We planned a small handful of road trips in the summer months during the week with our baby. We were both on parental leave and were able to go to some nice destinations and avoid the crowds.

An obvious benefit of taking our car on road trips is that it makes overpacking a lot easier. We think that for you, you’ll find an immense list of benefits with choosing road trips for the early travels with an infant.

Read on to discover why to consider road trips with your little one.

What’s considered a “road trip?”

  • Day trips and road trips both involve driving to your destination.
  • Road trips might include an overnight stay, or several.
  • We consider driving anywhere over 1-2 hours to be a road trip, because we have to prepare all our baby’s things just the same, if we’re going to be out all day.

Why take a road trip?

Here are our reasons to take a road trip with a baby:

  • You can take a LOT more with you in the car, compared to flying, which forces you to pare down all your luggage, weigh it and pay per bag.
  • You can stop along the way to your destination as needed: bathrooms, rest areas, snacks, feeding stops, points of interest, meals, nature and diaper changes.
  • For toddlers 18-24m, you can stop at playgrounds and parks when they get antsy in the car!
  • The act of driving to a final destination is also sometimes a bonus “micro trip” based on what you can stop and see.
  • You can drive as little or as much per day, depending on where you’re going and on your child’s behavior in the car.

Things to consider when taking road trips with your baby (vs a toddler)

Car rides are much easier (in our experience) when they’re aligned with a baby’s naps. Once we learned how to manage this, we could breathe a bit easier as new parents.

Next, remember that with road trips, you can take all your favorite baby toiletries and medicines from home, and they don’t have to be travel-sized, like they would have to be for flying!

Lastly, flexibility: you can always stop the car. You can always change the plans. You can always head home early, like if there is a health issue or something unexpected like a power outage where you are staying.

Packing for a road trip

Packing for a road trip is more low-stress than packing for a trip with flights, at least in our experience! We’ve been able to pack as many diapers as we want, with no limit, compared with when we’ve taken trips with flights.

What to pack? Packing lists will vary by your baby’s age; however, two things we’ve nearly always taken with us on road trips are a travel bassinet or travel crib, and our stroller.

For babies drinking milk, remember to pack all required breastfeeding accessories, pump parts, bottles, formula containers and a travel bottle brush set with dish soap, just in case your accommodation does not have any.

While we recommend taking a lot of non-perishable snacks for babies eating solids as well as toddlers, the truth is that you can always look up a supermarket and drive to a store when you want to get more daytime snacks or mealtime foods for your baby.

  • We’ve made stops to Trader Joe’s stores along our route to pick up snacks for everyone. It’s helpful to stop at any supermarket if we ate more than we expected during the car rides.
  • Either way, plan to be flexible because the day of your road trip could be the time that your baby or toddler decides that they don’t like their favorite food!

Planning road trip activities around naps

With naps being a big part of traveling with a baby, we’ve been able to sync naps with ways to help our trip continue moving. Here are our tips for you, if you want to get naps in at the right times, creatively:

  • Naps in a baby carrier during a hike
  • Naps in a stroller while walking around a town or city
  • Naps in the car while driving from destination to destination
  • Leaving home for your destination and departing the destination for home, at nap time or bedtime.

How to pick a road trip destination

First, consider driving distances, and how your baby handles car rides. Does your baby shriek in the car, or fall asleep immediately? This may also vary month by month and phase by phase!

Consider if driving north will get colder, or if going south will get warmer, in different times of year. We always like a cooler escape in summer, and a warm escape in fall and winter.

Family and friend stops: you can work in multiple stops with friends and family to visit during a road trip. This can be really helpful when traveling with a baby!

Visiting and staying with family or friends: If you’re traveling a long distance to get to the home of family or friends, or if you realize you forgot something along the way, you can order things there. This is a good way to lighten the amount of things that you’re packing.

Overall, we considered locations that were around 2 hours away from us. We mentioned in the introduction that we took a 6-hour road trip to New Hampshire with our newborn. That was to visit family and we had 2 grandparents traveling with us. We stopped more times than we can count, and somehow our infant took a 3-hour nap, which was the longest to date at the time. You never know what can happen in the car.

Determining how long to travel on a road trip with your baby

A lot goes into deciding just how long to go away on a road trip with a baby. Here are some things we factor in:

  • Think about how long you want to be away from the comforts of home.
  • Be logical about how tiring it might be to switch hotels or Airbnbs every few days and get used to new sleep environments with the baby.
  • Figure out if a long weekend trip is right for your family, or if a more extended trip like a week away is going to be fun, memorable and worthwhile.
  • Work in your child’s needs and any particular phases they are going through (sleep regressions, special health concerns, etc.).

Planning for the unexpected

Take it from us: during one of our road trips, a huge rainstorm made our Airbnb lose power, and then it lost WATER, too!

We commend doing some up-front planning, when you travel by car with a baby. Have some backup battery chargers for phones, some bottled water in the car for your baby’s water cups or baby formula, backup snacks in the trunk and a First Aid Kit.

Other unexpected situations might include health scares, hospital visits, broken-down vehicles or lots of traffic on the road! It pays to have Plan B for every scenario. This is a time to have your Rain Plan ready.

Packing lists

See our Packing page to learn about what we’ve taken on road trips at every age. You can also check out our list of what you really need to bring to pare down to the best essentials.

Deciding when to go home

Vacation with a baby can go one way or another, so when is it time to plan to go home?

  • We once cut a road trip short due to our rural Airbnb losing power and water in a storm. For us, getting home and back to safety was more important than losing our final night of vacation!
  • If you come across unexpected scenarios, the great thing about a road trip is being able to duck out and go home, with your car.
  • Decide when the cons are outweighing the pros of staying on the trip, and head home if it means everyone being safe and happy.
  • If there is unexpected weather coming, like a storm, blizzard or hurricane, stay up to date with weather reports and dodge the weather so that you don’t get stranded somewhere with your baby.

Road trips and flexibility

More than not, road trips let us be flexible, and that’s what comes to mind when we think of road tripping with our baby. Here are a few main ideas to digest:

  • We’ve enjoyed that road trips with a baby means we can change plans at a whim.
  • Doing something like changing hotel plans, or stopping to visit a friend along your route, are possible with a road trip, and not with a flying trip.
  • Road trips also have allowed us to head to a different destination when there’s rain, or if it’s too hot.
  • We’ve also been able to add new things to the itinerary (like a good recommendation from a friend, a one-day fair or festival or a special event!) as we discover them once we’ve already arrived.
  • Road trips allow flexibility with time, when you travel with a baby. You can head out late on day one, or come back early on the last day because you’ve run out of things to do or because the nap schedule changed.