Our trip to the Catskills in NY was our first family vacation, and it was definitely one for the books. I know I’ve been story-ing and post about parts of our trip, but I wanted to culminate it all with one big post of the best (and funniest) highlights.
As you may remember — I for sure with NEVER forget — we took a 14+ hour road trip with our two toddlers. It’s supposed to take 12-14 hours, but it ended up taking us over 20 in one direction. Enough said, right?! We packed up our entire lives into the back of our car, and prayed for the best on our multi-state journey from Chicago to New York. Check out my posts on Packing and Surviving Vacation with Kids and my guide to the Ultimate Carry On Bag for more details on those parts of our trip.
We spent a lot of time at various rest stops along the way. When you’re road tripping, the rest areas you choose are key.
And we visited our fair share of family restrooms.
We chose to stop at a really awesome “nature” rest stop. I kind of pretended like we were camping for 45 minutes while the kids ran around and got out some energy before we attempted to put them to sleep in the car.
We stopped at a hotel in States College, PA around 11 pm on the first night. Azi was not pleased, and ended up sleeping in my bed with me, like he was 6 weeks old again. Yes, I sleep with my little babies. Judge me. Yes, I swore I’d never sleep with them after 6 weeks old. Yes, I had to do what I had to do. We’re back to normal now, thank G-d.
The next day we enjoyed our free continental breakfast, and then we traveled the remaining 4 hours to Monsey, NY where we spent the afternoon shopping and getting our first fix of NY pizza. Then we drove back to Teaneck, NJ where we met my aunt and cousins for dinner. It’s not so often that we get to see them, so it was so nice to spend a couple of hours together. Then we hopped back in the car and headed to our final destination — Camp Morris in Woodridge, NY!
After arriving super late, we were all really happy (mostly just me) to finally have a place to call “home” for the next several days. I was excited to experience all things “bungalow colony” and live the NY Catskills experience. It was pretty much just like visiting Brooklyn but in the wilderness. We ate 3 more meals of pizza over the next 3 days, and I had the most delicious waffle at Cafe Chocolat in downtown Woodbourne, NY. Basically, we drove 20+ hours to eat, eat some more and do a little shopping. Productive, right? We also got to spend quality time with some old, family friends, which was why we went in the first place.
It was just a really nice chance to be away from the craziness of our everyday lives, together as a family. After only a few short days of enjoying the country, it was time to head back, but we decided to drive through the night going back, praying that it would be better than the way there. It was better, for sure, but I’m not sure how many road trips, of that length, we’ll be doing in the near future. One made us enough memories to last a lifetime!
Time to wrap this trip up, and put it in our scrapbook (theoretical, of course, because who has time to make a scrapbook?). I’ve loved taking you all along on this trip with us, and I hope we’ll have many more family trips together (big or small) in the future!
For more road trip fun, check out this post.
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