"Surviving the Road: Traveling 1,340 Miles with 2 Kids in a Sprinter Van"

Melissa Carr
Apr 16, 2024
4 min read

January 26th we embarked on our next road trip to Lynchburg, VA my hometown and then continued to Maryland, January 28th where my sister and her family live! This trip was a very dense trip, read on to find out why! :)

Friday afternoon January 26th, around 4pm we finally hit the road. David found an AWESOME stop for the night about 6 hours towards our 1st destination of Forest, VA. While on the trip, David did voice text for the destination, and it sounded good so we hit navigate not thinking to check the location prior to arrival, OOPS!! When it said you're a few minutes from your destination we started feeling like something wasn't right, we were climbing some very steep roads to a park in St. Albans West Virginia, but the destination is supposed to be next to a river, not a mountain....After we arrived to said destination, we knew that we weren't at the correct place so once we correctly input the information, and confirmed with photos the correct address, we got back on the road for another 10 minutes. As we were getting closer, I was super nervous that my husband had taken the wrong road or something as the underpass we were supposed to go under was a single lane, hobbit tunnel, that I thought was a small creek, as their was recent flooding in that area. I thought for sure we weren't going to fit underneath and we were going to take this tunnel out with the roof rack on our Sprinter... but we somehow, managed to fit! David got out of the van to snag some photos for the memories.. Thank God he was driving, If it was me driving, I would for sure have hit something... Ellie managed to get through this tunnel in 1 piece and no new dents! :)

The place we finally stayed at is called roadside park in St. Albans WV, with a nice water view, they had 3 pull through sites with electric and water hookups, and then a dump station as you're leaving. What a deal, as it was completely FREE too! Since we were just passing through it was the perfect spot to stop and park for the night and recharge (maximum stay is 2 days)! This place is great for families with kiddo's as they even had a nice play ground, that we didn't have the time to utilize, however, we will for sure be back here again to check out all this place has to offer!

https://thedyrt.com/camping/west-virginia/saint-albans-roadside-park

The next morning, we woke up and drove 1 minute down to the street to Wendy's to grab a quick breakfast before hitting the road to visit my high school friend Stephanie and her family in Forest, VA! We arrived to Stephanie's house just in time for lunch and a short hang out/trampoline jumping session before needing to leave, so that we wouldn't be late to a Celebration of Life for my friend, Lauren's mama. We surprised Lauren when we walked into the church, she had NO idea that we were coming. It was super nice to see her! :) What else is interesting is January 27th was my mom's birthday which happened to be the day she chose to celebrate her mom's life. Coincidence, I think not! Everything happens for a reason! Thankful, Grateful and Blessed to have so many amazing people in our lives!

Stephanie, Me, Daniel and DC Anna and DC jumping! Lauren, Daniel, Me and DC

After the celebration of Lauren's moms life we headed to Downtown Lynchburg to Depot Grill to have dinner with my friend Sandi who she has known for 20+ years! It was really nice to reconnect with lots of old friends and family on this trip. After Depot Grill we stayed with my bestie Susie's parents Lauri and Richard for the night. Then the next morning we had breakfast at Cracker Barrel in Lynchburg to meet up with my father John, who we haven't seen in about 13 years, before continuing the next leg of our trip, to Maryland.

Me, Sandi, David, DC & Daniel Me and Bestie Susie John, Me, Daniel, David, DC

On the road again, this time we are headed to Germantown, Maryland to visit with my sister Ashley and her family for an entire week!!!

Daniel's 1st experience eating Pho! He loved it!!

DC and Max! They are best buddies! Daniel loved exploring Max's cage! Don't

worry we don't lock our children in cages!

One VERY nice perk about having a Sprinter Van and visiting family is mobile office on wheels! While visiting family, we stayed inside my sisters house while David had to work. It was nice that he could take meetings, come inside to have lunch with us and then head back out to work remotely! The boys had lots of room to run around both inside and out while David wasn't bothered by us as he worked from Ellie! The only CON is Ellie is quite a beast, length wise she doesn't fit too nicely in a standard car parking space. We made it work for the week!

When the neighbor needed to move their car 1 time during the week, this is how far we had to backup so they could get out... We didn't stay this way for long as we didn't want to block the sidewalk for all the other people who live there and walk around their neighborhood.

After a very nice week with Family and helping my sister prepare for a new addition, we left Maryland on Sunday February 4th and drove all the way back to Michigan. Luckily it wasn't a bad travel day. We drove 4 hours down the road and found a nice park to stop by and have lunch at before getting the kids to run off some energy. We highly recommend if you're in Ohio stop by Ravenna Community Playground. It's a nice park with lots of things to do for children of varying ages!