We’ve got bottles of it for Anniversary for several years (since we don’t drink) and it really is good for any occasion. Although it’s hard to find it anytime but around the holidays. I know it’s not necessarily a travel or vacation idea, but I thought some families might appreciate the tip. Happy New Year!

I hope that at the very least you have a first aid kit that you keep in your car. A tool kit of some sort for me is a good thing to accompany that. (The tool kit came in really handy when my 2 year old discovered a light switch on the car that I had never noticed before and I had to just pull a fuse to cut off car lights until I could look during the day for a better way to switch it off.) Most cars have a spare tire already, but make sure you would have the tools to change it. A cell phone is a great thing to have “just in case” but many of you may be surprised that there are places that you just can’t get coverage so don’t expect that a cellphone alone will bail you out of any problem.

Personally I like keeping a good road map in the car. I like these maps that cover all fifty states. They do give less detail but, you don’t have to keep buying maps at each gas station and they give you pretty good coverage. Even if you have a GPS navigator please learn to read and use a map…. they have been known to lead people astray on roads that weren’t finished yet, were closed for some reason (rock slide, weather, flooding, etc.) Plus your batteries could die and then you’ll be glad you have a real paper map.

Jumper cables!

I’d also suggest a flashlight (or two) and spare batteries in your car packing. Maybe even one of those little battery operated LED emergency flashers. We have a little yellow flasher like that. It straps on your arm if you need to walk along the road at night and will help you to be seen. If that doesn’t work for you, look for some reflective tape. At least with that, batteries won’t run down and someone with a light would be able to spot you. (i.e. if you have to walk along the road maybe you can be seen.)

For winter weather I like the idea of putting a couple spare blankets in the car. Again, just in case. If you are stuck or stranded for a while these can really help. More important than that though is to make a good practice of keeping at least a half a tank of gas in your car. You’ll be surprised how long a car can idle with a half tank of gas. If you are stranded along the road you can idle the car to charge cell phone batteries and warm up, cover up in the blankets and pace your usage of the gas and hold out for a good amount of time.

Water bottles are a good thing to have on hand for each passenger (good or bad weather). I like the aluminum/steel refillable canisters. Snacks…. well, you can go longer without food than without water or shelter so here I’d just make sure there’s a pack of peanut butter crackers per person or granola bars. (Something that can help maintain energy because you expend more in cold weather environments.)

Some other items that you may wish to pack are as follows:

Small portable weather band monitor with SAME alert. This way no matter where you are you should be able to tune the nearest NOAA weather radio frequencies. If you spend a fair amount of time in one place you can program it to come on and alert you of warnings issued in that area. I’d also throw in a portable battery powered radio (so you don’t drain the car battery listening, or waste fuel just to listen to the car radio.) You’re most likely to find local news and info on the AM band, but some FM stations may do local news as well. The best time to catch local news is the top of the hour either way. Some stations will also have a news/weather segment at the half hour.

Oh, also, the FM stations that you tune in are likely to be closer because those frequencies don’t travel as far. AM stations can be further away (at night you may pick up stations MUCH further away in the AM band).

Some people suggest a bag of sand or kitty litter to help with traction on ice/packed snow and that might be a good extra item to pack. A change of clothes is another good one (if you get stuck in the snow you will want to change into something dry after digging out.) Of course if you’re traveling you probably already have that covered. Some sort of tire patch/repair kit would be another smart item to add as well as a collapsible small shovel to help with the digging out from snow. Matches or a lighter and candle with a sturdy base would be good too. (You could use it to melt snow for water.) A knife of some sort, rope, pencil and paper (sharpen with the knife if you need to….) All these are good things to have in your emergency car travel kit.

Another bonus that I like are these small portable 2 way radios that run on the FRS (Family Radio Service). They have a 1/2 mile or so range in our area (mountains) but can work with a clear line of sight further (up to 4-7 miles if conditions are really good.) If one person has to leave the car it would be nice to be able to communicate back and forth.

So…. where can we fit the luggage and passengers?

I know it seems like a lot, but really many of these items can be crammed into a small box and kept out of the way. Make sure to check your spare and main batteries from time to time (before a trip is a good chance.) Also make sure to replace items in your first aid kit after they’re used so you don’t get caught short next time out. I’ve seen some suggestions to reverse the batteries in a flashlight so that it isn’t accidentally flipped on while packed. It seems like a lot to pack, but as the scouts always said “be prepared”. Even if you don’t wind up getting stranded on the side of the road it feels better to be ready for the worst. (Plan for the worst, hope for the best.)

Happy and safe travels!

Yes, they really do work. However it is important that you have them sized correctly. They are sized based on your weight. The heavier you are, the larger the snowshow area needs to be. Now, today there are many different kinds of snowshoes. They don’t always look like the traditional wood and leather (or neoprene) snowshoes. Mine are the traditional design though.

First off, by foot I was sinking about 13 inches into the snow with each step. It was tedious and difficult to break a trail and I got snow down my boots, my pants, socks and boots were soaked and toes going numb by the time I got out of the soggy boots. NOT good.

I gave the snow shoes a try thinking that anything would be an improvement over that. (Boots were still soaked even after a long time by the fire.) So…. I put on tennis shoes (yes….) and then stepped onto the snowshoes to attach them. This is when I learned the first tip. Depending on the shoes you were and the type of attachment your snowshoes have for footwear, you may wish to strap the shoes in first and then step into the your shoes already attached to the snowshoes. This saved me a lot of frustration as I was in and out of the snowshoes quite a bit over several days.

In our snow I only sunk down about 3-5 inches at the most in the snowshoes compared to 13 inches in boots. It was a fantastic improvement. Only the cuffs of my pants occasionally got snow on them. Most of the time those 5″ sinkings and snow on the cuffs was from my carelessness and letting the snowshoe go at a bit of an angle. Before long I had packed down a pretty good path with the snowshoes. It helped me to have a walking stick (or two) for balance.

Backing in snowshoes can be a challenge. With my traditional teardrop design, the heel of the shoe is not connected to the snowshoe itself and so…. when you try to lift the “tail” up it doesn’t lift. Lot’s of small movements for a turn are needed and most turns make a large radius.

I compared a path we made by foot which compacted down to a deep trench of ice to a path compacted with the snow shoes. It was much easier to walk on foot in the snow shoe path (although you did compact the snow a bit more there.) If you stuck to the snow shoes the snow shoe path did not become more compact and icy like the boot path.

One note that I didn’t expect is that my calf muscles were very sore after a lot of snowshoeing.

Some other things to remember. Try to keep the snowshoes level. Try not to use the snow shoes to bridge a gap. Instead try to place the most supported part of the snowshoe (near the ball of your foot) on a log or other raised obstacle to step over and cross it, or carefully step over the obstacle without leaving the snow shoe on it. I have had a good deal of fun with these snow shoes. It made my trips through the snow much more entertaining as I wasn’t worried about the melting snow in my boots. Instead I got to focus more on what I was doing, seeing and less on whether I was about to get frostbite.

I know it’s not exactly a vacation I’ve been on, it’s all been around the house here, but in some ways it’s felt like a vacation (albeit a tiring one.)

I will say that most of the deaths you will hear reported in the summer in Western North Carolina are of hikers near waterfalls. Be careful, cautious and aware that wet rocks can be slippery. Don’t go into uncertain areas without a guide. Stay on marked hiking trails and be safe.

Yes, Western North Carolina IS still open for business as many are trying to make sure that people are aware of. The catch is you should expect travel plans to take a bit longer and you will see a bit heavier than normal traffic en route to your destination.

What do I mean by “they have done it right”? Read on…

For starters, let’s face it, there are probably more attractions within a few square miles here than you can hope to see in a few days. Myrtle Beach has seen similar development and variety of attractions in the southeast, but really there aren’t too many places that have such a wide range of activities for the whole family. But, that’s not quite what I mean. There are good sidewalks and crosswalks through Sevierville, Pigeon Forge, Gatlinburg. They know people (tourists) are going to spend a lot of time on foot and an effort has been made to make it somewhat pedestrian friendly with sidewalks on both sides of the main thoroughfare.

What’s even more fantastic really is the excellent trolley system which, this visit we have not taken advantage of. There are frequent trolley stops extending all the way up into Sevierville. It’s possible to catch a trolley not 100 feet from our hotel, ride that to their central station, switch to head to the Gatlinburg welcome center and then connect on to the station at the Aquarium in Gatlinburg. The only reason we haven’t used it this time is we would have had yet another trolley to take us to the Arts and Crafts Community and seeing that the traffic wasn’t as bad as last time, we headed out in the car.

We see so many things here that are really good ideas for attracting and bringing back tourists that we would love to see other places take lessons from what good things they’ve done. Traffic lights on the main thoroughfare are numbered. This makes dealing with the tourist maps easier. It’s easy to spot the numbers on the traffic lights, (easier than finding the street name signs) and it’s pretty clear which number will come next. There are good informational signs pointing the way to certain areas and attractions and although they have the natural benefit of one main thoroughfare leading from Sevierville to Gatlinburg, it’s well thought out in the way they make use of it and present it to visitors.

I’m also impressed by how well they have really worked to brand and market their cultural heritage. Coming from the other side of the Blue Ridge in Weaverville, North Carolina I see many ways that our area has failed to take as much advantage of making a strong branding identity out of the craft and folk heritage that is ours. When it comes down to it there are many things that our area of the mountains shares with Gatlinburg, but it’s largely absent on the local cable access channels, it’s just not as big a focus for Asheville tourism. Perhaps it was more of a focus 30 years ago, but I feel as though some of the local mountain heritage roots of Asheville has been played down somewhat in recent years.

Anyway, I suppose I should mention the place that we’re staying. We’re at the Days Inn Apple Valley and we’re really here for two reasons. One, we found a good room rate through priceline and saw several good reviews and 2) they have a pool. Our oldest son had his heart set on a summer getaway to a hotel with pool that we had visited in Maggie Valley before, but really the POOL was the big thing he wanted. The pricing in Maggie Valley was in the range of $110 a night if I recall correctly and the pricing here at the Days Inn was less than half that for a well reviewed spot. So…. that’s why we’re here.

It’s clean and well kept. I imagine a hotel in this area that’s NOT clean would have a tough time because there are so MANY different places to stay around here. In fact, I suspect that’s the main reason we got a good rate, there are so many rooms, they really have to compete on price. We’ve seen places advertising rates of $28 and up (places that at least from the street are looking nice and well kept.) Maggie Valley on the other hand has a limited number of hotels and I guess there is not as much pressure to draw people in. They have more of a captive audience I guess you could say.

Anyway, the pool here is between 3-5 feet all the way around. That’s fine for the boys right now as the only jumping in is a little feet first plunge. The hotel has been fairly quiet and has free wifi. I asked at the desk for the username/password for the wireless (terms and condition page on your first connect.) I probably could have guessed the combination – it’s really just a formality. Our room was a double queen with microwave and refrigerator. Big tv of course, ironing board, hair dryer and coffee maker. Really it was nothing outstanding that I would really remember I think. Which is the other challenge to a hotel in such a high competition area. It was a good clean room, everyone seemed friendly. My wife and children took advantage of the breakfast offered which they seemed to enjoy. The beds and pillows have been fairly comfortable (four pillows on each bed is kind of nice.) On the criticism side…. the towels are a bit rough (I joked about ex foliating while you dry) and the bathroom is a touch small although I think other suites have different options.

Would we make a point to come back to this particular place. I doubt it, there really are so many places to choose from we’d probably try another hotel just to see if we had found a place we’d make a point to revisit. We stayed once at the Greystone Lodge next to the Aquarium and for that convenience might return there again. But there’s a Fairfield Inn and Suites in Pigeon Forge (and I think one in Gatlinburg too.) There’s the National Parks Resort Lodge and then, the Pigeon River Inn, the Mountain Melodies Inn all here in a short stretch in Pigeon Forge just to name a few that we’ve walked past.

As for attractions, we visited the Arts and Crafts Community (Alewine Pottery in particular). Our oldest had fun I believe casting his own bowl which we should receive after it’s dried, glazed and fired in about 6-8 weeks. (Not bad for $25.) We toured several spots in the nearby area and then returned to the pool on the first full day we were here. We’ve also visited Tanger Outlet Mall. There are some good deals to be had, but we really need to make a plan before coming for Christmas or back to school shopping otherwise you could spend days wandering from store to store there. We also visited Wonder Works which I thought our oldest would like (it’s the big upside down house.) But, the best we could do was visit the gift shop area and look around the lobby, we had given the choice of that or mini golf on our last full day. It turns out we didn’t make either, but had a pretty full day anyway.

As for eating, we tended to keep on the simple and cheap side. One of the highlights though was Buddy’s Bar-B-Que. (They have great sauces.) We didn’t remember the Apple Barn being so close to the main thoroughfare or we may have eaten there. We wound up walking out there the last evening (our hotel is at the intersection you turn to go out there.) I was remembering it being a ways out, but it’s really an 8th of a mile or less just around the curve from the traffic light.

Anyway it’s been a good trip, we’ll be heading out tomorrow and as usual I’ll have this post scheduled to go out after we’ve left town. This post has been enough to remind me though that I need to revisit our page structure here and really get to work fleshing out information on these areas we’ve already visited with more information.

First off, our oldest likes to read so he had several books packed as well as crayons or markers and paper. In many ways he’s just arriving at the age where he is relatively easy to entertain on the road. Our youngest though at 14 months is a tougher sell. Fortunately he slept some, but his Mom had carefully planned a bag of tricks with some of his favorite toys that we could progressively bring out (including an Elmo and Grover hand puppet.) When those tricks were wearing thin we had some veggietales music that we could pull out that passed a couple hours of entertainment. By that time we were over-vegged and ready for something different. I had prepared a few cartoons (Scooby Doo) on the laptop for them to watch which carried us the last leg of the trip (and through some of the worst sit still traffic jam I’ve seen in a good while.)

Some suggestions to keep in mind are to save your flashiest tricks until last. For instance, the video was the very last item in our list because our kids really could have watched that the whole trip…. (aaaauuuugggghhhhh….)

Mixing things up is also a good idea. And don’t forget those road games like looking for signs that start with the letters of the alphabet, or looking for license plates from different states. These are especially good with older children (and can even keep an adult from getting too vegg-ed out.)

One last thought to keep in mind is to remember to stop frequently and take advantage of the large green spaces that so many rest areas have to let the kids run around a bit and burn off that pent up energy. Try to plan out your travels so that you don’t feel as though you’ve got to push on and hurry to get to your destination by a certain time. GIve yourself plenty of time and realize you’ll get there WHEN you get there and it will really be more fun for everyone if you take your time and can take breaks to stay fresh along the way.

Our third car is a 1990 Honda Accord and again, the storage space just doesn’t cut it for the family trip any more.

For our most recent trip to Surfside Beach, SC for our family vacation we had a rental van and it worked out just great. We had plenty of room for the cooler as well as in car entertainment and luggage, food stuffs for snacks (and meals for the 14 month old.) There was room for the pack n play playpen that our youngest would sleep in when we made it there, the baby carrier backpack that really just doesn’t fold up much, etc.

Enterprise car rental is where we managed to rent the van and the vehicle was a Dodge Grand Caravan with the stow and go seating. I was really impressed with the vehicle (I had not driven a Dodge before, nor a van except for within a car dealership lot.) We’ve toyed with buying a van as our next vehicle and after this trip I’m a bit more convinced that a van will be our choice next time around. This vehicle supposedly seats 7. To be honest that back row will have some cramped leg space I think, but it would be possible to get 7 passengers in. We folded one of the middle row seats down to give our oldest a bit more legroom in the back row. Our infant seat was anchored securely behind the driver side seat and we had room for a large thermoelectric cooler in the floor next to him.

The only thing I didn’t like was the difficulty of the front passenger to reach and hand things to the other passengers. My wife usually drives because she get’s carsick riding, so I’m used to being in the passenger seat and in charge of handing snacks/etc. off which was more challenging in the van.

Some benefits of renting a vehicle for your vacation are that you can get a vehicle that get’s better gas mileage than your own (ours got ~25 miles per gallon over the trip.) More space, or simply better maintained. I remember growing up, my parents always made a point to have the car serviced not long before we were going on a long trip to make sure everything was working well… it’s really not a bad idea. The price wasn’t that bad either it came to between $50 and $60 a day and of course they have an 800 number that you can call if you have any problems.

The biggest hassle, I thought was having to get things unloaded and delivered back the day we got back into town, so if you’re renting a vehicle I would suggest giving yourself some grace time for the pickup and redelivery of your rental vehicle. It will make things a bit less hectic for you. Of course it’s also a bit challenging to get used to a new vehicle in time for a long drive, but having a different vehicle helped me to switch mental gears from my day to day “hurry and get things done” mindset to…. “we have plenty of time”.

We stayed in a nice condo in the Surfwatch building. It was nice to be on the top floor, we had a nice balcony view of the beach and ocean and the kids had fun. Fortunately we were all over the stomach bug that we got the week prior to heading down. (We thought we may have to delay the drip a bit.) But, all went well, we got the rental van and loaded up. Now, if you’ve traveled with kids, you know that it’s easy to bring EVERYTHING along. I’ll try to talk about the in-car entertainment in another post because there’s just so much I can talk about in one posting.

Surfside Beach is a really nice little town. It’s quieter than Myrtle Beach and they intend to not allow large high-rise condos. In fact our 4 floor of livable space condo building was one of the taller ones along the surfside oceanfront. There are good sidewalks on both sides of Ocean Blvd. heading up and down the beach which we made some good use of. There are also sidewalks down Surfside Avenue towards Business 17 and down 10th street. There are several parks including one all Childrens park on 10th street that we had scouted out beforehand as a diversion if we needed it for the kids, but ultimately we didn’t make it to them.

We weren’t there for many days, the day we arrived it was raining and we got in rather late, so there wasn’t time to go out to the beach. Our next day though was the day to go to the beach. Although it was quite cool (mid 60s with a cool breeze), our oldest (7 years) had a ball playing in the water and some in the sand as well. We had brought a kite with us to try out which did quite well in the breeze and we also had a Frisbee that Dunes Realty had given to the kids on our arrival.

We had walked down to the pier at Surfside Beach that day and taken a bit of a look around there, getting a bite of breakfast at a great restaurant at the pier called Nibils. I HIGHLY recommend getting something to eat there. I think we ate there about 3 times while we were there and everything was very good. The Scallops for dinner were exceptional, their breakfast fare was good and the shrimp was very good as well. There is a pay to park lot at the pier, but really it was walking distance for us, so two of the times we ate there we just walked.

Our second full day there was our expedition to Broadway at the Beach which is sort of an outdoor mall/amusement complex. They have the IMAX theater and Ripleys Aquarium among smaller shops, some amusement park rides, etc. The Aquarium and IMAX theater were our main targets. We went to the aquarium first. I think our youngest is not quite old enough to enjoy the aquarium. He is about 14 months and just didn’t quite get into it like we had hoped. Our oldest has now seen 3 aquariums (the Ripleys Aquarium in Gatlinburg, the Aquarium in Chattanooga and now Myrtle Beach’s Ripleys Aquarium.) The floorplan of this aquarium is very similar to the one in Gatlinburg and I think our 7 year olds mind was more on being able to play at the beach again. Personally I don’t think this one is quite as good as the one in Gatlinburg. We stopped at the snack shop there as we were finishing up and then prepared to head to the Imax. On the way we did a sidetrip through 18 holes at the minigolf course called Dragon’s Lair. Our 7 year old had a great time (he loves mini golf.)

By this time we needed to get some lunch so we followed the maps to the location of the Chic-fil-a, only to find that it was shuttered up. So, we wound up eating at Tripp’s instead and then heading back to the IMAX in time to realize we’d missed the showing we hoped to see by 20 minutes. (Sigh!)

Along the way though we got to see a magic shop with some odds and ends and a store called Sugar that was filled with all sorts of candy/sweets. We even got to make a personalized mix of M&M colors (it wasn’t quite cheap, but entertaining.) We’d definitely revisit Broadway at the beach if for no other reason than we didn’t get to see it all. (They also have boat rides and other amusement park stuff.)

I think there was another beach trip on this day, and then some plans for the next day which was a trip to Brookgreen Gardens.

Brookgreen Gardens is a unique spot. I think if we lived there we would get memberships just to go walk and picnic anytime. They are VERY well kept and tended, there’s a nice mix of formal gardens and statuaries. I don’t think the kids quite got into it. I think we spent around 4-5 hours there but it felt quite rushed trying to see everything. They have a children’s discovery exhibit which entertained our oldest a bit. Our 14 month old though is a little tougher to find things to keep him amused and he mostly spent the time sitting in the stroller riding or napping. There is a shuttle at Brookgreen to take you from the main welcome center to the other two locations (which includes a zoo) within the property.

The zoo kept our oldest somewhat interested. I would have liked to take more time there than we did though. In summary, I think our oldest would have been content just to spend three full days playing in the water and sand at the beach, but I’m glad we managed to get to at least see the other places mentioned. I know if we’re going back we’ll revisit Brookgreen Gardens.

As I have time I will try to expand posts and perhaps pages on these places I’ve mentioned along with other notes on our trip. Look for those coming soon. I definitely hope to be able to revisit the Surfside Beach area in coming years!

It can be a good idea to keep an eye out for those times of year when not as many people are traveling to try to cash in on the travel deals, but it’s also worth thinking about WHY people aren’t traveling that time of year. January wouldn’t be a great month to go to a water park in Minnesota, let’s face it!

Other advantages of off season travel are that there just aren’t as many people on the roads or in line. Hotels may be quieter and have special events that are less likely to be booked well in advance. Show tickets are more available, etc.

So… think about the benefits and if you have an opportunity enjoy the good things of off season travel.