"I cannot possibly imagine taking a cross-country road trip with little kids (+ nursing baby and wheełchair) for almost five months... How did you do it??"
Besides being crazy and motivated, here is our strategy and advice:
First thing first, any road trip must be saturated with prayer!
The next thing I did was let people know of our upcoming trip. Then, I used a free mapping site (batchgeo.com) to map every address I had. I used that map to create a general trajectory of our path and sent that out to our contacts to let them know that this wild dream was becoming a planned reality.
Now, I did not contact people individually far in advance to schedule dates and times. I only made plans one to two weeks out (ideally). I would say about one out of three friends couldn’t meet or host us. When that happened, we had backup options to avoid a bunch of hotel expense! We are members of A Candle in the Window, a Christian hospitality network with families all over the country (and world)! Or, we would use a Wycliffe hospitality roster that has families all over the U.S. willing to host Wycliffe missionaries. Out of the 144 nights on the road, we only paid for two hotels (and not out of necessity, but by choice).
We learned that the optimal time to stay with anyone, besides parents, is one or two nights. More than that felt like an intrusion, no matter what they said or how close you are to them.
One big rule: we tried to limit the amount of driving we did in one day. Our goal was four hours, knowing that could take us five to six hours to get to our destination. We usually took one bigger stop (gas, eat, potty, diaper, nurse) and one quick stop to potty. We tried to stop only if the baby was awake ;) And, we did not drive every day! Limiting our time in the car each day was a huge sanity-saver and made this endeavor more manageable :)
Traveling with kids: Honestly, they took a bunch of naps. When they were awake, they could think, pray, sing, talk, play with car games or toys, or look out the window... We also listened to a lot of audiobooks, Bible dramas, and music :) Oh, and snacks, lots and lots of snacks!
And, lastly, lots and lots of PRAYER.
And, lastly, lots and lots of PRAYER.