Why Traveling With the Family Can Be the Most Magical Part of the Winter Season

Our trips to Mexico would always start the same way. My dad stacked and packed luggage inside and on top of our car, trying to fit as much as he possibly could while still leaving enough sitting room for all of us to fit. He’d tie rope around the roof of our car, sometimes through the backseat passenger doors as well, making all style of knots to secure our precious cargo, which was mostly used clothing for us to wear and to leave behind for our family in San Luis Potosi.

My mother usually had woken up several hours before all of us to make tacos and gorditas for the road. In between stuffing tortillas and packing all our belongings, she’d take turns fussing at each of us – all seven of us kids – to hurry up and get ready to go. Our plan would always be to leave early in the morning hours to get to the border by daylight, but somehow, we would always manage to leave a lot later than planned. It was chaotic to say the least, but once we got going it was always a lot of fun.

Those crazy drives to and from Mexico are what really made me fall in love with the open road. We shared so much on those 14-hour drives, and even though we inevitably got on each other’s nerves, it also made us so much closer.

Anjelica grew up making those same road trips with her family, so when we got married we knew long distance drives were in our future together as well.

We’ve now made the trek from Houston to New York City, to Washington D.C., to Connecticut, to California, to Arkansas, to Nevada, and a bunch of other states in between. Every time we hit the road there’s an excitement about the new places and things we will see. It also helps that we are both the adventurous type and love making little detours into big family experiences. We have gone on so many road trips now that even our 15-year-old son Edgar gets the itch when we’ve spent too many months at home without making a long drive.

There’s just something special about sharing a cross-country drive as a family.

These long drives are when we have the most in-depth conversations with one another. We listen to each other’s stories. We laugh. We get mad at each other. We argue. We make up. And in the morning, we wake up and do it all over again, until we make it to our destination. As soon as it gets dark, Anjelica starts looking for the nearest Best Western Hotels & Resorts property to us, so we can stop and rest for the night.

When you’re traveling for several days and on a budget, it’s easy for things to add up. That’s why we joined the Best Western Rewards program years ago. It offers us the convenience of a standard Best Western hotel stay, with the added benefit of special discounts and a point system with points that accumulate and don’t ever expire. That’s golden! I can’t tell you the number of times we have been able to take advantage of instant rewards because we are now long time members of this loyalty program.

Whenever friends and family ask us where to stay, we immediately recommend Best Western and enourage them to join the rewards program as well.

The amenities at Best Western hotels are great for traveling families too. Edgar loves taking a dip in the pool (in some cases even when it’s cold because the pools are often heated or indoors), and as of late, he also likes to get a workout in every chance he gets. Alright, so I’m a little partial to the pools myself if I am being completely honest. And well Anjelica, she just likes the peace and quiet of sitting in the hotel room while we are swimming and having father-son time. It’s during that quiet time when she’s usually plotting our next detour for the road.

Last year we cut back on our long-distance trips because we just couldn’t travel very far. To hold us over in between we made a lot of shorter trips around the Lone Star State. Those were fun too because since we weren’t going hundreds of miles away we could also invite more of our family members to come with us. That’s one thing we want to do more of in the new year. Because regardless of how near or far we are traveling, what matters is that we are creating family memories that will last us a lifetime.