. So we have to like mentally prepare myself for that. But yeah, I mean some people Just absolutely love it and they're great at planning it.

Speaker 1:

I did get some ideas from the interwebs Of, like the benefits of road trips. There are some benefits. I will say the snacks are benefits. Like, I would like doing the snacks. I would get creative with those type of snacks. Yeah, like one of those snackle boxes. Oh yeah, maybe That'd be fun. Everybody could have their own. Yes, ooh, ooh. A little cooler, and that is probably the only advantage I can think of, because all five of us in a car for a really long time sounds fun. Yeah, it sounds difficult.

Speaker 1:

I think when the kids were younger, I think road trips were easier that is my take on it Because of naps, because you know that, like I feel like you could have planned it, like you could leave in the morning and you know that, like you would just have to entertain them for just a little bit and then they would fall asleep. That's true, that's true, but now don't touch me, don't look at me. Somebody ate all the snacks. It's just for our family. It's a little bit more difficult.

Speaker 1:

But I did find some things that were great, ideas that I haven't like really thought of. These are like benefits of road tripping or some, if you are going to take a road trip, like some tips. No, most of these are just tips. So I don't know, like this, plan your rest stops, which, as a woman, I don't know, like, when I got to go, I got to go, but plan your rest stops, oh which, as a woman, I don't know, like, when I got to go, I got to go, but plan your rest stops. Maybe this is really good for, like, multiple people, or if you're traveling like in the middle of nowhere, just to know what maybe a safe spot is. I think it's not just if you have to go to the bathroom, though.

Speaker 1:

I would think, plan your rest stops because there's actually, like, interesting things. I do think one of the benefits of a road trip is you can see things that you normally wouldn't be able to see. So I think maybe planning your rest stops around interesting things, right, they're not just talking about, yeah, or like, when you're going to stretch your legs, yes, farther down the list it says bathroom breaks. So, right, that's separate. I think maybe there's like a cool store to go to, like the largest ball of wax or something, yeah, some sort of fun restaurant. That's different, right, Like, I think, plan your stops around interesting things. You probably also need to know your limits on your driving, like how much you can drive in a day. I know people who drive overnight. I think a road trip I might enjoy it, because you do need to plan things out a little bit right and to make it enjoyable. There's a lot of things that I think you would like because you do have to plan. It says book your accommodation, familiarize yourself with local driving, download funny books and then prepare a first aid kit, prep your car. So there's lots. It looks like there's lots of planning involved in it that I didn't really even think about it, which I like that.

Speaker 1:

Do you remember? This is an aside I was just thinking of. I would drive to college right From Connecticut to Nashville. And do you remember when we didn't have GPS, we had to get those trip ticks from AAA. Did you ever get one of those when it was like the? You had to the maps, the maps from you would tell them exactly. It was actually pretty cool. I wonder if they still make it. Yeah, and that could be a good learning tool actually to get that's going to be.

Speaker 1:

My advice is get a trip tick and see and cause. Our kids probably haven't even seen those. No, maybe we do. Like a ooh, this is a good idea. Maybe we go to AAA and we get the trip ticks we have our kids do it because they have to know how to communicate and ask for things and then maybe you do like an hour, like a day trip or something, and he is like they can practice their driving Right, because Alex and I have kids that are starting driver's ed and we're very nervous about it and but this would be, this would be a good thing versus listening to GPS and getting frustrated and I don't know.

Speaker 1:

I don't really remember triptychs, I'm just I'm trying to think I spent a summer in Vermont, so I drove from Michigan to Vermont and I used MapQuest, and so I remember being like looking at it and then just being aware of, like, how I had to keep an eye out for certain things, and it was, yeah, areas where your GPS may not work right. So I do think one thing would be definitely have a backup plan or know where you're going to go a little bit so that you're not stuck. That happens in my own town with my GPS. Definitely need a backup plan for that. So have you planned out your road trip in Colorado? No, not yet, but I've got a good idea of like how to do it. So I don't know, with my family I think we could actually drive two and a half hours without stopping. These are really good things like to have for like longer trips.

Speaker 1:

But I think some of these ideas like I think maybe downloading a funny audio book would be really good for the family, but I don't, I don't know if they would listen. I think I would. I think they would listen if I didn't tell them to listen. I think they would just really start listening. They always listen. When I listened you know what it's so funny, nicole, when I listen to podcasts in the car and they like have one earbud in or whatever they do my sons will then mention something from the podcast, like because it's normally about, and they're like why are you listening to that? Right, like they're they. They asked me that too. I think they are listening.

Speaker 1:

When I was a kid, we would drive, we would do a road trip I'm remembering this now from New Jersey to Cape Cod, and but it was when you could actually lay in the back of the car. My mom had a big station wagon and we would put our. It was so fun because we'd put three of our little sleeping bags in the back and we would sleep like sleep the whole time. I don't think you can do that now, that's probably not legal, but I remember thinking it was very fun. Yes, I remember those station wagon trips. Those were fun, especially like I had cousins and I did it with Right. But yeah, well, that's not happening, but it's nice to go down memory lane.

Speaker 1:

But I do have to say that maybe we will plan a road trip. Jerry has been really wanting to go to Wyoming. He loves bears and they have this bear like pet the bear exhibit and like you can bottle seed them. And maybe we'll do that because there's lots of places to stop on the way to Yellowstone. I think that sounds fun. We've been to Yellowstone. It's amazing. We did road trip around there a couple of years ago and we went to a dude rant. Okay, so this is.

Speaker 1:

I feel like I don't know. I've changed my mind a little bit. Do you think road tripping thrive or survive? Oh, survive, blah.

Speaker 1:

I've gotten excited thinking about this. What would be in everybody's healthy snack box? Where would we stop? What beautiful things would we see on the way to wherever we were going? The idea of traveling outside of Colorado is a little bit more exciting, because it's just something different. I think it would thrive. Maybe one road trip, not a lot, but one, okay, okay, I can't wait to hear about that road trip. I think that sounds fun.

Speaker 1:

I was going to change my mind, but I'm still survive. I'm not going to AAA anytime soon to do a road trip. We drive, we drive about an hour and a half to get to Alex's family's summer house and that's. That's about all I can handle. I'm not driving to anywhere really far. I drive to Maine to drop off John at camp. That is not a road trip in my mind.

Speaker 1:

So I think this summer for me it's like survive, I'm, I'm, I'm, definitely. I'm not planning it. Yeah Well, I'll let you know. Thrived or survived? All right, all right, ladies, let us know what you think about road trips. And that's a wrap for today's episode of don't Call Me Midlife. We hope you had as much fun as we did. If you're just waiting in the carpool line, don't forget to follow the show, and if you're feeling extra spicy today, leave us a rating and review Before we part ways. Join our newsletter to stay in the loop with all things midlife, magic, bonus content and more. Head on over to the show notes for how to sign up. We can't wait to keep the conversation going. No-transcript.