What did we learn on our Sprinter Van Roadtrip?! Traveling with a 3 yr old & 11 month old!!

As total newbie's to the Sprinter Van scene we learned a few things!!!

When buying an older model 2008 Sprinter Van 2500, with 340,000 miles things wear out! Our van "Ellie", when we purchased her was crying for help, love, and maintenance. We learned that having spare parts and a few tools comes in handy if an unfortunate situation occurs. In other words, it's never a bad idea to have spare oil, antifreeze and a serpentine belt, just in case!

That being said, we might have overpacked ( a theme for this trip....) and found that our swing away cargo carrier helped greatly to support this initial bad habit! :)

When we arrived at Yellowstone Hot Spring's RV park, we were super excited to try out our NEW Venture quick drying towels! My husband and I are texture sensitive people so the thought of true microfiber towel's made both of us cringe. Venture makes an amazingly soft microfiber texture towel, that feels like butter. Venture's description is spot on, it's suede like material. These light weight towel's dried up super fast! We also loved the black bag's you store them in! Great for Van or RV use! These are now in our travel bin so we will be bringing them on many future adventures. We purchased the large size towels and are very happy with how big they are. The hooks on the towels also came in handy too!!

A few people have asked us, "How did your kids do traveling?" They surprisingly did GREAT!!!

Here's a few things that made our trip better:

• limit daily transits to around 6 hours of drive time (~350 miles) MAX!

• Give the kid's opportunities to get out and stretch their legs or crawl around!

• the more you travel with young kids the easier it becomes!

One thing that we wish we had more opportunity to test out was our Core 12 person tent. We used it for the 1st time at Spokane, Washington KOA! It was wonderful to let our 11 month old baby crawl around and our 3 year old also run inside of! They were contained and kept out of the elements, as it began to rain....and the tent stayed completely dry inside!!!! If you're considering doing a long roundtrip like we did with young kids, think of ways that you can safely contain your kids while they can safely crawl or run around. This was the perfect solution for us!!

We have learned that space optimization is important on this trip, so things that can collapse or serve multiple purposes are nice. I've always been a fan of Sea to Summit products when I purchase one of their dry bags a few years ago before a kayaking trip down the Huron River. I tested it out and it kept my phone, wallet and keys dry, from that point I was thrilled to test out more of their gear. I purchase the X-Plate and X-Bowl for this trip and was pleasantly surprised when I read that it can also double as a cutting board, so I tested it out and sure enough it did a fabulous job for that as well. I was a little nervous to see how well these would hold shape when filled with cereal and milk, I'm happy to report that their was no issues found!! These are light weight so if you are a hiker, Van or RV fan you should definitely give these a try! :)

Thanks for reading our recap! Stay tuned as our next few blogs will be about Pawleys Island, SC!

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