Driving >250 miles for a family ski vacation, is it worth the effort?

[lisamamot]

We drove 200+ miles on Friday and returned on Sunday every weekend last winter since we had a house rental at Sunday River. We traveled with both teens and 3 dogs. My kids could easily have done that, no matter the age. For our family, it would be totally worth it for a week!

 

[Fluffy Kitty]

It really depends on individual tolerance, no? Bachelor is about 150 miles from us, and it's been about the limit for my younger teen; we stay a week, or leave on Friday and come back on Saturday. (Of course, if I'm by myself, it's a one-day thing.) My older teen, by contrast, every summer has been going to to a camp that is 400 miles each way, and likes the "scenic route" even better.

 

[marzNC]

It really depends on individual tolerance, no? Bachelor is about 150 miles from us, and it's been about the limit for my younger teen; we stay a week, or leave on Friday and come back on Saturday. (Of course, if I'm by myself, it's a one-day thing.) My older teen, by contrast, every summer has been going to to a camp that is 400 miles each way, and likes the "scenic route" even better.

Certainly depends on the family's tolerance for driving for a day or two.

The original reason I asked the question was not for families who are already fully committed a big chunk of their recreational budget to skiing. It was to get ideas for a family who likes to ski in the flatlands of Texas or Michigan or Washington DC but is ready to plan their first family ski vacation at a big destination resort. Airfare adds up fast for a family of 3 or 4 or 5. So driving a day or a day-and-a-half can be worth considering. For the first time, it's not a simple decision though.

 

[lisamamot]

I guess we are blessed with good travelers, but with no local family they learned to be that way. 250 miles is a 5 hour drive and I would never consider flying that. We frequently do northern VT (240 miles) for a weekend and have since our teens were infants. It would take us the same amount of time to drive to the airport, get through security, and then fly...not to mention the hassle and being insanely more expensive.

Change that to over 12 hours of driving and then air starts to look better. If it requires an extra day of vacation each way, and hotel stays, then air makes sense.

After booking air fare for 4 to CO (30 hour drive!) I can attest that it absolutely adds up.

 

[marzNC]

My brother-in-law and his son used to drive from Chicago to Colorado for a spring break ski trip. Went with another father and son who better skiers. When the sons were in high school and could help drive, they started driving to Utah. That's 1400 miles or about 22 hours with no stops. When the sons were in college, the four of them drove out together and then the fathers flew home. One reason to drive was that the sons weren't old enough to rent a car. But they were old enough to drive all night if necessary. So clearly there are situations when people drive instead of fly.

I don't think parents would compare driving 5 hours with flying to the same destination. It's more likely that the choice is between driving 5-10 hours one way or flying a few thousand miles, presumably to a much bigger ski resort than can can be reached in a day of driving with kids in the car.

 

[lisamamot]

I don't think parents would compare driving 5 hours with flying to the same destination. It's more likely that the choice is between driving 5-10 hours one way or flying a few thousand miles, presumably to a much bigger ski resort than can can be reached in a day of driving with kids in the car.

I misunderstood the original question. I thought it was asking if it was worth it to drive 250+ miles or better off to fly to the same or at least somewhat equivalent distance location. My apologies as my posts were totally based on the break-even between driving to a destination and flying. Some people would fly instead of drive 10-12 hours, but we would drive.

 

[marzNC]

I misunderstood the original question. I thought it was asking if it was worth it to drive 250+ miles or better off to fly to the same or at least somewhat equivalent distance location. My apologies as my posts were totally based on the break-even between driving to a destination and flying. Some people would fly instead of drive 10-12 hours, but we would drive.

No worries. I was refining my thinking as the discussion progressed. So the questions in Post #1 ended up being a way to get things started, but weren't really that relevant.

The families who may find driving 10-12 hours worth the effort seem mostly to live in FL/AL, TX, or the midwest. I've talked with parents who drove 1000 miles from FL for a timeshare week vacation at Massanutten during ski season. One family had five kids. Parents had skied growing up. For them, it was worth the drive so the kids could have time on snow (75 acres skiing/boarding, snow tubing). I know there are families who drive from FL to Snowshoe for an annual ski week. A few even buy condos at Snowshoe. There are families who drive a full day or more from VA/PA/DE/NJ to ski at bigger mountains in the northeast during school holidays. Makes driving from TX or the midwest to Colorado seem like a completely reasonable choice.

When you live in the flatlands and want your kids to ski and don't have a big budget for family travel, you do what you have to do to make it happen.

 

[artistinsuburbia]

What to pack: If you can get your hands on a medical grade barf bag, or two or six... We took a trip to snowshoe once and the switch back roads had kids in two different cars needing to make emergency pull overs from being car sick. We also have local shops that rent and fit your car with a thule enclosed carrier. HIGHLY recommend those as it makes the trip much more bearable being able to put the bulk on the roof and your skis aren't frozen to the rack when you get there.

 

[marzNC]

What to pack: If you can get your hands on a medical grade barf bag, or two or six... We took a trip to snowshoe once and the switch back roads had kids in two different cars needing to make emergency pull overs from being car sick. We also have local shops that rent and fit your car with a thule enclosed carrier. HIGHLY recommend those as it makes the trip much more bearable being able to put the bulk on the roof and your skis aren't frozen to the rack when you get there.

Interesting! Discovered it's also possible to rent a roof top ski carrier. For a trip in the southeast, no worries about salt on the road. Of course, relatively few families doing a long drive own skis or snowboards.

 

[Jilly]

Had a similar discussion with my former snow school director. It was more about time for travel. It's going to take a day to travel out west. It takes a day to drive to Mont Ste Anne, or the US NorthEast. What would you rather do? It's drive. And for some the skiing is just as good. Notice I said some. There are those that will only ski the BIG mountains....they're missing some great skiing...

 

[RedinChicago]

4-5 hours of driving? If I could stay the night absolutely. 5 hours isn't really that big a deal. If someone is enough of an evening person you can leave after work on a Friday, ski Saturday and and most of Sunday and be home Sunday night.

My tolerance for the car ends at about 12 hours. Colorado is 15 and the east about the same. DH would but I just can't bring myself to do it. I suppose it would come down to just how bad I wanted to go out west. I suspect we may end up driving the next time, and I will want to shoot myself.

 

[surfsnowgirl]

I have a huge tolerance for car trips. Forest Gump likes to run, I like to drive. I miss having Vegas in my backyard as that was an easy weekend trip. One of my best road trips was driving from California to CT when I moved back here. I stopped over night in Utah, Colorado, Nebraska and Pennsylvania. Had such a great trip and would do it again in a heartbeat. My tolerance for a day trip is about 3 hours but if I'm going over night I have no issue driving 4-6 hours for a weekend. We don't have kids so that makes it easier. DH reads his tablet and "goes away" and I listen to whatever I want on the radio.

 

[bounceswoosh]

My tolerance for the car ends at about 12 hours. Colorado is 15 and the east about the same. DH would but I just can't bring myself to do it. I suppose it would come down to just how bad I wanted to go out west. I suspect we may end up driving the next time, and I will want to shoot myself.

We just got back from visiting family - 14 hours each way. We drove so that we could bring the dogs; otherwise it would have been a 1.5 hour flight. It wasn't so bad with some decent Audible selections, although we about ate our weight in junk food. But DH drives the entire way, and I nap much of it. I brought a blanket for my legs, which was really nice as most of the drive, the outside was 15 degrees or colder.

It leaves me pretty exhausted, despite all the napping, so for me, doing this and then being "on" for skiing the next day would be tough.

 

[HeidiInTheAlps]

This last Christmas, was the Christmas of driving....

We live in Amsterdam, drove to Tignes (12 hours). We were meant to meet my sister in Italy to ski the last week of the holiday, but there was NO SNOW!!! Because of a ka-winky-dink - she could cancel her airplane tickets for a full refund, and the house with only at 161 EUR penalty. But we still wanted to spend Christmas together so....

We drove from Tignes to Frankfurt (8,5) hours, spend the night. Got up the next day, drove to Hirsthals Denmark (9) hours, waited for ferry, then a 3,5 hour ferry trip, then another 45 min drive....

Then I drove home solo, 45 min drive, 3,5 hour ferry ride, 10 drive to Amsterdam....

I'm over driving for the time being...

 

[Mom of Redheads]

I actually had to mapquest to see how far we generally drive on our "big" ski vacation. We've gone as far as 400+ miles to Tremblant, 300+ to Smuggler's Notch and Bretton Woods, and probably the shortest distance was to Okemo last year which is 215 miles.

So, yes, with a family of 5, we drive 250 miles regularly for a ski vacation. We won't really do it for less than 4 ski days. When we plan a vacation, we look for a mountain within 5-7 hours of driving time (as predicted by mapquest) that's large enough to keep us busy but not bored for 4 days of skiing. It definitely means extra vacation time to get there. We need a 5-6 day window for 4 days of skiing. We used to have the entire Presidents Day week off, so the kids didn't have to miss school. Lately though, we've only had a 4 day long weekend, which just isn't long enough in our opinion. Some of that is because of the cost... with a family of 5 it just doesn't seem worth it to drive that far and pay that much to ski on the most crowded weekend of the year for 2-1/2 days on the snow... We've tried to leave after school so the kids miss one less day and so DH can schedule conference calls later in the day and NOT take a vacation day - and we've also left by noon on our last ski day to get home. That actually is pretty standard for us since our kids feel like they've skied most of the mountain that they are interested in by our 4th ski day. Even on skis they get bored easily so if they've skied most of the runs and gone back to their favorites a couple of times, they're ready to leave.

Anyway, other than taking snacks for the car and 2 boot dryers (family of 5, LOL), I don't think we pack anything different than we would if we flew somewhere. If we did fly somewhere, we'd all take boot bags full of clothes, helmets, ski boots etc - and we might (or might not) take the sport tube with my skis and DH's. But I think we'd rent equipment for the kids. Whether we fly or drive, the kids are responsible for their own entertainment. Between iPhones, nintendos, and e-readers, they don't need much room to bring along whatever they need. When we do drive, we bring along movies for the car. The kids choose the movies, and DH and I might add a couple - but only if we know that our accommodations will have a DVD player. Our kids are ages 10-15, but when they were younger, we took along a few extra bags with things like coloring books and maybe a new power ranger or whatever as a treat. I will say it's harder to pack light when you have room in the car or in a carrier on the roof of the car...

When we lived in Delaware and Maryland, we took vacations at Sugarbush. We would leave on Saturday, drive to Southern Vermont where we spent the night with friends. We'd have a nice visit and relaxed morning at their house and leave around noon. We'd stop at a grocery store in their town and get food for the week... and since it was generally plenty cold, we'd throw the food up top in the carrier where it would stay cold. We'd get to the mountain mid/late afternoon on Sunday and ski Monday - Friday. Then we'd either reverse the process or, once or twice we left about noon and drove straight through, hoping our kids (toddlers and babies at the time) would sleep - which they didn't! But we'd be home with at least one more weekend day before we had to face the week ahead. Pulling kids out of preschool for an entire week was a "no-brainer," and it gave us both weekends for travel flexibility. Trying to minimize the time we take kids out of school is definitely more challenging and adds some stress to the process. But our schools give each student laptops and much of their work is done/turned in online - so driving would mean they could keep up with their homework more easily. I'm not sure I'd want to risk taking the school laptops on a plane...

Would I drive that far for a weekend of skiing? Probably not... We'd hit southern VT which is more like 175-200 miles. I can't see taking two days off to drive somewhere to ski 2 days. I want my ski days to outnumber my driving days, LOL. Also, 250 miles takes us to large enough mountains I think we'd want more than 2 days to explore...

As I write this I'm debating where to book our annual vacation... it's either driving to Tremblant (a second visit for us which would be a first) or actually getting on a plane and heading west. And as usual, one fo the driving factors will be deciding whether/how long we can afford to pull the kids from school for the travel.