At the end of July, my new niece is going to be getting blessed back home in California. The last few times that Marty and I have gone to visit my family, we have flown, because it was faster and easier than driving, and not much more cost (because both Peter and Carolyn were young enough to be infant-in-arms). Well now that Peter is over two, and we'll have to pay for a ticket for him, the cost disparity between driving and flying is more significant.
We're still undecided, but we're looking at around $650 to fly, or around $200 to drive. Our visit this time will probably only be for a few days, because it's still in Marty's busy season and it will be hard for him to be gone for longer than that. The last time we tried driving, Peter was about nine months old and we drove through the night so that he would sleep. He did really well on the drive down, but coming back, the last couple of hours were really rough. I remember thinking "I don't want to do that again for a long, long time".
Driving through the night is always a little nerve wracking of an option too, because of the whole falling asleep at the wheel thing. But it's not like I haven't spent plenty of time awake in the middle of the night already (thank you Carolyn). We also have that DVD player in the van that works pretty well now, so day driving might be an option this time.
The pros of flying are that it's faster, and when you have time bombs children with, faster is a big deal. The flight is just under two hours, and driving is closer to twelve hours. Although you do have an extra couple of hours for travel to and from the airport and TSA and all that goodness, so let's call it four hours vs twelve. On a flight, you are fairly trapped- if there's a meltdown, there's not a lot to do. Whereas in a car, if things get really bad, you can always pull over and change up the scenario. Granted, the chances are you'll be pulling over in the middle of nowhere and maybe in the middle of the night, so is that really any better? Also if we drive, it will be nice to have our van there, which is not a huge deal because my parents usually have a car that we have pretty easy access to.
We know at some point, we will have to give up the flying thing. Once Carolyn hits two years old, I don't think we'll be able to justify paying for four tickets over driving. So for now, do we give driving a shot again, or should we take advantage of flying while it's still sort of an option? I would love to hear your best traveling with kids wisdom!Labels: Family, Parenting