Touring with a toddler

[prodigyrf]

Did a 3 monther in a Jayco Dove when the son and daughter were littlies and we did free camp maybe 2 out of 3 nights. Bribed the kids with $2 coins for each night we camped out (it worked) but we had no timetable so you could judge when they were getting scratchy. We'd often camp 2 or 3 hours from the next cara park stop so you'd get in late morning for showers and lunch and then sightseeing or the kids playing. Never get in say 5pm and they're hungry and scratchy. We'd often pull up on the road for an early tea and a run around and make some kms after sundown while the kids slept and we'd pull up, set up and plonk the kids in last to sleep and they'd be up running around exploring while we slept in the morning. That depends on camp site of course but the best thing we did was buy them buoyancy vests and they could hit the water like Mataranka springs and the pools. Don't plan your stops just go and play it by ear as you can always book ahead by mobile and Wikicamps nowadays.

[Alyosius]

We have done 3 big trips with our son, the most recent at Christmas being our longest.

We found that the first couple of trips we did with him as a baby were easy, he coped fine no matter what we decided. This most recent trip however was far harder and we learnt alot about travelling with him, and in future he will need to set the pace.

We have come up with a couple of planning guidelines for long distance trips in the future (these are for trips where the travel is a significant part of the holiday - not just a Sydney to Brisbane run to visit family for example):
- Plan for an average of 250km per day
- Hard maximum limit of 600km per day
- No more than 2 consecutive 'big days'
- Plan refuelling to occur in the afternoon near your destination for that day

We found that our son would sleep in the morning giving us 2+ hours of solid driving but in the afternoon he was much harder to keep contented, so future plans centre on a short but solid burst of driving followed by an early stop at camp. Bigger days followed by several nights at the same campsite.
The refuelling is a practical thing mostly because we discovered if we stopped to refuel while he was asleep he would wake when we started the car and wouldn't go back to sleep.