Road trip alone with twins, crazy?

KMB7

I'm planning a crazy trip. I have a 12 hr drive that I will be doing with the dog and kids. I'm splitting it up about 7 1/2 hours the first day, staying at a family memebers house, spend the next day there, and then travel the rest.

I know I'm crazy, but do you have any tips? 

I'm doing this so the kids can have extra time with family. DH will be flying in a week later, and then doing the drive home with us.  

Temp6313048411121614

Wow.  I've never done a long car ride with my DS, I couldn't imagine with 2.  We did take a road trip when he turned 1, but were in an RV so it was a little easier on him (they can be out of their car seats in an RV at times).  Good luck, let us know how it goes.

omalley

I did a 2 hour trip that ended up taking almost 5 hours due to bad traffic.  The one thing I will suggest is try to map out your route w/ a lot of detail. 

Map out places ahead of time along your route that you will feel comfortable stopping to feed/change them.  My boys started screaming but I was not familier w/ the area I was driving through and it did not seem nice and I was afraid to stop.

beefsbride

You are a brave, brave mommy!  We've taken 2 12+ hour car rides with B&K, but both times it has been me & my DH.  The longest I've driven with them myself is 2 hours and it was pure HELL (they were bored and I couldn't really pass back drinks, toys, etc without crashing).  I'm contemplating a 6 hour drive with them this fall and I'm really nervous about it!

Are you pro-TV?  We purchased a DVD player with 2 screens and that was a LIFESAVER on our last trip.  But the passenger had to change out the DVDs every so often, so that might be a bit of a challenge on your own.  I would say keep everything you might need really close by so you can try to pass things back (although my twins are forward facing so that made it a bit easier for us . . . I'm guess yours aren't there yet??). 

Good luck to you!

bumpuser3082773

Have you thought of traveling at night during their bedtime?  I didn't have twins, but it worked for me. Of course, I wasn't going that far.  Is it safe to drive during the night?   Good luck!

TheNextWest

I drove 16 hrs (one way) to TX and back with all three of mine by myself when the twins were 8 mos old and L was 3. I broke it up into 2 days (one way). It really wasn't that bad at all!!

I kept a gallon of water up front with me to make bottles with. If I had to, I just pulled over on the side of the road to make bottles right there (or change diapers, whatever I had to do.) When we stopped for lunch, we made sure to eat outside where everyone could stretch out and move around and stopped for at least an hour or so.They slept a lot in the car. But I did have snacks, songs, toys, etc.  I took the pack and play for them to sleep in and L slept with me at our half-way point.

 The only thing I didn't think of was when *I* would have to use the bathroom... it was really difficult to have to get EVEYBODY out.... take everybody in (and into one stall!) so that I could pee. So I really had to limit my own liquids and well, just hold it... lol.