2019 Travel Plans

I was reading back through my post about our 2018 plans, and I found that I approached 2018 with all the big trips laid out already, with only a few weekends here and there left to fill in. A lot of those plans never actually materialized– we’ve had a very busy schedule of kid activities and whatnot AND we’ve had a whole lot of problems with the trailer that are still being resolved–but we had plans at least. And the big trips–Jekyll Island, the east coast and Canada, and Disney–all went down when they were supposed to.

I have no idea what’s going to happen in 2019.

This is not entirely true. Our big summer trip for 2019 is all set, and I’ll get to that in a second. But there’s so much up in the air this year, between Ari going off to college in the fall somewhere (we don’t yet know where or exactly when), Milo and Gus thinking of doing marching band and needing to be around in July for band camp, wanting to dedicate spring break to college visits but not being sure which ones yet, and the trailer repairs that keep dragging on and on and on….it’s been very tough to make plans.

But! Let’s talk about what we do know so far. After three long summer trips in a row exploring all over the US and Canada in our trailer, we’re going in a different direction this summer. Like across the ocean.

Dave’s parents, because they are great, are taking the whole family (us plus Dave’s sister’s family) to Ireland for two weeks in June. And since we’re already going to be in the neighborhood we decided to add on ten days in England (just the six of us) before Ireland. SO EXCITING! This will be the first non-Canadian trip out of the US for the kids and me.

In England we’re planning on spending 5 nights in London and then splitting the remaining time between Bath and the Peak District, before heading to Liverpool and either flying or ferrying over to Dublin. Our Ireland stops are Dublin, Killarney, and Oughterard (our base camp for exploring both Galway and Connemara).

We have all the places to stay reserved already (mostly Airbnbs and the like, owing to our large parties), but there are still lots of details to be worked out as far as rental cars and things to do and all that. Thank goodness I still have something to plan even with all the RV travel totally uncertain!

Santa brought those DK London and DK Ireland books for the big kids so they could help plan and these books for Abe:

“This is Ireland” and “This is London” are reprints of charming books from the 60’s (with endnotes updating information as needed) and “Katie in London” is a more modern but still adorable take on touring London (with a lion statue who comes to life). (All those Amazon links are affiliate links; if you buy anything after following the links I get a tiny commission).

So what about the rest of the year? Well, we don’t know. I’m not counting on having a useable trailer before spring break in early April. We’re likely to spend it checking out colleges in either Ohio or Minnesota, depending on what colleges Ari gets into and which ones are still contenders. But he won’t get admission decisions until March for the most part, so we’re likely to be doing some last minute planning.

I found out that the Braves minor league team in Rome, Georgia has an RV campground right in their stadium parking lot, and we’d love to spend a weekend or two there seeing games and checking out the area.

We’d like to fit in a July trip somewhere or other after we get back from Ireland, but we don’t know when or where yet.

At some point in August we’ll likely be taking Ari to college…..probably somewhere in the northeast or the midwest; depending on the timing we might be able to work some sightseeing into that trip as well (Dave goes back to school at the very beginning of August, so it’s a tricky time of year).

We definitely hope to fit in more fall weekend trips this year than last (i.e. more than zero); I mean, we did Disney and Ari and I did two long college visit road trips, so it’s not like we really stayed home all fall…but we want to get the trailer out next fall and do some shorter trips.

And we already have reservations for Jekyll Island for the week between Christmas and New Year’s. We had to book something like a year and a half out to get that week, so I hope nothing keeps us from being able to go!

So it should be another great year, but also one that’s bound to be a little trying at times for me, the compulsive planner!