Jump to content

Driving in RV from CT to WDW with 3 year old


Recommended Posts

Ours are all grown up. When they were little we trained ours to sleep so well on trips we only had to worry about gas stops and eating. Of course the other side was they were asleep before we left the neighborhood and we had to wake them a few minutes later when we arrived at our local destination. Nothing like kids waking up from a deep sleep. 

Are you planning on driving straight through, stop for the night or visit sites along the way? Where do you plan on stopping?

There are multiple rest areas along I-95 in NC though I'm not sure I would call any of them scenic. You have the welcome centers on the north and south ends and a few in-between. The ones in the middle are the most recently renovated and have a lot of room to let the kids out and run around. Unlike the Welcome Centers there is less traffic and people at these. Here is a link to the NC DOT website.  

http://www.ncdot.gov/travel/restareas/

If you want to stop at an old fashioned tourist trap with reasonable gas prices there is always South of the Border in SC. Just tell'em Pedro sent you. :lol:  You can't miss it as the full length of I-95 through NC has bill boards directing you to it. In fact if you can I would try to fill up in SC as opposed to NC as the price of gas is significantly lower.

Link to post
Share on other sites

When I was a kid my grandparents considered any rest area they could stop and have lunch and wear me out a scenic one. Games were how many times I could run around the motorhome or up and down a hill in a set amount of time. We rarely stopped other than for lunch, dinner or gas, then where ever we spent the night, usually a rest area between destinations.

Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

Link to post
Share on other sites
15 hours ago, Cortezcapt (Derek) said:

When I was a kid my grandparents considered any rest area they could stop and have lunch and wear me out a scenic one. Games were how many times I could run around the motorhome or up and down a hill in a set amount of time. We rarely stopped other than for lunch, dinner or gas, then where ever we spent the night, usually a rest area between destinations.

Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

Smart Grandparents, low cost, happy kids, entertainment for adults-watching kids wear out and best of all tired kids ready to get back in RV for a rest.

Link to post
Share on other sites

+1 on south of the border! We stayed in the campground last year, nothing fancy but it was clean and had lots of security patrols.

We'll be traveling to the fort in the fall, our kids will be one and three. Rest areas are great places to let the kids run around and get tired out, and it's better to have a nice lunch prepared in our trailer than to eat restaurant food the whole time. All the rest areas we've stopped at have been clean and well maintained.

We spent about an hour last spring in a truck stop letting our two year old run around on a rainy day. It was funny seeing some of the big tough truckers wave and smile at our little girl, she can be very outgoing.

We have a DVD player in the truck. In the morning our daughter gets to watch a movie, then afternoon is nap time. We usually plan to travel 3 hours before lunch a and another 3-4 after lunch, and be setup in a campground for dinner. It makes travel slower but much more enjoyable than trying to cover a lot of miles in a day.

Link to post
Share on other sites
On 4/15/2016 at 4:57 PM, NYtonowhere said:

What are some good convenient places to stop? Probably just stop to stretch our legs at scenic rest stops, but if anyone knows anywhere specific they like stopping we are open to ideas! 

We took our son to WDW for his 3rd and his 4th birthdays, driving from Mass.  I will echo the above advice, especially about South of the Border. It's a fun stop for an hour or two, with an observation tower in a Sombrero! and a Reptile Zoo with lots of alligators and turtles.  It's also a great stopover, as AldeanFan noted above the campground is not fancy, but it is clean, inexpensive and safe.

We also liked to stop at the State Welcome Centers so he could pick out a few brochures to look at while driving.  Another big hit was the Petersburg Civil War Battlefield, right near the highway and has lots of cannons and historical markers w/pictures to look at.

We got him a "Mickey Mouse tablet" to use on our trips too. It's a VTech Innotab 3s and it came with Mickey Mouse educational games already loaded on it. It takes cartridges that are age-appropriate and have familiar characters from different shows.  Well worth the cost, he still plays with it, but now with harder level games that teach math, geography, biology, etc.

Another resource I have used if you are into off-beat stops like SOB (South of the Border) is Roadside America, the site has a map function to show you whats nearby:

http://www.roadsideamerica.com/

Good luck and have fun!

 

Link to post
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
×
×
  • Create New...