Five days and 1,600 miles on the road with two kids, a dog and a cat, eating out and sleeping in hotels creates some memorable moments.
We had our two pets with us, our dog Dutch and cat Scottie. Those two were packed into the back, with Scottie in Dutch's travel kennel to give him room while keeping him contained, and Dutch managing with whatever space he could find.
Traveling with Dutch...Dutch is our nearly 100 pound yellow lab. He is almost twelve years old and cannot get into or out of my vehicle (an SUV) because it is too high. Because I did not want to have to lift him in and out every time he needed to get out of the vehicle (he is a big guy), I bought one of those pet ramps that folds out then gets propped against the back bumper. Theoretically, the dog is supposed to easily walk up and down the ramp to get into and out of the vehicle. I think the ramp was made for dogs smaller than Dutch. It definitely made the job easier, but we needed to hold up Dutch as he walked on the ramp because he felt a little unstable and one time got his back end a little to far over the edge and would have fallen off if we hadn't been hanging onto him. Sometimes it just seemed like too much work to drag out the ramp every time we stopped (which seemed like about every two hours), and Jason just lifted him up or down.
Traveling with Scottie...Scottie is our 16 year-old cat. I was really worried about him on this trip because he is showing his age and even though the vet checked him out and said he is healthy, he seems rather delicate. Long days in the car seemed like it would really stress him out. In preparation, I bought some Kitty Calming treats at the pet store (a friend joked that it is like kitty pot) and some pheremone spray, both natural ways to supposedly keep him calm. Scottie threw up his breakfast and the calming treats before our first stop on the first day. So much for that. The spray seemed to work, but wore off pretty quickly. He was kind of a mess by the end of each day, and completely stressed out. He never yowled (thank goodness), but by the end of day three we were really worried the trip was doing serious damage to his already frail state. So, on day four we brought out the big guns and gave him a sedative the vet prescribed. I gave him the smallest dose and it totally knocked him out, which is not the objective. It is supposed to just make him laid-back and relaxed. Even by the time we got to the hotel that night, when the sedative was supposed to have worn off, he was staggering around like he was drunk. The next day we gave him half the dose of the previous day and it worked really well, he just laid in the kennel all day and by the time we got to the hotel he was up and alert.
Kids...Some people have idyllic visions of car trips with their children, the adventures they will have and the bonding they will do (ok, I assume some people have these idyllic visions. Maybe the only people who have these idyllic visions are people who don't actually have kids). I had visions of kids screaming and fighting. Elise and Anja are good kids, and pretty good travelers, but I was not optimistic about them maintaining their sanity over that many days in the car. We brought along DVDs and video games, books and toys. They worked through them all. They really did well overall, there wasn't much arguing, and they did a good job of entertaining themselves. Before we left, our friends Alison and Jona gave the girls gift bags with 7 separately wrapped gifts, one for each state we would travel through. They had labeled each gift. So, as soon as we were on the road, the girls opened the gift labeled "Minnesota," when we crossed into Wisconsin, they opened their gift labeled "Wisconsin." The girls had sooooo much fun with this. It led them to figure out the order in which we would be traveling through the states, so they knew which present to open when. It also gave them something fun to look forward to each day (a great thing because there isn't really much else to look forward to when riding day after day in the car). Here's a picture of the girls enjoying one of the gifts:
Special thanks to Alison and Jona for saving the noisy gifts (harmonica and kazoo) until the last state.
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