Tricia Thirey

After we returned from Palo Duro, I had the itch to get out of Texas and knew we needed to find somewhere a little further away to travel to. I knew I wanted to be on the road Father’s Day weekend just like the last several years for the change of scenery and I went back and forth with a friend about meeting in the mountains or at the beach. We finally decided on a trip to the mountains of NC. We found an awesome AirBnb that we could share and loaded up to make the 14 hour drive there! Cooler loaded down and car filled up with snacks, we made the trek across the lower southeast USA.

               Since my three kiddos had not been to Louisiana, Mississippi, or Alabama; we planned some strategic stopping points along the way in order to mark them off of our family United States map (this trip marked states 28-30 for the kids and I, and states 19-23 that we have visited with E & B)!  We stopped to picnic in Louisiana and visited the battle grounds in Mississippi.  Our Alabama stop consisted of a short mountain hike and drive as we made our way to Rock City on the border of Alabama, Tennessee and Georgia.  There we wound our way through some twisty roads in order to see views of 7 different states at once (however, I couldn’t tell you where one begins and one ends).  The views were beautiful.

We also made a stop at McKays Used Books in Chattanooga. If you ever find yourself passing through Tennessee, you don’t want to miss out on stopping at one of these warehouse sized bookstores. They are worth putting a mask on for and my kiddos enjoyed browsing and picking out a few new books for the road trip! It was our first trip into a store in 3 months and was worth the wait!

Since we shared an Airbnb in NC, it was by far the nicest place we have stayed to date, and happened to be located right on a small waterfall. Limited phone and internet service for the week made for some excitement, but once again we came prepared to cook our own meals and enjoy our time with friends.

We made a couple of day trips to see local waterfalls that were only a few miles from our house. Cullasaja Falls can be viewed from the road as it’s a bit of a dangerous hike. Bridal Veil is a waterfall that you used to be able to drive under, but is now blocked so you can only walk through. Dry Falls is a fantastic waterfall that you can hike down to and walk under, ducking into caves to stay out of the spray of water! Dry Falls was by far the kids favorite to visit as they loved the caves!

We even took the kids gem mining at a local shop just down the road from where we were staying. And one day we drove into Bryson City to do the train museum scavenger hunt and have lunch outdoors in the little town. The middle of the week we took all the kids on their first white water rafting trip and they got to experience one Class 3 rapid which made for a lot of excitement!

On our last day we drove to Black Rock Mountain State Park in Georgia to do some hiking and see the waterfall there! This waterfall was down about 20 flights in elevation and was not nearly as exciting to see as the others we had visited, but the exercise was good for everyone!

The rest of the time we spent playing games in the house and enjoying the waterfall.  The kids enjoyed skipping stones and jumping rocks around the fire pit almost every day of our trip!

Our trip home consisted of a stop in Nashville to have another picnic with friends who are stationed at Fort Campbell and then a stop in Arkansas for dinner! I love getting the opportunity to travel with friends and family and having friends living all around the country who we can stop and see along the way is a huge bonus to traveling! With family in NC this is definitely a trip we will making again in the future with new stopping places along the way!

               I love taking the time to plan out a trip, and research the best things to do with kids to both make it memorable, and affordable.  Because of the pandemic, our plans have changed so much this summer, that I have just been learning to go with the flow.  And in many ways that has turned out to our benefit.  During the Texas lockdown, I had lots of time to research and make lists of all the places I wanted to visit!  We have a goal to hit all 50 states before the kids are in high school and we are well on our way.  But Texas is a BIG state and there are so many places I have wanted to explore that are good weekend destinations… so I started making plans and booking refundable trips and praying that at least some of them would work out!

The first trip of this summer was to Palo Duro Canyon. Now, I have been to the Grand Canyon and it is for sure a sight to behold, but in light of the pandemic and this being our first trip away, I decided to stick closer to home this time around! Palo Duro is only about 4.5 hours from Fort Worth, and perfect for a short trip when you don’t want to do any stopping with kids!

Because the canyon was still closed (with no published reopening date) when I started planning, I was able to get an awesome deal on an AirBnb that was located right on the canyon! We knew we wanted a kitchen for this trip and since we had friends traveling with us, an AirBnb was more cost effective than staying at a hotel. Since we already have state park passes for Texas, all we had to do was reserve a spot in the park when reservations reopened (added bonus, when the park opened up they were only letting in a limited number of people, so less people on a holiday weekend at the end of May was a huge bonus).

We drove down on a Friday and stayed thru Monday evening. We spent the first night at the AirBnb on the deck watching the wildlife climbing through the canyon. The good thing about staying at an AirBnb with a kitchen is that we could load a cooler down with food and snacks for the whole trip and cook our meals just like we are at home. So once we checked in, we could stay put for the afternoon/evening.

Whenever we make plans to travel, the first thing I do is make a list of all the things we would like to do while we are there that would cost extra money and determine what our budget for the trip can handle. Whenever possible, I like to find free activities and plug in one “bonus” thing to do that we think is reasonable to spend the money on! Because we had several out of the country trips for the spring/summer rescheduled ☹, our travel budget for the summer allowed for us to do two splurge things on this trip! The first, which was my favorite, was horseback riding in the canyon on Saturday morning. I love horseback riding and other than riding a pony at the state fair, my kids had never ridden and I thought it would be a fantastic way to get a glimpse of the canyon for the first time! We got there early and met our guides and the kids got to meet their horses for the morning. We loaded up and went on our first adventure through the canyon.

When we finished riding we went back to the AirBnb for lunch and then loaded back up for our second adventure which was ziplining over the canyon! Not going to lie, I was a little nervous about this one, but luckily we had enough adults to outnumber the kids who would need to zip tandem and most of them were braver than I was! 😉 Ziplining required us to climb a steep ramp while tethered to each other and the railing and then after ziplining, crossing a swinging bridge back across the canyon!

This was the kids favorite part of the trip, and while it was quite exhilarating, I was not as ready as they were to jump back on again. It was definitely worth the money we spent on it and everyone agreed the views were amazing!

We grilled out Saturday evening and Sunday morning we hiked several miles through the canyon. Being the end of May in Texas, we didn’t go as far as we would have liked to, but fun was still had by everyone. We celebrated with snowcones and did some souvenir shopping before heading back to the AirBnb for dinner and smores over the firepit!

This is definitely a recommended trip, even if you only do free activities and camp out in the canyon! We would definitely go back, as there are quite a few things we didn’t get to do because of the pandemic! And while it isn’t the Grand Canyon, there is so much more accessible to you here, and the smaller crowds can’t be beat!

If you have ever been and have recommendations for future visits, we would love if you would share them in the comments!

I still remember the first time we flew with three kids.  We had just moved back to New York and were heading back to Tennessee for the twins to be in their babysitter’s wedding.  We agonized over whether we should drive or fly because three kids under three require a LOT of stuff.  We were lucky to have friends in TN who were willing to meet us at the airport with carseats and pack n plays so that we wouldn’t have to fly with nearly as much as we thought we would.  Our biggest navigation that trip was two 2-year olds who needed regularly bathroom breaks on the airplane!

The twins may have been two before they took to the skies the first time, but before the pandemic hit, my kids were getting to be quite seasoned in the flying department.  The kids have clocked in over 24 flying trips apiece and have been the proud recipients of a first class trip home from Ohio last winter. They consider themselves to be pros and absolutely love that they are seasoned travelers.  However, we have come a long way from those first tentative flights with car seats and luggage over the last few years!

Flying might not be on your radar for awhile (it’s not our first choice right now with a pandemic and so many regulations), but here are a few things we have learned in our travels!  I’ve broken it down by age as I have learned that their needs have changed somewhat over the last few years, and this is what I have come up with! 

Toddler Travelers:

• If you can get a trusted carseat/booster on the other end of your travels, do it.  It makes travel so much easier to not have to drag it through the airport (especially if it ends up being thrown under the plane).
• BRING SNACKS!!!  This is a good one for any age.  Make sure you have something for them to chew on when you are going up in the air, and plenty to keep them for begging for food during the entire flight.  I will usually bring one special treat along to give them part way through the flight.
• At this age they didn’t have their own electronic devices, so I would bring plenty of games, books, and LeapFrog readers to keep them entertained.  They also loved the reusable sticker books and would enjoy sticking them to the windows and anything else they would attach to while telling stories all around us!
• I also would download a kid friendly movie to my ipad and would bring along headphones and a headphone splitter so they could all watch something together on the second half of a longer flight or in the airport if we had a flight change.  It helped to give them something to look forward to and made the minutes fly by a little faster for all of us!

Elementary School Travelers:

• Now that my kids are a little older, and have their own tablets, our travel looks a little different.  We still download some movies to the tablets, but they carry their own backpacks with tablets, headphones, games and books.  They have to earn electronic time just like on roadtrips, but they all love reading so this usually isn’t a problem! 
• I’m still in charge of rationing out the snacks and always make sure I have a backpack full to keep us well fed!  This makes flight attendants happy especially since my children will tell everyone they are hungry every five seconds if they can 😉

Two things I always try to warn people of is:

• Kids sound really loud on an airplane!  We try to practice whispering before we get on and I try to remind them that they are much louder on the plane then on the ground.  Maybe it is because their ears are doing crazy things in the air, but be prepared for them to shout a lot to get your attention especially if you are sitting across the aisle from them!
• Some kids have anxiety about flying.  Luckily even my motion sick child does well on airplanes and none of them get nervous now that we have flown so many times.  But we always talk about the plan and where we are going and how many flights and what we are going to do when we land so they are well prepared for every step of the journey!

The most important thing is to have fun!  Enjoy the time and don’t let all the delays and inconveniences stress you out!  We have missed a lot of flights; had a lot of delays and reroutings.  It’s never pleasant, but you can make the most of those extra moments too!  Just try to make an adventure out of it!  And don’t forget the snacks!!!

               I can’t think of a better way to embrace every moment of life then to spend it enjoying travel with family and friends.  During the first five years of our marriage (when we were just waiting for our family to begin 😉), Ben and I spent every holiday and graduate school break traveling the world.  We knocked off 46 states together and countless countries in Europe, North America, & South America.  We encouraged our families to join us on cruises rather than buy presents, and tried to travel to see family and friends as much as our schedules (and finances) allowed. 

               When God finally blessed us with children, we determined that we would spend as much time showing them the world as we could.  We didn’t let brain cancer and treatment schedules get in the way of that travel, and were able to knock off every state on the East Coast with our kids before he passed away.  The summer he separated from the military, we spent two months on the road, exposing our children to as many new and exciting places as we could in an effort to making lasting memories.

               I took a break from travel outside of visiting family and friends for about a year.  Making the nine hour trek from home to visit family in North Carolina with three kids five and under was enough for me for a little while, but road trips to Texas and Maine the summer after losing Ben put the travel itch back in me and we haven’t stopped since!  My kids love to travel.  We embrace long trips (even though they still ask why I won’t drive through the night) and we love getting to travel with our best friends! 

               Travel brings us so much joy and whether it be Disney, or staying with friends and family, we embrace every moment of these adventures that bring us closer together and allow for us to truly enjoy every moment!  Before our national pandemic I had friends request that I share some travel tips, and about how I plan and pay for our trips, and I am finally getting around to posting some of what I put together!  I hope you will enjoy hearing about some of the adventures we have been on the past few years and the adventures to come!