Vacation with a baby? Are we crazy?

When I was pregnant, Brett and I swore we would never stop traveling just because we had a child.  As long as we had the funds, we would continue to take small weekend getaways when given the opportunity.  We live in a part of the country where many great travel destinations are less than a 5 hour drive from our house.

 

This weekend we are packing up our car and living up to our promise.  Asheville, North Carolina here we come!!  (That is of course, if Hurricane Earl doesn’t put a literal damper on our plans).

 

I can’t wait.  It’s going to be in the upper 70s.  UPPER 70s!!!!  During the day!!!! In Savannah terms, that’s freaking freezing!  I need to pack pants!  And a sweatshirt for night!  Yippee!!

 

Brett and I are a little intimidated traveling 5 hours from home with Max.  The theme for this trip is flexibility. Other than tickets to the Biltmore and hotel reservations we don’t have any set plans for the trip.  Max doesn’t have a set schedule and he’s pretty good at napping in his stroller and/or sling so we don’t have to run home every 2 hours for naptime.  However, his bed time is pretty early (7PM) and he tends to get really fussy until he’s made it to bed. 7PM seems a bit too early to call it a night so we are just going to play it by ear. Hopefully he’ll just pass out in his stroller so we can walk around or get takeout to eat outside.  Otherwise, it’s back to the hotel.  Brett’s got plenty of homework and I have a stack of tabloids, classical novels that I can dive into, so being quarantined to the hotel isn’t a death sentence. 

 

Five hours in a car has the potential to get hairy.  Max hasn’t been in the car any longer than 1.5 hours at a time so I’m not sure how he’ll react. Usually he just sleeps or watches the world go by, so we’re hoping with frequent stops to get him out of the car seat he won’t subject us to insanity by screaming.  Our 5 hour drive will probably take about 8 but we’re realistic about making terrible time.  Best case scenario is that he spends most of the drive like this:

 

Or this:

 

As long as I get to see some mountains, I’ll consider the trip a success.

 

So, anyone have any advice about traveling (by car) with a 5 month old?  Are we insane for doing this? Anyone have suggestions on things to do in the Asheville area?