Family Relocation Road Trip - SF to NJ

Hi all! We are relocating to the East Coast with our 8 year old, 5 year old, and 1 year old. We leave in 2 weeks, and have rented an RV for a week. We are trying to be flexible to have low expectations of the trip (with three small kids), but this also will likely be our only cross country drive and are hoping that although coming out of necessity it could be a fun experience for the kids. We are planning to social distance throughout the trip and hope to avoid any crowded stops.

Any advice on this trip would be very much appreciated! Routes, stops, driving times, things to bring, and anything I may not be thinking of! Thank you thank you!

Welcome to the RTA Forum!

To start, are you having all of your belongings moved and then using the RV only for your transportation? RVs make lousy moving vans and have far less storage space than many people tend to think.

As far as the kids go, the nice thing about traveling with young kids is that they are as likely to enjoy a playground at a city park as they are the wonders of a national park or some similar large scale.

Speaking of which, Every State and National Park has different rules regarding reopening and restrictions due to COVID, and if we're being honest, many of the places that have reopened have seen visitors taken the approach that if the park is open at all, then the danger of the virus has completely passed.

If I were in your shoes, I would be focusing on making my stops at state parks, national forests, and other places where you can get out and move around that are less visited and less well known than most national parks.

The places on this list are a great starting point and great examples of what I would be looking for, especially when traveling during these challenging times. That of course is not a complete list of all of your options, just a list of good examples. Good maps - particularly paper maps - will show even more examples of those types of places worth stopping to explore and camp.

Also keep in mind that one week is not a lot of time when traveling coast to coast in an RV. It's plenty of time to complete the journey, but I imagine in your situation, 400-500 miles in a day will be about as much as you'll want to do, and at that rate, you'll need a good week to complete the trip.

Reread Michael's last sentence. Please. Then realize the following: You will not have use of the RV for a full week. When you factor in the time to pick it up, take the introductory lessons on how to operate it, get it loaded, unload it at the end, and drop it off---you can figure on having only six full days on the road. Even to the closest place in New Jersey, that's going to require a minimum of well over 400 miles a day, and almost 500 mi/day to the Newark area. Now consider that stopping for the night is not as simple as getting off the highway at an exit and rolling up to a handy motel. Most RV parks are well off the beaten path and besides the time needed to get to them you'll have to budget time to set things up for the night, and reverse the whole process the next morning. You also would be well-advised to get to the RV park before sunset to help with setting up. In short, RVs are simply not made for what you intend to use this rental for. Also remember that even with all that space inside, you cannot let the kids roam free while you are on the road. They must be buckled in.

One other thing to at least give a passing thought to is the cost of your route. Yes, any mapping routine will show you the shortest/fastest route, basically just I-80, but that route is toll between Chicago and Youngstown OH (and RV tolls are not cheap!). That will get even worse if you're headed for southern New Jersey via Philadelphia. There are alternative routes, but again, the trade-off would be time (which you really don't have) for money. Since traveling cross-country by RV is not inherently cheap (rental, gas, tolls, campsites) I'm assuming that you're doing this to avoid staying at a different motel each night and risking exposure to the coronavirus. You will also stay safer (and save a tiny bit) by cooking your own food rather than eating in restaurants. But make no mistake - this is going to be a stressful trip for the adults. The trick will be to not transmit that stress to the kids and dampen what could be a great trip for them.

AZBuck

This could be a GREAT trip - if you had 2 weeks!

Thanks for all the notes! I very much wish we were not in the situation to do this, but weighing the risks, particularly with the kids, to flying we made the choice to drive. Belongings are being transported separately, so that shouldn't be an issue. We may have some flexibility to extend a day or two, but are not planning this to be a sightseeing trip as we are trying to be extremely safe due to COVID (and as @midwest michael mentioned, we are not treating this that because things may be open the danger is passed - except for the baby we will all have masks when out of the RV).

The week is for driving, not including the pick-up or drop-off days for the RV. Door to door (which we know there will be more miles than that) the route is 414 miles a day at 7 days of driving. The plan is that the kids will be buckled in whenever driving, and we are hoping to be able to split up driving into a couple chunks each day, possibly timing around naps and then a few hours in the early evening. Based on this, we may look for overnight parking (and I have a number of resources for that) vs driving the full 400 miles per day and then stopping at a campground, getting up the next morning and going the next 400 miles. I'm not sure if this makes sense though, not having done it before.

@AZBuck - I would love to know some of the alternative routes you mention - my concern is less around time or money per se, but more limiting how much the kids are forced to be cooped up (which seems to then be trying to take a more direct route, but open to trade-offs that make sense).

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Originally Posted by lesliesp

I would love to know some of the alternative routes you mention.

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Well that would depend on where, exactly, in New Jersey you're headed for. If you let us know that, and any specific interests you or your family might have, we can make some suggestions that are more to your tastes. I will say that with even one extra day for the drive, that opens things up considerably as to how much time you can spend out of the vehicle letting the kids explore and just play.

AZBuck

We can also help you avoid a lot of the tolls.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by lesliesp

Thanks for all the notes! I very much wish we were not in the situation to do this, but weighing the risks, particularly with the kids, to flying we made the choice to drive. Belongings are being transported separately, so that shouldn't be an issue. We may have some flexibility to extend a day or two, but are not planning this to be a sightseeing trip as we are trying to be extremely safe due to COVID (and as @midwest michael mentioned, we are not treating this that because things may be open the danger is passed - except for the baby we will all have masks when out of the RV).

The week is for driving, not including the pick-up or drop-off days for the RV. Door to door (which we know there will be more miles than that) the route is 414 miles a day at 7 days of driving. The plan is that the kids will be buckled in whenever driving, and we are hoping to be able to split up driving into a couple chunks each day, possibly timing around naps and then a few hours in the early evening. Based on this, we may look for overnight parking (and I have a number of resources for that) vs driving the full 400 miles per day and then stopping at a campground, getting up the next morning and going the next 400 miles. I'm not sure if this makes sense though, not having done it before.

@AZBuck - I would love to know some of the alternative routes you mention - my concern is less around time or money per se, but more limiting how much the kids are forced to be cooped up (which seems to then be trying to take a more direct route, but open to trade-offs that make sense).

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As an avid RV'er I'll mention a couple of things.

Driving a motorhome is a lot more tiring for the driver and plan on it being slower and taking longer than driving a car. Make sure that the motorhome you are renting has enough front facing seatbelts! I know a lot of them have them on the couches that face sidewise but I've also read they are not as safe as front facing seats especially for children's car seats.

I don't know what your resource is for overnight parking but I would highly recommend a campground/ RV park for safety reason. I would call ahead to a campground early in the day you are planning on arriving, pay over the phone and have them leave you an envelope with your site and how to get there so you can arrive after office hours. This way you will have a spot and won't have to have contact with anyone. Everyone is going to need a good night sleep!

Utahtea

Speaking from my experiences as a child, father and grandfather, the 5 and 8 year olds would LOVE being able to swim in a pool at the end of every day’s long boring drive.

Looking forward to getting in some pool time gives them something to look forward to, and gives you something to threaten them with if they’re misbehaving.

I started to reply to this thread yesterday, but hit the wrong key and the message went into oblivion. So here I go again. Some of the questions I had, you have answered in response to others.

If your household goods are being transported to your new place, how about your everyday vehicle? Is that being shipped, someone else driving it for you, or are you going to drive alongside? If being shipped, that's easy. Someone else driving it for you, or one of you driving it while the other is driving the RV, can slow you down a bit. Then you have two vehicles to fuel up, two vehicles to remain in contact with each other (from experience, family radios are easier than the phone), but maybe you have the ability to split up the kids.

Both travelingman and Utahtea have suggested getting off the highway into a campground rather than just pulling into a truck stop/travel center that will take RV's. The latter will be noisy, as commercial truckers tend to run their engines ALL night, and they come and go ALL night. Staying in a rest area may not be the great night's rest you think it might be. First off, in many states it's illegal and it's never very safe any more. It's also just as noisy as a truck stop, with folks coming and going all night and truckers running their engines constantly.

We have an entire forum focused on camping, and one of the threads in it has public campgrounds that are within 20 miles or less from the major freeways. Public campgrounds tend to be a little less expensive, but may not have the electric hookups you may desire. Private campgrounds are often located even closer to the highway than indicated above; when my family had an RV, it was rare for us to go more than 5 miles off the highway to find a place to stay, and often it had a pool.

However, one thing seems to be consistent in this COVID-19 age: pools and shower houses at campgrounds have mixed status. Some are closed, some are open. You'll find that showering in an RV is not for the wimp. Most of them have a 6-10 gallon water heater. So you learn to wet down, shut off to soap down, then turn it on again to rinse off. Often the showers are barely big enough to turn around in.


Donna

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Originally Posted by travelingman

Speaking from my experiences as a child, father and grandfather, the 5 and 8 year olds would LOVE being able to swim in a pool at the end of every day’s long boring drive.

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And equally important: Let them sleep in -- hit the road at Noon. Every day can be a new adventure in fun.

Mark

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Originally Posted by DonnaR57

However, one thing seems to be consistent in this COVID-19 age: pools and shower houses at campgrounds have mixed status. Some are closed, some are open. You'll find that showering in an RV is not for the wimp. Most of them have a 6-10 gallon water heater. So you learn to wet down, shut off to soap down, then turn it on again to rinse off. Often the showers are barely big enough to turn around in.


Donna

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This is actually a good argument for a private campground where you can make reservations. If you don't have water and sewer hook ups you need to take showers like Donna mentioned. If you have a campsite with water and sewer hook ups you can easily take a good shower. Water can heat back up really quickly so you only have a short time between everyone that needs to shower. Make sure you turn on the shower for the children before they get in to make sure it's not to hot and stay there to make sure they don't knock the faucet handles. (Our old RV had a small shower with handles so low we would accidentally bump into them and we'd get very HOT water or very COLD water depending on which one we bumped!) While the hot water heaters are small they are designed to be VERY hot so you can mix it with a lot of cold water so you can have a pretty long and comfortable shower. It takes a lot of testing to get a good mix of hot and cold to make sure you don't get scalded! Same with washing hands at the sink for the children! Hot can be VERY HOT!

Utahtea

Thanks for all these notes! In terms of the route AZBuck, our RV return is in Linden, NJ. For specific interests, as many have alluded to, I think mainly places for the kids to get the energy out. Thanks so much again for all these notes!

I-80 will still form the backbone of your driving out west, but to avoid the toll roads out east, and the congested cities you'd be paying to get around or through, a slightly different route could pay off pretty well. The route laid out below adds just under a hundred miles but misses the Tri-State Tollway, The Indiana Toll Road, The Ohio Turnpike, and most of the Pennsylvania Turnpike.

You'd leave I-80 at Lincoln NE and take I-29 to St. Joseph MO, then US-36/I-72 to Champagne IL. Note that US-36 is just slightly below Interstate specs for most of its length it's four-lane, divided, limited access roadway. I-72 joins I-74 at Champagne so just follow that to Indianapolis where you'd take the Beltway (I-465) around the northern side of the city to I-70 eastbound on the other side. I've found that when driving relatively slow and unmaneuverable vehicles that the best thing t do in multi-lane, heavy-traffic situations like this is to get in the next to the farthest right lane rather than the farthest right. Leave that on for people getting on or off. Anyway, continue on I-70 east, using Beltways around larger cities where available, to Mount Pleasant PA and join the Pennsylvania Turnpike (I-76 TOLL) east to Bedford PA and hop on I-99 north up t0 I-80 east. That will finally take you into the Newark area and I-280 to the Garden State Parkway (TOLL) to almost Linden.

Even with an extra day or two, your time is still going to be your most precious commodity, so don't be tempted to take major detours to see "must see" attractions. It really won't take much travel off the most efficient routes to have you end up spending all your 'extra' time driving to places you then won't have time to enjoy. There's plenty along either of the two basic routes (I-80 all the way, or the slightly longer route outlined above) to keep you and the kids occupied, entertained, and informed without making things more stressful than they're already going to be.

AZBuck

I would modify Buck's recommendation as follows, this keeps you on Interstates and avoids PA Turnpike tolls:

Stay on I-80 to Moline IL, then take I-74 to Indy. Take the southern I-465 bypass back to I-70.
At Columbus OH, take the northwest I-270 bypass to I-71. Take I-71 to I-76 through Akron to I-80. To get to Linden, take I-287 to NJ-24 to I-78 to the Garden State Parkway. Go south to Exit 136. Note the the GSP has relatively low arched bridges in that old section, use the 2nd lane from the right if your RV is tall.