I am a road trip hater. We leave next week to take our son 10 hours away to college, but are breaking it up into a 2 day trip. The rest of the time, he will be flying back and forth. In fact, if everything works out, the next time we have to drive out there will be for his graduation in the spring of 2019.
I lived in CA when I decided to attend Mount Holyoke. My parents flew with me out to school, then never returned until I graduated. I flew back and forth, storing my stuff at school over the summer. Lots of schools have provision for this.
You will be in good company if you take my family’s approach!
H left a few hours ago with S, driving from MA to NOLA. They will be doing some sightseeing and hiking on the way. I will fly out next week prior to move in, and then drive home with H. I’m a last minute packer and didn’t want to deal with the planning entailed in shipping or packing for the plane. Also, S wants his bike at school and needs his hockey stuff, so this was the easiest plan for us. We didn’t start packing until this AM(I already made a checklist), and they’re off!
Love road trips. Not sure I’d drive coast-to-coast for a college drop-off. Well, actually, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t, but we did drive from Minnesota to the East Coast to drop off both of our daughters. We had done a lot of Midwest-Northeast road trips throughout our daughters’ childhood, especially when we lived in the Northeast and all of our family (both sides) were in the Midwest, but also after we relocated to the Midwest and still had lots of ties to the Northeast. So everyone knew the drill and was comfortable with it, and the time together was something we actually enjoyed. So we decided to make a family vacation of it, figuring that, especially with D1, this might be the last road trip we did together as a foursome. We had grand time, with stops in Chicago, Ann Arbor, Stratford (Shakespeare Festival), Toronto, Montreal, and Quebec City before dropping back down into Vermont then heading toward the Philadelphia area. A roundabout route, to be sure, but an outstanding family vacation. I wouldn’t trade that time for anything.
We thought about sending D2 off with a plane ticket, packed bags + shipped boxes, and one parent to help out on the other end, but she was not about to be short-changed. So we did Road Trip Round 2, this time opting to spend more time in Chicago, Stratford, Toronto, and adding Niagara-on-the-Lake (Shaw Festival) and skipping the Montreal-Quebec City leg. D2 was entirely satisfied with that itinerary, also a memorable family road trip.
It’s a matter of personal preference, Many people hate road trips. Some love 'em. If it’s a long distance trip, it’s probably cheaper to fly in most cases. But for my money, flying and spending a few extra days in your child’s college town isn’t much of a vacation. So it comes down to how much that last vacation is worth to you, both in time and money, and is the road trip one that will count as a meaningful, memorable, and enjoyable vacation. For us, it was well worth it, twice.
Due to family scheduling, we weren’t able to do the dorm move-in with our daughter, and I was a little sad about that, but there’s no way I would have been willing to drive across the entire country and back just for that. If I were you, I’d spend the time and money on a real family vacation before she leaves, and say your good byes at the airport. Is a week in a cramped hot car looking at highway billboards really the way you want to spend your last week together?
There’s a family (a girl and her dad) I know that are baseball fans and for the girl’s dropoff they drove from California to the midwest and stopped at all the ballparks a long the way to watch a game. I think they made some beautiful dad-daughter memories. Dad had business in states on the way home so it worked out. I love roadtrips too but coast to coast might be a wee too long for me unless I was on a bucketlist mission like they were.