Road Trip Day 2: Indian John Hill I-90 Rest Stop

We pulled over for our first stop in the morning at Indian John Hill Rest Stop at about 10:00. It's was a very busy location with lots of people coming in and out but I was able to pull our 2007 GMC Yukon XL Denali and 35' Keystone Premier 31BHPR travel trailer into a nice central parking spot. This rest area was large with nice grassy areas, picnic tables, and plenty of tourist information. The view is very nice, too, with the Stuart mountain range in the distance.

Unfortunately, there was one dog owner who didn't follow the signs and had their large dogs loose outside the designated dog area, so I couldn't let our 2-year-old play in the grass. It was too bad because he really needed to work off some energy.

We're lucky all our 5 kids travel really well. We've done extended road trips in the past, including driving to...
...Washington, DC, (see Road Trip 2007, Road Trip 2008, Road Trip 2009) and we generally find that leaving not too early, having a morning break, an extended lunch, an afternoon break, and then the final stop for the night not too late in the afternoon worked out to be a good routine for us. Each break was never rushed and we encouraged the kids--especially the younger ones--to run and play as much as possible. It usually works out to be around an easy 6 hours of actual driving each day: 3 in the morning and 3 in the afternoon. For this particular trip, we decided to do some 7-8 hour driving days so that we could spend an extra day or two not driving at all.

Having satellite radio and a rear DVD entertainment system with an iPod Touch in the Denali is magic because time passed very quickly. The kids were able to read, watch a few episodes of their favorite shows, and listen to Radio Disney in the morning, and then watch a movie after lunch. After a little more music in the afternoon we'd be at our destination. We were never worn out at the end of each day and at the end of 27 days, we wanted more!