Vacations are made of mines and memories

Any old parent can take a kid to Disney World. It takes a special kind of insanity to take a child on a vacation to a coal mine.
My best friend (and coincidentally cousin) and I have been taking vacations together with our respective children since the children were in diapers. That right there is all the proof you’ll ever need that something just isn’t right with the two of us. It’s probably genetic.
Nonetheless, we find a certain satisfaction and sense of adventure in loading up a minivan with four young kids and a bag full of crackers and hitting the open road.
One-tank trips. Granted, because we have not yet completely descended into madness, we do tend to confine ourselves to “one-tank” trips. We’ve found anything further than four hours on the road and two days away from home will inspire even the sweetest of small children to conspire against you and contemplate mutiny.
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