St. George & San Diego Trip: St. George & Road Trip Portion

So to keep our planned tradition of taking the girls on their first vacation when they are 7 months old, we decided for Gwen we'd do a road trip to San Diego. We knew a straight drive would be a little much so we planned an overnight stop in St. George on the way there and back (it was such a nice little break for us too). Here is information on what we did in each location:

 

I just have to take our family road trip pic (Gwen is even in this one a little bit)



Doesn't look like much, but it sure took up
Space in the car



St. George

Hotel: We stayed at the TownePlace Suites St. George (for both ways). We picked this hotel because of the option of having a separate bedroom so that we could keep the girls separate since we knew Cara wanders before she sleeps and we didn't want her to keep Gwen awake (so Cara slept on the pull out couch in the living room and Gwen was in the Pack N Play in our room). It was a really nice place to stay in such a hot location. It was close to some good shopping and food places (and by that I mean there were plenty of options for both near us). They had a decent breakfast food selection, but they never had scrambled eggs or bacon (they either had hard boiled or fried eggs and Canadian bacon), but they had enough to fill us. They checked us in quick, which was nice on the way back because we got there right at bed time so we were able to hurry and get as unpacked as we needed, get ready for bed, and just pass out.

Activities: Other than swimming we didn't give ourselves enough time to do too many activities (especially on the way back). Swimming (in the hotel pool) was a big win though! It was so hot there that the pool wasn't freezing and the girls both loved "swimming" in it. We almost couldn't keep Cara with us (we forgot floaties so she needed to stay with us in the pool) so we ended up compromising and letting her wander on her own in the 1.5 ft deep/stairs area. She loved floating while holding onto the railing and she really loved jumping into the pool into our arms. Gwen even got to the point where she wanted us to hold her away from us and let her float.

Food: Other than the hotel breakfast we ended up eating dinner at Village Inn. I didn't used to be a fan of this place, but I didn't know what I was in the mood for so we figured a restaurant like that would have a little of everything and we could see what looked good on the menu. The biggest win was the fact that we went on "Free Slice of Pie Day" so we both got a free slice of pie with our dinners.

Road Trip

We learned a bit about road tripping with kiddos this vacation. For one: when you have a young kid who eats every 3 hours, plan to make stops every 3 hours! While stopping so often can be annoying, it was nice for us to think of those as good opportunities for them to get wiggles out. Driving down to St. George we stopped in Scipio (we were told there was a petting zoo - which there was, but it was closed), it lined up with lunch time perfectly and then we were able to drive to St. George and let the girls nap in the car while Larry and I talked (perfect time to have a nice conversation).

Driving from St. George to San Diego was a bit more rough, just because we didn't plan stops the best way and we ended up in a very hot city where we let the girls "wiggle" in a dollar store (for real haha), but mostly only because it lined up with when we had to get gas. Gwen lost her cool very much on this drive, it wasn't my favorite part. But we did learn that pouches with a baby to snack on is much better than baby food in jars.

Driving from San Diego to St. George was MUCH better. We planned stops, we found great places. We found a sketchy, but at least we didn't die so it was fun, playground in California and a market/gift shop in death valley (hello 113 degrees) that had a fun play area that was awesome AND we got ice cream at so score! We had to make a final stop, about 30 min from our hotel, for dinner at a cute 50s diner (but I was just over diner type food at that point so even though it was good, I just wanted something different).