Driving 13 hours, drive all day or overnight?

Raspberry807 · March 2011

Planning a vacation and the drive is 13 hours. Kids are 3, 6 and 8... they love their electronics and books, but they also can sleep pretty well in a car. We have done both, doesn't really matter to us. What are your experiences with day vs. night driving with kids?

mrstarawalsh · March 2011

I'd do it overnight. Whenever we go to San Diego (11 hour drive) we do it at night with one of us driving halfway then switching. Albeit my kids are quite a bit younger but it tends to work a lot better that way.

JThomas221 · March 2011

I've never done a long drive like that with kids, but I personally prefer to make long drives at night because traffic is generally a lot easier to deal with. The longest I've done with the Skids is a couple of hours and I try to plan the trips for their nap time. Youngest SD (4) usually falls asleep in the car if she's even a little tired, so I'd rather have her sleep when she's supposed to be sleeping rather than throw her schedule off.

jpowell3 · March 2011

I would leave super early in the morning, like 3am. That way you guys could stop like 4 or 5 hrs into your drive to stretch & eat breakfast. Then when you pile back in the car they can break out the games & books if they want to. (plus when you reach your destination there is still plenty of daylight for them to try to burn off the rest of their pent up energy.)

twinkl5379 · March 2011

If you do overnight, you must be rested. I say this b/c over the holidays, H and I had 4 kids and a 13 hour drive. He wanted to do it overnight so kids could sleep.

We didn't leave that night until 11 pm so H drove overnight on no sleep. I drove the last 3 hrs so he could sleep, which he did for only an hour.

When we got home he was unloading the car and fainted outside in the driveway, hit the concrete and had a seizure. Luckily I was outside and heard his scream, ran over and found him. I called 911 and he went to the ER.

Everything turned out fine, but it was b/c of the stress on his body, no sleep and not enough blood circulation to the brain (b/c of the long drive) that caused all this. The dr. advised us both to be sure to get out and stretch during this kind of drive.

Sorry this is so long, but I now take this much more seriously than I did before. It was the scariest day of my life and a result of the overnight drive w/no sleep.

Raspberry807 · March 2011

Thanks all!

Jessys_Girl · March 2011

We'll be doing an 18 hour road trip in August with a 9 (almost 10) y.o, an 8 y.o and an 18 month old.

Our plan is to leave right after work on Friday and get dinner on the way out of town. Then, the kids will have some awake time in the car to talk/be excited about the trip, but will hopefully get tired within a few hours and go off to sleep (I know my littlest one will for sure). By the time they wake up we will be most of the way there, and they may have 4 or 5 hours (maybe 6) of "morning time" in the car.

I figure that will break up the long trip. We also plan to stop a lot (maybe not at night while they're all sleeping, but definitely when they're awake).

Driving 13 hours, drive all day or overnight?

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