Dear Tracy, 

Road Trip! 

Growing up military and then marrying military, means that any family events aren’t just a drive across town. They’re often a drive across several states and I made that drive the first weekend in August for my family’s reunion back in the mountains of Virginia. It’s a date set in stone decades before I was born and if my dad could make the trip across states during his chemotherapy, then in his memory, I could take my son to the reunion. 

Which means when the tiny human was just about 8 months old, he and I drove from Georgia to Virginia and back home again. 

I’m very much about breaking down a trip into multiple days and I have a pretty set rule on my driving versus break routine that I still implement to this day. I would drive two hours, rest an hour, and then drive two more before stopping for the night. (Now that he’s 4 years old, it’s drive 3 hours, rest an hour, and then drive three more.) 

My tiny human has generally been a great traveler, a fact I am very thankful for, but I do my best to facilitate that and when he was just about eight months old I drove 8 hours up to Virginia and 8 hours back down to Georgia and learned some tricks along the way.