How We Spent Our Summer Vacation; Pre-Trip Report

It’s time to start sharing our biggest adventure ever, and I am so excited. There are a few things Rob and I have tossed around doing for a while. Visiting family in Kansas. Visiting friends in Colorado. Couple these with the kids learning about American geography this past year, and we decided it was time to do it. Yes, the Schneiders headed West!

Our plan was to go from our house in Kentucky to St Louis for a week so Rob could work. Then we drove to Kansas to see family. Our next stop was Colorado, spending a few nights in Colorado Springs and a few nights in Fort Collins. Then we took the northern route home, seeing Mt Rushmore and parts of the Oregon Trail, plus we squeezed in a trip to visit Rob's buddy from pilot training.

We stayed primarily in the Four Winds, with a few nights in hotels when necessary and a few nights camping in people's yards and driveways. Sometimes we rented a car, sometimes we didn't. Griffey, our faithful companion was along for the ride.

​A trip this long required a lot of planning. Some campers say they just get in and drive. These people are not Schneiders. First we made a lose itinerary of where we would go. The return leg of our journey was a lot looser, but we had a date in mind by which we needed to be home.

​Then I made a packing list, hoping to bring clothing for 5 days for each person and doing laundry along the way. Also, each person needed a few specialty items, like a jacket, a swimsuit, jeans, boots. As the list grew I started to feel like I was bringing everything, including a brand new camping sink.

Being totally type-A, two things I made for this trip were a “cookbook” and a pantry list. The cookbook isn’t fancy, just a laminated page I posted in the camper with dinner ideas for cooking while camping. The pantry list is also laminated, and it has everything we should have in stock. When we run out of something, we can mark it on the list, making restocking the camper easier.

I also made a travel guide for us. We did a lot of research into things we wanted to see in each place we stopped. So I started printing things off and put them into a book. Yes, all the information is also still available online, but if we needed opening hours for a National Park Visitor Center, it is much easier to just open my guidebook and find what we need.

While I was at it, I made one more thing with my laminator and book binder, travel journals for the kids. This was a huge trip and I wanted to make sure they have a way to remember it. So I made a simple journal page, with date, travel day, weather, and what we did that day. My idea was to complete one page each night with them writing or drawing what their favorite part of the day was.

On our recent trip to Mammoth Cave, we bought a pin as a souvenir. I decided to make this pin board for the camper so we could buy pins as souvenirs in all the places we stop. That way, we get the fun of buying a souvenir but don’t come home with a ton of junk, or worse, more stuffed animals!

Ugh. I meant to put the seam in the paper at the bottom, and I totally messed up.

Then I began the process of gathering all the stuff we would be packing, buying groceries, doing all the laundry so we have the right clothes to take. Man, there was a lot to do before a trip!

Just taking along a few books.

All the non-perishable groceries.

Looking good!

The pantry, all loaded and ready to go!

So with a full two days of cleaning and packing, we were all set to hit the road!  First stop, Saint Louis!