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How to Roadtrip With Kids
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Over Easter break 2022 our family went to California. This was part of our 40 cities in a year goal so naturally I wanted to make the most of our flight across country. I planned to fly from BWI to Long Beach and rent a car there. Let me explain further our itinerary so you can see how to roadtrip with kids.
We got our flights extremely cheap because part our 40 cities plan was to open a southwest credit card and put some of our month expenses on that so we could get a ton of bonus points! It worked out really we and I would totally recommend taking advantage of something like that if you want to help jump start your travel adventures. **Disclaimer** only open a credit card and put regular monthly expenses that you will be able to pay off monthly to avoid interest charges.
I have a standard list of goals I like to try and achieve for every trip we take with or without kids:
- Try a new activity
- Try a local food or restaurant
- Learn something about the area
- Keep a daily log or journal about the trip
#4 is sooooo important to me! Before my first big trip my grandma said 2 things. First she gave me a small journal and said document your trip, you don’t think you’ll forget a thing but you will be glad you wrote it all down! The second thing she said was, “can you please bring me back some sunscreen? Europe has really good sunscreen that the FDA won’t approve in the United States.” haha
But seriously best advice she gave me and best advice I can give to anyone! I’m so thankful I’ve documented all our trips because I definitely forget a lot of little things that have happened along the way. And now I can share how to roadtrip with Kids!
Here is a daily log of our trip to Southern California:
- Day 1: Long Beach, Santa Monica Pier, Dodger Stadium
- Day 2: Oceanside
- Day 3:Easter Sunday, La Jolla, San Diego
- Day 4: San Diego Zoo
- Day 5: Homeward Bound
Day 1 of 5: Long Beach, Santa Monica Pier, Dodger Stadium
Travel from Baltimore to Long Beach
We had a layover in Chicago which, with kids, is actually really nice (as long as they give you enough time to get from one gate to the other). My kids are decent flyers at 8, 6 and 4 years old. They sleep or enjoy some time on their tablets (I’m not like the other moms, I’m a mean mom…cue Amy Poehler in a pink track suit, my pro tip here is to deprive the boys of electronics as much as possible leading up to travel, this way they are not easily bored and want to spend time on them). I also pack single serve snacks and the boys love ordering a soda on the flight! Long beach is a nice, small airport. Almost the whole airport is open-air or outside. It’s a great alternative to LAX, anything to make life a little more simple with the boys along.
Arriving and Dealing with LA Traffic
We drove to our hotel (the Residence Inn) in Long Beach on the San Pedro Bay right down from the Queen Mary and some cruise ships. We ate at In and Out Burger. My boys decided it was mediocre and McDonald’s is better. I still love exposing the boys to as many different experiences, like food, that I can…doesn’t mean they’ll love it. We drove 45 minutes to the Santa Monica Pier. We walked the pier and then walked in the sand to muscle beach. From the Santa Monica pier we drove to Dodger Stadium. Man that LA traffic is no joke! It was suppose to take 30 minutes and it took us 2 HOURS! Ugh! Three little boys trapped in a car for 2 hours, whew…it wasn’t pretty but we survived.
Dodger Stadium on Jackie Robinson Night!
Also, I’ve been to a couple different stadiums in the United States and parking here is also pretty confusing and frustrating. From an east-coaster’s perspective it was hard to find and there were lines of cars on the main roads and side streets, through the parking lots, this was tough. Once we got into the stadium and found our seats we grabbed some food, nachos=$20, beer=$18, and water was $7. Pretty steep prices. Over all we had a good time, the Dodgers beat the Reds 3-1. (We planned to see this game specifically because my oldest son is a Dodgers fan and my husband and youngest son are Reds fans).
We had breakfast at the Residence Inn and then took a walk to get a look at those giant cruise ships! The boys also saw one of the four man made Thums Islands, which were built to harvest oil. My husband and I noticed oil rigs all over the sections of Long Beach we drove through.
Heading from Long Beach to Oceanside
After we checked out we headed south toward Oceanside, CA. We enjoyed seeing the Pacific Ocean on our ride down. We got to the Springhill suites in Oceanside and walked a block to the beach! The hotel was great and had a pool and hot tub on the roof! The boys loved that part! My kids love the beach! They love throwing baseball on the beach and I’m assuming because it was mid-April, the beach was bare. We had plenty of space to throw baseball and run and jump in waves. The beach also had a pier built in 1888 and a nice play ground for the kids. After the beach we walked back to the hotel to change and go to dinner. The little beach town was so cute and we were told (in 2022) it was an up-and-coming town.
Dinner in Oceanside
We walked to Sancho’s Tacos for dinner. It was a funky casual restaurant with great burritos and good chips and salsa… what else could you ask for from a Mexican Restaurant? It was super causal, like order at the register casual, it had a rough around the edges vibe to it that kind of seemed on purpose. I would say it is kid friendly. No one was upset our kids were there and its got a lot of colorful things to look at. After dinner we hit the pier and saw a bunch of fisherman and one even caught a shark! We were exhausted and were back at the hotel in bed by 9pm.
Day 3 of 5: Easter Sunday, La Jolla, San Diego
I woke up at 5am to hide some Easter eggs and candy that I had sneakily packed in my suitcase. The boys were shocked that the Easter Bunny knew they were in California for Easter and they had fun hunting for eggs in our hotel room. We had breakfast at the hotel and then went to the roof for one last dip in the pool. We really loved Oceanside, especially as a family trip, and wished we could have stayed longer.
La Jolla
In my research for the trip I read somewhere about a “children’s pool” in La Jolla we just had to see. So from what I gathered it was a kid friendly beach. We headed south and found La Jolla. Parking was tricky/confusing but eventually we just picked a spot on a side street and walked toward the beach! We were up on cliffs looking out over the Pacific Ocean and we were in awe of it. It was so beautiful. We snagged some ice cream from a nearby ice cream truck and went down to get a closer look at the water. We got down to a man-made wall that went into the ocean to block the big waves and currents (hence “children’s pool”) but we couldn’t go down to it because April is prime season for seals to give birth to their pups!
Children’s Pool
There were tons of seals and pups all throughout the children’s portion of the beach and it was advised to keep your distance and not to disturb the mommas and their babies. We had a blast watching them! You can even walk out on the wall and get splashed by a wave or two if you’re brave enough. We went down to the other side of the sand and played in the ocean over there. My husband and I had the best time watching our kids play in the waves and the sand, and just letting them explore the area. It was one of the most beautiful places we’ve ever seen, we both agreed on the drive in the landscape reminded us of our trip to Greece. We loved the diversity in the town and just walking through noticed about ten different languages being spoken.
San Diego
Our hotel was the Marriott in the Gaslamp Quarter. It was right next to Petco Park, and we didn’t realize the Padres would be in town while we were there! (If you haven’t noticed, we love visiting baseball stadiums and are huge sports fans in general)! We requested a room overlooking the stadium and watched the Padres play the Braves from our room! We even saw some military special forces parachuting down to the baseball field from helicopters! It was a great view! We walked a few blocks to Nick the Greek’s for a late lunch and they had “bangin” food (review from my oldest son) and $5 drafts all day, can’t beat that! We noticed that this part of the city was pretty clean.
Day 4 of 5: San Diego Zoo, Petco Park
Breakfast and Head to the Zoo
Monday morning we walked to Donut Bar. They had delicious donuts and they were GIANT! My boys loved it but their eyes were bigger than their stomachs and they probably could have all shared one. It was about a ten minute drive from our hotel in the Gaslamp Quarter to the free parking for the zoo at Balboa park. (I’m a cheapskate and if there’s a deal, a discount or free parking somewhere, I’m going to sniff it out)! Whew! San Diego zoo is massive, we were excited but overwhelmed. I’m a person who does my research and likes to be prepared but nothing can prepare you for the size of this zoo! I didn’t think it was necessary to spend the extra money on the zoo safari ride or the shuttles but man, the break to sit down would have been nice!
San Diego Zoo
The zoo was fairly hilly and we felt like we were walking forever to get to the different sections. I packed a lunch for our family today so we stopped at a picnic table and ate. The break was nice. We saw so many different animals from all over the world. It’s nice they have different sections corresponding with different regions of the world. We were surprised to find they did NOT have pandas here. My oldest, who I thought would love the zoo the most, was pretty grouchy all day. He wanted to be back on the beach or throwing baseball. Ugh! Anyone else ever feel like their kids will never be happy no matter how much you plan for them to do?! Oh well, we kept moving but by the end of the day we were hot tired and ready to rest.
Leaving the Zoo
The walk back from the zoo to the car was just under a mile… FREE PARKING sounded like such a good idea until we spent all day walking and just wanted to sit. Haha, lesson learned. We looked up the Padres schedule and they just happened to be playing, yep, you guessed it, the Reds! Haha so we bought some tickets in the outfield last minute for the game, rested in our hotel for about two hours and then walked across the street for the game. While the boys rested Nicko and I ate some tacos from City Tacos, delicious!
San Diego Padres-Petco Park
We got into the park two hours before the start of the game, WOW!!! Best ballpark we’ve ever been to! You are allowed to bring in outside food and sealed drinks!!!!!! They had a mini turf field for kids to play wife ball on with employees helping to facilitate the games! The boys loved this! They batted a couple times each and then we went to left field for the Reds batting practice to see if we could catch a ball before the game started. No luck! Some of the players would throw a ball up in the stands every once in a while, some wouldn’t.
The Game! Padres vs. Reds
The game was fun and the fans friendly, a big contrast to the Dodgers game we went to a few days prior. The final score was SD-4 CINN-1. The boys were excited to see Pham and Machado hit homers. Pham was a triple short of the cycle. After the game we went to Nick the Greek’s again for a gyro and a beer. We watched our older two play invisible baseball on the sidewalk while our youngest was sleeping in my lap while enjoying watching all the fans leaving the stadium after the game. Our family walked back to our hotel to get a good night’s sleep and pack up for the airport in the morning.
It was about an hour and forty minute drive from our hotel in San Diego to the Long Beach airport but we were worried about traffic. The traffic on the highways/405 was awful. We left the hotel between 6:45 and 7:00am and the traffic wasn’t too bad. We got to the airport in Long Beach a little before 9:00am and even after returning our rental car we still had plenty of time. The airport only has four or five airlines that fly in and out with eleven gates total. It was super small but so nice!
We had a blast roadtripping through SoCal and to this day it is one of our boys favorite vacations! They always ask, “when can we go back to California?” I highly recommend checking it out if you haven’t yet and as always if you have questions or want more details on how to roadtrip with kids, please feel free to contact me at [email protected].
<3,
Allie
P.S. If you haven’t yet, check out my “How to Make Traveling Easy” post! This is my fool-proof plan to making traveling with or without kids a breeze!