Please find below some tips we live by while in the states… we’ve gotten pretty good at the road trip to New York, as I think this was our 5th/6th visit over the past 10 years!
- Travel routes and accommodations go hand in hand when planning, and good careful choices here can make your life a lot easier. Explore multiple options when researching highways as well as walking routes, then link to where you’ll stay. Our choice of accommodation was just a short walk to the subway, and central for walking to some of our chosen attractions.
- Once again, we stayed at Hampton Inns while on the road. We like it because there are no surprises – Hamptons include wi-fi, full breakfast, and are worth the rate. It’d be our first recommendation as a family on the road.
- The Toyota performed well… solid mileage and four studded tires (but no snow)!
- We called the card company just before leaving so they know the card may be used abroad and drop a limit on expenditures in case it gets lost/stolen. It went “kaput” while at the MTA but worked well otherwise.
- Many gas stations won’t accept a Credit Card at the pumps without a zip code. We got this figured out though! Click here!
- The Canadian dollar officially sucks… around .70 cents. It has diminished the bonus that gas, food, clothing and accommodation were a few years back. We emptied the American Savings of cash and managed to avoid bank machines / forego any bank fees.
- Have your ducks in order at the border… you know what they’ll ask about and possibly for… be ready and organized. Janie uses a spreadsheet App on her iPhone to tally everything up!!!
While in the car…
We used a combination of GPS, Google maps and paper maps. We always knew (roughly) where we were, reducing a lot of road stress. We have a set route for NYC, down the Henry Hudson. If we get out of sync, we rely on the GPS rather than correcting midstream!
The kids are awesome travelers. However, it was always important to stop and get out for a bit. We took time to stop and stretch/snack/bathroom/etc. at obvious points to keep the peace.
We tried to keep a cooler at all times filled with water and goodies between the kids, keeping cold a host of healthy treats. Worked well on the longer car trips as well as in the hotel room at night.
The i-Pod/i-Pad/iPhone and accompanying chargers left a means for music, maps, as well as our main communication tool home via face time / e-mail. The kids took turns DJ’ing to provide spurts of tunes. I blogged on WordPress real time which was a treat… Half the work done before getting home!