How far ahead do you like to plan family travel?
This may sound crazy to some, but I’ve already started planning our spring break trip for March 2024.
Spring break is a very popular time to travel. Warm destinations, especially, tend to book up fast. For some places, you need to plan six to 12 months out or even longer (I’m looking at you, Disney).
Plus, planning a trip is almost as much fun for me as the actual travel itself. I adore the entire planning process, from researching destinations to crowdsourcing places to eat and things to see and do.
Especially when planning travel to a new-to-us destination, I really like to get out in front of it by reading tons of articles, watching videos on YouTube and figuring out which experiences and attractions will work best for our family.
I began raising the topic of spring break, and asking the family what they’d like to do and where they’d like to go, sometime in the last month. Long gone are the days of me planning something and then springing it on them. We’ve learned that our best trips are the ones we plan collaboratively.
We all agreed another driving vacation – like our epic family road trip in 2021 – is the way to go. We also are in sync as a family in wanting to explore more of this awesome country of ours, and visit as many national parks as we can along the way.
I suggested another Wild West adventure, as I’ve been obsessing over the Utah national parks for a while now. But Z suggested something a little closer to home and E enthusiastically agreed.
The destination we’ve chosen for spring break 2024 is… drumroll please… the beautiful state of North Carolina!
Both Z and E feel a strong pull toward North Carolina. We’ve been there before, of course. My best friend from high school lives in Charlotte, plus we’ve driven through the state en route to or from Florida. But we’ve never truly explored NC’s mountains, waterfalls or beaches – all things we love.
When I asked my little fam what they’d like to see or do in NC, neither had any concrete ideas. “You can figure that part out,” they said. And so I am!
First, I asked friends and family on Facebook about their favorite spots in NC. I already had Asheville in mind as I’ve heard such great things about that town and surrounding area. I also wanted to pick a spot on the coast, though, and I had no idea where to start.
Then, based on recommendations from people I know, I started to build out an itinerary for us with half the week in the mountains of Asheville and half the week on the beach at Topsail Island. I researched a few AirBnBs in both locations so I could give E and Z some options. I also plotted out drive time between home and both destinations so I could let the fam know what to expect – always a good thing.
Then, I put everything into a Trello board that I created specifically as a trip planner. I’ve been using this free, visual, organizational tool for years to plan travel – ever since our 2018 family trip to Europe – and I absolutely love it.
Trello is a great way to keep track of all your reservations, links to great articles of things to do, and so much more. Above is a photo of my NC trip planning board so you can see how I am starting to organize things for this trip.
Having a Trello board set up makes it really easy to present a travel plan to your family; the photos and visuals add excitement. I shared my preliminary Trello board with E and Z and they loved my ideas. They both gave the thumbs up to go ahead and book the trip. They were super happy with my idea to spend half the week in the mountains and the other half at the beach.
A small cabin nestled in the mountains near rivers and waterfalls. A little cottage right on the beach with ocean views and dolphins to spot. Does this sound like the ideal NC spring break or what?!
Once I have our AirBnBs booked, I’ll spend more time leisurely looking into attractions, activities and things to do. I’ll typically map out one activity for each day, knowing that we may end up doing more but also making sure to leave lots of downtime for exploring nature or just chilling in the hot tubs at each AirBnB.
With highly sensitive and neurodivergent family members, I like to have as much planned out in advance as possible to avoid surprises and increase enjoyment.
Using my Trello board to keep everything in one place – and then keeping it updated in real-time during the trip or immediately afterward – also results in a great record of our travels to look back on later or share with friends who might want to take a similar trip.
When will you start planning your family’s spring break – or will you take a staycation at home like we do occasionally? There’s no wrong way to spend spring break!
